Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio 10 2011 Release (PC)

I have tried almost all well-known audio editing tools including those bundled with video editors and, in my opinion, nothing comes close to this Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio 10 for ease of use, price, and performance. This tool has an intuitive user interface, reasonably priced - price here on Amazon about half the direct sale price by Sony online outlet - and most importantly the productivity is great, i.e., you can get a job done (audio recording, audio editing, and further manipulations with effects) with minimal overhead.

For someone mainly interested in audio restoration, the Tools menu provides a simple interface for tweaking restoration parameters (such as click removal, noise reduction) and testing the audio in real time with a convenient bypass toggle to compare the audio with and without a chosen restoration setup.

If a more comprehensive audio manipulation is desired, the Process and Effects menu commands provide more of the audio filtering and enhancing techniques. At any point, if you're satisfied with a particular setting, you can save the setup as a custom pre-set so that you can re-use it with other audio files (in effect you're creating kind of your own sound FX which is nice).

Beyond the above techniques, this tool also provides an interface to plugins for the likes of DirectX Audio to harness more creativity with audio recording and processing. This tool will also 'attempt to detect' if there are other sound FX plugins already on your computer but this cleverness could prove troublesome as I've noticed. I have CyberLink DVD Player and Video Editor installed on my computer, and browsing the FX Favourites menu showed that there are numerous CyberLink FX plugins. I thought I would give a try with these plugins, particularly as one with the name "CyberLink Audio Spectrum Analyzer" attracted my attention. Unfortunately none of the plugins worked, most of them resulting in a crash and prompting me to report the error to Sony Creative Software. One FX plugin I tried had a more serious consequence since it sets the program into a situation it can never get out of - on application launch it exits with an error "application has made an attempt to load the C runtime library incorrectly". Even re-installing will not get rid of this problem - you have to use the installation roll-back to revert to the installation state before you tried the plugin. There is a slim chance that this may happen to every user, but the morale of this story is - keep away from trying out FX plugins from other applications which this tool lists as usable; there is no problem in FX plugins that come with this tool (or presumably if you buy additional FX plugins intended for this audio tool).

This tool also allows you to load a video file (assuming that it's DRM free) but work on the audio track as if you just loaded an audio file. When played you see the video frames with nice animation and you can even copy a video frame into an image editor such as Microsoft Paint. Really nice!

The Quick Start Manual (in PDF on disc) as suggested by the title provides a good introduction. There is also help integrated with the program (accessible via the Help menu or F1 key) as well as a "Show Me How" which is a kind of mini e-Learning system that attempts to provide an interactive lesson for a chosen topic. In short, the help system provided to improve the usability of this tool is quite commendable.

The software supplied on disc is Version 10.0 Build 176. Following installation it will happily update to the latest Version 10.0 Build 177 after downloading a huge 142MB exe file.

I am well pleased with this excellent tool, but I didn't like how Sony ties the licence to a particular computer. You will note this when you enter the Product Key as this is linked to a machine ID (but don't as yet know how the machine ID is computed). While software companies are well justified to protect their intellectual property (to use techniques that combat piracy etc.) they shouldn't impose restriction on which machine the software is installed and used. I wish to use this audio tool both on my laptop and desktop under a single user policy rather than as a single machine policy (only one copy used at a given time) but I am yet to find out whether I'm able to install on more than one machine and run the application on which ever computer I choose.

As a matter of principle I do not like software product registration that tries to be intrusive beyond the registration for help and updates. I don't mind my name being linked to the Product Key because this deters copying programs and it's exactly what software companies should be satisfied with and no more. But, software companies should also be able to reverse the process of registration if the software is passed on to different ownership. I quite successfully did this with Magix Movie Edit Pro 17 Plus when I passed on the software to a friend (and re-registered under my friend's name) but not many companies are prepared to do this.

On the other hand, you may also come across software companies with shady practices which coincidentally I came across one just before I purchased this software - the NCH Software which authors the WavePad Audio Editor. WavePad Audio Editor may be a very capable audio tool but I found it as the most intrusive software I have come across so far - it installs numerous programs the user has no clue about; does a lot of data-mining from Registry such as email settings saved by other applications; and if you care to monitor your Registry, worryingly it makes hundreds of changes and makes you wonder what it does to your computer. Well, this is another extreme and I am glad I didn't go ahead with that purchase.

To come back to the good Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio 10, in addition to the main audio tool, there are also bonus extras:

1) iZotope Vocal Eraser;
2) iZotope Audio Enhancer, and
3) recorded sound effects in wav format - I think over a thousand of them assuming the folder name '1001 Sound FX' is meant to designate the number of sound effects stored under that folder (and sounds about right). A quick browse shows almost all sound effects you can think of - from washing hands, dog barking, to various weapon sounds and alien noises.

If you wish to elevate your skills into a Pro level, this tool has a Professional version with more capabilities, which means you can retain your existing skills and easily pickup advanced ones.

A solid audio recording and editing tool, together with all these extras for under £25 is a real bargain. Get it, and you won't regret!

I have been using sound forge for editing and gentle mastering for over 6 years. I like Sound Forge Audio Studio because it is affordable and the workflow is quite fast and very usable after you get use to it (and it does not take that long time). I would really recommend it for editing sounds prior to software like Audacity. As this affords much bigger usability. It can be used for mastering music as well but there I would recommend to spend some money on a good plugin like the advanced version of iZotope tools. But the plugin Audio Enhancer by Izotope that is included in this version is a great way to quick-master your tracks and boost up their sound.

I had beed using NCH but the licence is for one pc only bit rubbish any way this bit of kit translated from that soft ware and it is easy to use with all the guides within the programme it helped this old tecnophobe