Sound Forge XP
Reviewed by
Tony Thomas
Sound Forge XP is an audio editing package designed for Internet, multimedia and broadcast production applications. Like its parent, the full-blown version of Sound Forge, XP uses a multiple-window interface and provides a wide variety of audio editing tools such as reverb, ten-band EQ, normalize, delay and many others (although no real-time plug in support).
Given its $60 list price (and street price in the $40-50 range), you would think the program would be something of a toy. However, I found XP to be a rock solid professional application. In fact, I use it as one of my primary editing tools in my studio. One of the best things about the program is its ability to view and edit AVI files and save the edited audio into a file with the video. This makes it a great tool for audio for video editing for the Internet or CD- ROM production. The fact that it is only a two-track editing package is lessened since you do have the ability to open multiple sound files and cut, paste, mix and crossfade between them. XP also converts a number of standard file formats including WAV, AU, AVI, AIFF, ADPCM, GSM, MP3 and True Speech. There is also support for Real Networks' Real Media and Netshow streaming formats.
My only disappointment was with the MP3 encoder which only supports up to 22K stereo files (56K transfer rate). The version I am reviewing is 4.0, but I understand the newer 4.5 version also has looping support for Sonic Foundry's popular ACID program (which will be reviewed here shortly). If you are looking for an inexpensive audio editor with an impressive feature set, Sound Forge XP is the program to get!
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