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Sound Forge 10 retains the look and feel of its predecessor.

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• Review

Many readers will no doubt be familiar with Sound Forge, at least in name. From more humble beginnings back when it was a Sonic Foundry product to the brand new Sound Forge Pro 10 from Sony Creative Software, this audio editor has long been a staple of many studios and editing suites thanks to its straightforward layout and solid functionality.

In case you're unfamiliar, Sound Forge is a standalone app that enables you to perform all the usual audio editing operations (cut, paste, trim, normalise, etc), add effects/fades, resample, record and even restore audio files, all through an intuitive interface. SF10 supports pretty much any audio file format, working at up to 64-bit/192kHz resolution, and it can host both DirectX and VST plug-ins, all while offering full Windows 7 compatibility - it's certainly what you'd call comprehensive.

In detail

Firing up SF10, it looks and feels almost identical to the preceding version, which is actually reassuring. The menus and windows work in the same way, making experienced users feel instantly at home.

Going a bit deeper, it's evident that some niggles have been addressed: working with multiple files in v9 led to a baffling mess due to the use of Windows' clunky multiple document interface, but they now appear neatly tabbed along the base of the work area.

Sticking with the visuals, there are plenty of View menu options for customising the main work area to your heart's content, and everything seems to dock together more neatly than before. Something we wish Sony had addressed this time, however, is that navigating the FX Favourites can be slow - if, like us, you have a multitude of plug-ins installed, the menu takes a very, very long time to scroll all the way to the bottom, which can be a pain.

Previous versions of Sound Forge included the Sony Time Stretch effect, which gave mixed results, often suffering from nasty flanging side effects. SF10 boasts the addition of zplane's tried-and-tested élastique Pro timestretching and pitchshifting plug-in. It does exactly what you'd hope, changing the pitch and/or time of your musical source with minimal artifacts. And if you just want to convert from one sample rate to another, the new iZotope 64-bit SRC function will do this for you with no discernible artifacts.

Processing tools

SF10 contains over 40 effects and still comes with the Noise Reduction 2 package, which is a helpful set of tools for restoring poor-quality recordings. New effects include a Resonant Filter plug-in (which is exactly what you'd expect) and the iZotope Mastering Effects Bundle 2.

This is provided by audio wizards iZotope, makers of the excellent Ozone 4. In fact, the contained effects read almost identically to the module list from Ozone: Mastering EQ, Mastering Reverb, Multiband Compressor, Mastering Exciter, Mastering Imager and Mastering Limiter.