Music Software to use with Vegas Pro 8

[Kevin Saitta]

I am now looking to get some software for editing sound and putting together music for videos.

For editing sound I noticed that there are two version of Sound Forge

Sound Forge Audio Studio

Sound Forge 9 Pro

Do I need the pro version?

I also been playing around with Acid. I am playing with Acid Music Studio but i also notice they have Acid Pro 9, do I need the pro version or can I get away with the standard version with either of the two softwares; sound forge, acid.

Also I have noticed SmartSound Sonicfire Pro 4.5, any thoughts or opinions on this?

Thank you again,

Kevin

[Don Bloom]

Don't know what you NEED but obviously the PRO version of the software will have more features than the other version. Why not DL the trials versions and read the white papers to see the difference in the versions. Which has what features that you might need.
I would hate to be the one to tell you you NEED something only to find out you either didn't need all the features OR you spend your rent money on something that you didn't need.
Just my $.03 worth (adjusted for inflation) YMMV.
Don

[Erwin van Dijck]

Are you going to use it for editting audio files, or is your goal composing (stock) music?



Regards,
Erwin

[Randy Stewart]

Cinescore from Sony is a good app if you are not to versed in creating your own music.
Randy

[Kevin Saitta]

I need something to edit and clean up the the sound from original recordings via the cameras and voice overs and then I need something to create my own music for my videos ( documentaries, shorts, events ).

Some music I need will be stock but other will have to be original for some projects I am working on.

Thank you agian,

Kevin

[Mark Stavar]

Originally Posted by Kevin Saitta

I need something to edit and clean up the the sound from original recordings via the cameras and voice overs and then I need something to create my own music for my videos ( documentaries, shorts, events ).

Some music I need will be stock but other will have to be original for some projects I am working on.

Thank you agian,

Kevin

As well as the Sony stable of music/sound apps (Acid, Vegas, Soundforge, ...) you could take a look at Reaper (http://reaper.fm/) which gives multitrack recording as well as access to MIDI.

Worth a look.

Ciao,

marks

[Ian Stark]

A few random observations:

1. Your choice of tool will be partly influenced by the type of music you want to create (for example - and I stress FOR EXAMPLE, before I'm flamed off the thread! - FL Studio, formerly Fruity Loops, is great for electronica; Sonar, Cubase etc would be a better choice for 'live' audio; Sound Forge is great for chopping up and treating stock music and dialogue).

2. Got a budget?

3. Agreed 100% with Don - d/l the demos and see which works best for you.

4. Are you a musician? Again, your choice of tool is going to depend on whether you need automatic or semi-automatic composition creation or whether you can pick up a guitar and play (just like yesterday . . .)

5. Are you looking for a single app that does most of what you want, or a selection of apps that cover each base 100%?

6. You mentioned 'cleaning up' audio - do you mean getting rid of noise etc? If so, keep in mind that with some apps you may have to buy additional plug-ins for noise reduction. If you mean 'chopping up' and re-sequencing dialogue then read point 7 below!

7. Vegas itself is a first rate audio tool. For dialogue work especially, I would rarely consider going outside Vegas nowadays. It's not a music creation tool though. If it had the ability to operate as a midi-sequencer and work with DXi and VSTi instruments I would probably never open up Sonar again. At this point though, I have very successfully used it to record v/o, trim and re-order dialogue, record acoustic instruments and synths etc and to add (on very rare occasions!) effects such as reverb to dialogue. I am also a very happy user of the original and excellent (but not cheap) Waves X-Noise (etc) plug-ins for noise and hum removal, from within Vegas.

8. I have limited experience with SonicFire but I thought it was good at what it does - which is similar to Cinescore, in that it allows you to take a pre-composed theme and alter it's speed, intensity, style etc to suit your video. Both Cinescore and Sonicfire are limited by the amount of available themes (Sonicfire appears to have way more than Cinescore) and the degree of customisation you can apply within a composition. For corporate work, and to a certain extent documentaries, I would say both are good choices. This assumes uniqueness is not important - remember every other user has access to the same themes.


For what it's worth, I use Cakewalk Sonar (I have been a Cakewalk user for over a decade) and I consider it to be absolutely bang on as far as my needs are concerned (excellent midi and audio recording, great bundled instruments, easy user interface etc). I use it to create original music (a combination of midi sequenced instruments and real audio) as well as the occasional 'soundscape'. It served me well on the two occasions I had to do ADR (dialogue replacement), although that was still quite a challenge! I have tended to use Sonar for foley work rather than doing that in Vegas, mainly because I have access to virtual instruments that I use to bend and mangle sounds.

I record all dialogue, i.e. v/o, directly into a new Vegas project, where it is then cleaned up and chopped about, ready to be imported into the active project.

Hope that gives you some more food for thought. Again, I'd reiterate Don's comment - download the trials and see which feature set works best for you.

You may end up deciding you can save some cash by doing it all within Vegas.

[Chris Barcellos]

All PC side:

1. With one of my first versions of Vegas, it was bundled with a limited Acid program. They give you some loops. And you eventually end up upgrading and buying loops, to build sound tracks. I have absolutely no real musical training, but can cobble together a track using current versions of Acid Music Studio and the loop libraries I've gathere over time.

2. Cinescore has been mentionied. It has a nice interface, but the available music is a bit limited.

3. Sonicfire Pro- has a much wider range of library, and its current version give you more control over theme, apparently letting you adjust the theme by pulling certain intruments or sub themes in a particular piece in or out.

4. Check out Audacity, a freeware basic sound editing system.

5. Haven't seen the latest Band in A Box, but I have used the older version to produce some soundtrack material..

[Jon Fairhurst]

There are two reasons to consider the pro version of SoundForge:

* Noise Reduction. Great for removing 60 Hz hum and air conditioning noise.
* Mastering plug ins - Multi-band compression and limiting from Izotope.

Regarding ACID, you probably don't need the pro version, unless you want the MIDI features. But, frankly, Cakewalk and Cubase have much stronger MIDI than ACID. ACID is the best app for composing with loops though...

[Jason Robinson]

I had purchased Cinescore and have demo'ed SonicFire and I hands down like the sound of SonicFire over Cinescore. May be Cinescore just used synths for much of the instrumentations, or may be it is something else, but it sounds like cheap crap next to SonicFire. BUT I bought Cinescore because it is so much cheaper than SonicFire and much easier to get running right away.

When Sony gets better sounds (and more sounds.... please something besides more electronica!) for Cinescore it will be a great application. May be up to where SonicFire is right now. But my price simply meant I couldn't put the $400-500 into a few themes for SonicFire when I needed to be able to have a wider selection for less money. So less money gets you a larger variety of themes, but you have less control and the audio recordings themselves leave something to be desired (in my opinion).

[Kevin Saitta]

Thank you everyone for all the comments!

Gives me a lot of options to look at.

Kevin