

In addition, Sound Forge will support many third party VST and Mac Audio Units plug-ins.

Sound Forge Pro Mac comes with a set of Sony plug-ins, as well as the iZotope mastering suite filters. The operation is very easy to learn, thanks to a tabbed window layout, easy-to-understand controls and menus and a good user guide. In other words, it’s devoid of unnecessary “chrome”. It might look a tad Spartan to some, since it bucks the current trend of dark, dimensional interfaces. Sound Forge sports a clean user interface that will appeal to the professional. Sound Forge can be used as a recording application if you have an input device on your system, such as the Avid/Digidesign Mbox2 Mini that I use. To be clear, it’s designed to edit and master single files and is not a multi-track digital audio workstation application for mixing. Since most users are going to be limited by their I/O hardware, they will likely work with 24-bit, 48kHz stereo files. Although it is thought of as a two-track editor, it can deal with multi-channel files with as many as 32 embedded channels, sample rates up to 192kHz and bit depths up to 64-bit float. Sound Forge Pro Mac 1.0 is a comprehensive tool for audio analysis, recording, editing, processing and mastering. Sound Forge has been the tool of choice for Windows-based audio production and now Sony has made a strong entry into the Mac creative universe.

Enter Sony’s Sound Forge Pro for the Mac. Until recently BIAS Peak had been go-to, two-track audio editor and mastering tool for Mac-based audio engineers but, the company has apparently withdrawn from the market, leaving an opening for some new blood to step in. On the other side of the fence, Mac OS has enjoyed a wide range of creative tools, especially for audio production and post. These include Vegas Pro, ACID and Sound Forge, which have traditionally been tightly integrated with the Windows operating system. Sony Creative Software has been the home for an innovative set of audio and video editing and mixing tools originally developed by Sonic Foundry.
