OT: Sound Forge 9 and iZotope Mastering Bundle

[Dave Labrecque]

Considering doing the upgrade from 8 to 9.

Questions:

Is there a difference between the boxed and downloaded versions of the program itself?

Does anyone have any feedback on the quality of the iZotope mastering bundle that comes with 9?

Any other observations? Are the free training DVDs they're offering with 9.0 useful?

[Dave Labrecque]

Thanks, Mark. Lemme know about the iZotope stuff, if you would. Lite would be lame. :rolleyes:

Yeah, I had a recent need to deal with multichannel audio files, and was able to do what I needed in Vegas, which is on my laptop. Not sure how long till I need that capability again.

[TotalSonic]

I might be mistaken but I believe the Izotope Mastering Bundle is just a number of the features from Ozone. Ozone's broad band brick wall peak limiter and its MBIT+ (aka "Megabitmax") dithering are both very good, and certainly worth while having. To my ear the Sonoris eq's are definitely superior than Ozone's though. As far as Ozone's various multiband effects and enhancers that - you have to be very careful with applying these because to my ear more often than not you can seriously hurt the integrity of a mix by adding them in. As always ymmv - luckily there's demos of Ozone available at Izotope's site - http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[MikeDee]

Hi, Dave -

I have SF 9. However, since I like to work in SS, I have not spent any quality time with iZotope.

It's unfortunate that external apps (e.g., SS) are unable to see the plugins...probably due to some block/constraint (as part of some "licensing" scheme). Else, I'd be a lot more familiar with iZotope.

I ran into the same roadblock with PG's plugins; I can see them only within SF and Band-in-a-Box. Oh, well...<sigh>. :(

Best regards,

[Tim Miskimon]

Hi, Dave -

I have SF 9. However, since I like to work in SS, I have not spent any quality time with iZotope.

It's unfortunate that external apps (e.g., SS) are unable to see the plugins...probably due to some block/constraint (as part of some "licensing" scheme). Else, I'd be a lot more familiar with iZotope.

I ran into the same roadblock with PG's plugins; I can see them only within SF and Band-in-a-Box. Oh, well...<sigh>. :(

Best regards,


While Sonic Foundry owned Sound Forge the plug ins would open in Saw.
Since Sony took over I guess that went away.
I was going to upgrade from 8 to 9 because of the addition of Izotope but if it's true that it only works in Sound Forge than they've lost a sale.
I'm sure that will break their hearts...:rolleyes:

[Dave Labrecque]

I might be mistaken but I believe the Izotope Mastering Bundle is just a number of the features from Ozone. Ozone's broad band brick wall peak limiter and its MBIT+ (aka "Megabitmax") dithering are both very good, and certainly worth while having. To my ear the Sonoris eq's are definitely superior than Ozone's though. As far as Ozone's various multiband effects and enhancers that - you have to be very careful with applying these because to my ear more often than not you can seriously hurt the integrity of a mix by adding them in. As always ymmv - luckily there's demos of Ozone available at Izotope's site - http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Thanks, Steve. Here's the page showing the bundle in SF 9:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/soundforge/izotope

Look familiar?

[Dave Labrecque]

While Sonic Foundry owned Sound Forge the plug ins would open in Saw.
Since Sony took over I guess that went away.
I was going to upgrade from 8 to 9 because of the addition of Izotope but if it's true that it only works in Sound Forge than they've lost a sale.
I'm sure that will break their hearts...:rolleyes:

Tim, all my Sony DX stuff shows up in SAW. You sure yours doesn't?

[Dave Labrecque]

Hi, Dave -

I have SF 9. However, since I like to work in SS, I have not spent any quality time with iZotope.

It's unfortunate that external apps (e.g., SS) are unable to see the plugins...probably due to some block/constraint (as part of some "licensing" scheme). Else, I'd be a lot more familiar with iZotope.

I ran into the same roadblock with PG's plugins; I can see them only within SF and Band-in-a-Box. Oh, well...<sigh>. :(

Best regards,

What's PG?

[TotalSonic]

Thanks, Steve. Here's the page showing the bundle in SF 9:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/soundforge/izotope

Look familiar?

Looks like they took only 4 of the multitude of modules available in Ozone - i.e. a much simplified eq, the multiband comp, the "mastering" reverb (which is ok but most likely not going to get much use in comparison to your current favorites), and what looks to be a simplified version of the peak limiter. I'd venture to say depending on your other options that the peak limiter is well worth while having - but just this one thing wouldn't necessarily make me upgrade - I'd personally make sure there are other features that make going from SF 8 to 9 attractive before investing.

fwiw - I've been pretty happy with Awave Audio 10 as a "swiss army knife" format/batch converter - http://www.fmjsoft.com - which for the most part allows me to do all of my editing work in SAW regardless of the format tracks are delivered, or the format requested for delivery.

