N-track and Sound Forge question

[YesZep Lick]

For those of you who use both N-track and Sound forge, what is the value added by using sound forge as well? I thought you can do everything in n-track including mastering. Can anyone comment on what they use each of these programs for? Thanks.
YZL

[Gidge]

N-Track is great for multitracking, but for editing and mastering it does lack, in my opinion......

ill track with n-track and have my plugins and Eq, but for intensive editing like cleaning up tracks and such, i pop them in Goldwave or Sound Forge.......

i dont really master.....i will take my final mixdown into SoundForge or Goldwave and do a final listening and maybe make some Eq or compression adjustments.....

[Rusty K]

YZl,

Hey I completely agree with Gidge. Some functions are just easier and better done with a wav editor.

I might add that I do mastering with a program called TRacks, exellent for newcomers to PCrecording. It has some good presets so you really don't have to know what you are doing to get a good result. Of course there are many mastering tools out there, but whatever you use the "function specific" programs will usually be better than trying to do everything with N-track.

I do have some mastering plugs that I can use in Ntrack but ya gotta know what you are doing to get the result.

Rusty K

[imacgreg]

Yeah, Sound Forge is definately better for editing single wav files while N-track rules the world on multitrack recording/mixing.

ian

[Slackmaster2K]

n-Track isn't great for precise editing, although technically it can do it. Standalone wave editors are a much better solution. I'm not sure what Soundforge goes for these days, but I'd recommend looking into Wavelab instead. Soundforge is a toy compared to Wavelab (a nice looking toy though).

Slackmaster 2000

[TimOBrien]

SoundForge = Microsoft Word

N-Track = PageMaker


You wouldn't (and shouldn't) use Word to layout a catalog. By the same token, you shouldn't think of using N-Track or any other multitrack sequencer to do fine tweaks on a single track.

If you do multitrack you still need a sound editor.

"Use special tools for specific purposes; don't try to make one tool do everything."

[masternk]

Gidge or others,
"but for intensive editing like cleaning up tracks and such, i pop them in Goldwave or Sound Forge....... "

Do the wav editors like Sound Forge work on multiple tracks simultaneously or do you 'clean up' one track at a time? If the answer is the latter, how do you make sure you are doing similar 'clean up' on all tracks at same location? Am I making sense?

NK

[Rusty K]

masternk,

I'm not sure what you mean. What type of clean up are you needing on all the tracks? Wave editors work on one wav file at a time. If I need some kind of clean-up on everything then I wait till "mixdown" (to a single stereo wav file) and then clean-up.

Normally after I record a track I first copy it to another folder to save the original then I open my wav editor and do any cleaning like low/highpass, noise reduction, "silence". Trims and fades I wait till mixdown.

Rusty K