As far as reading and extracting multiple mono files from "bwf poly" wav files - I just had a project that came in where I used the freeware BWF Manager from Fostex to do this (it works to split regular stereo files into two mono files as well) - it's big downside is that it doesn't do batch conversions - http://www.fostexinternational.com/docs/pro_support/pro_bwf_manager.shtml


Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Dave Labrecque]

Looks like they took only 4 of the multitude of modules available in Ozone - i.e. a much simplified eq, the multiband comp, the "mastering" reverb (which is ok but most likely not going to get much use in comparison to your current favorites), and what looks to be a simplified version of the peak limiter. I'd venture to say depending on your other options that the peak limiter is well worth while having - but just this one thing wouldn't necessarily make me upgrade - I'd personally make sure there are other features that make going from SF 8 to 9 attractive before investing.

fwiw - I've been pretty happy with Awave Audio 10 as a "swiss army knife" format/batch converter - http://www.fmjsoft.com - which for the most part allows me to do all of my editing work in SAW regardless of the format tracks are delivered, or the format requested for delivery.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Thanks, Steve. Wow -- that Awave sure does a lot of formats! :eek:

[Sean McCoy]

I have SF9 and yes, the Izotope bundle is "lite," and no, the plugs aren't available outside Sound Forge. Because of these two facts I haven't even bothered to authorize them. Unless you think you'll make use of the multi-channel functions (I haven't), offhand I can't think of any reason to recommend the upgrade. Why did I do it? 'Cause I'm a sucker that way. :o

[Sean McCoy]

Sound Forge is much more than a batch converter, and until a few versions back, the converter was a standalone program. In my opinion, SF is the fastest and most versatile dialog editor I've ever used, with it's playlist and cutlist features.
Agreed. Batch and format conversion and voice editing are the reasons I keep it around.

[TotalSonic]

\
Speaking of batch converters, it appears Awave is just a format converter and doesn't give you the option to put plug-ins in the conversion script, which I use frequently for level matching and top/tail trimming, and occasional EQ. If I'm wrong about that, someone please advise.

Mark -
You are not correct in this -
you can in fact use DX plugins in the conversion script with Awave Audio. Of course VST plugin support would be nice addition to have in this - but to date I've never needed it.



Regarding the free Fostex multi-channel to individual channel BWF converter, it doesn't appear that you can create multi-channel files, or edit them within the program as you can in SF, Vegas, PT, and many other apps.

No - it's a simple de-interleaver so that you can extract individual mono files from bwf-poly wav files (which can contain up to 8 mono channels in a single file) - so that they can then be loaded into the app of your choice. It unfortunately can not create the bwf poly-wav format - but I've yet to have any client ever request this from me.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Perry]

.................................................. .....

As far as reading and extracting multiple mono files from "bwf poly" wav files - I just had a project that came in where I used the freeware BWF Manager from Fostex to do this (it works to split regular stereo files into two mono files as well) - it's big downside is that it doesn't do batch conversions - http://www.fostexinternational.com/docs/pro_support/pro_bwf_manager.shtml


Best regards,
Steve Berson

How do you find all these things??? :) :rolleyes:

Thanks for this link!!!! :D

Perry

[Tim Miskimon]

Tim, all my Sony DX stuff shows up in SAW. You sure yours doesn't?

I had to reload Sound Forge 5 to get some of the older plugs to show up in Saw.
I have both 5 & 8 on my system.
There are a few that are on the Saw Plug in list but when I click on them they are in demo mode.
Lately I'm using less & less plug ins anyway.
I find myself using the same half dozen or so on a daily basis.
I guess it's nice to have the other 100 or so just in case...:)

[Dave Labrecque]

I had to reload Sound Forge 5 to get some of the older plugs to show up in Saw.
I have both 5 & 8 on my system.
There are a few that are on the Saw Plug in list but when I click on them they are in demo mode.
Lately I'm using less & less plug ins anyway.
I find myself using the same half dozen or so on a daily basis.
I guess it's nice to have the other 100 or so just in case...:)

That demo mode thing for the Sony DX plugs seems to be solved by the Sony Migration tools in Start/Programs/Sony/Utilities, IIRC.

[MikeDee]

What's PG?

PG Music, Inc. -- the author/owner of Band-in-a-Box.

http://www.pgmusic.com/

There are a number of plugins that come with it. I believe they're DX; they can be seen in Sound Forge as well...but not SS. :mad:

One of the plugins I like to use is called [I *think*] Vocal Reducer [or somethin' like that]. It's the same as PG's standalone app, Copy Scat (which is probably discontinued); however, the plug-in can reduce reverb trails as well. Also, the plugin doesn't create those annoying extra "dub" files (equivalent to wav file copies) that Copy Scat did.

HTH...best regards,

[Dave Labrecque]

PG Music, Inc. -- the author/owner of Band-in-a-Box.

http://www.pgmusic.com/

There are a number of plugins that come with it. I believe they're DX; they can be seen in Sound Forge as well...but not SS. :mad:


Weird. I thought DX was DX. :confused:

[Bob L]

Some have registry entries that lock them to certain apps, like copy protection.

Bob L

[Dave Labrecque]

Some have registry entries that lock them to certain apps, like copy protection.

Bob L

Ah. Interesting. Bummer, but interesting. :)

[MikeDee]

Some have registry entries that lock them to certain apps, like copy protection.

Bob L

'Tis a bummer...I'm usually pretty crafty hacking around the Registry...but I still haven't found these few blasted entries yet. :confused:

Oh, welp...t'morrow's another day...and then there's the day after.......

[TotalSonic]

Just an update regarding Fostex's free BWF Manager conversion utility -
I just built a new DAW and finally after all these years put XP on it instead of Win2k as I've been doing to date - and one of the benefits is that I downloaded the version 2 of BWF Manager for XP (instead of the previous version 1 I was using for Win2k) and happilly discovered that this version not only features improved gui, but also allows you to create bwf poly wav files from multiple mono files.

http://www.fostexinternational.com/docs/pro_support/pro_bwf_manager.shtml

Best regards,
Steve Berson