Acoustic Mirror forgets prev impulse files used & last browsed folder

James-Lo wrote on 1/24/2020, 12:14 PM

Is anyone else seeing this behavior? The impulse dropdown in Acoustic Mirror only contains the most recently used impulse file. Other than that, it is empty. When I browse for an impulse, it always starts in MAGIX/Shared Plug-Ins/Audio_x64, regardless of where I was last browsing (my impulse files are stored in a sibling directory called "Impulses"). I went back and checked an installation of SF v10 on an old laptop, and the impulse dropdown contains a history of the impulse files I used and browse starts in the last folder I was browsing.

Version 13, build 131, 64 bit, Windows 10, MOTU Ultralight mk4

Comments

cybermaster wrote on 4/18/2020, 3:19 PM

Yes, same thing here, except mine always goes to "Sony/Shared Plug-Ins/..." probably because I'm on SoundForge 11. But otherwise, exact same behaviors you described. Don't see anyplace in preferences to change the default folder. Might have to just move them all there. Annoying.

James-Lo wrote on 4/18/2020, 4:36 PM

I don't get it. I used to be a developer, and that kind of bug would barely live 2 business days in the bug tracker before some team member addressed it in 15 minutes, probably between checking Facebook and texting their friends.

RBIngraham wrote on 4/22/2020, 9:44 AM

Acoustic Mirror is such an old Sound Forge only plug-in (probably shouldn't even call it a plug in except I remember it being an add on that you paid quite a bit of extra money for many moons ago and it was called Acoustic Modeler for several years as well) that I suspect little to no maintenance or development or troubleshooting is goin on with it. This is just my opinion and observation mind you, so I could well be wrong. I switched over to using SIR (a VST plug in) years ago and it works a lot better and can be used in any app that supports VST plugs. I think the latest version of Forge has a new IR reverb plug in that came from Samplitude, so maybe check that out. I don't think you can use the old Acoustic Mirror IR files with SIR or the newer IR reverb from Magix as the file format for Acoustic Mirror was something special, not just a .wav file. But frankly that's really not much of a loss. The stock Acoustic Mirror impulse files were great for their day but there is a lot better out there now. Forge is a like a lot of old applications, it has a bunch of legacy stuff hanging around from decades ago that has never been stripped clean because someone might still need it or needs to reopen some old sessions from decades ago. (I wonder who out there might still be using the SMDI sampler tool?) I suggest just migrating away from AM.

rraud wrote on 4/22/2020, 10:41 AM

FWIW, Originally in the Sonic Foundry days, Acoustic Mirror was an additional purchase. it also used a lots of CPU (not much of an issue these days).. I still use it occasionally.

cybermaster wrote on 4/22/2020, 1:03 PM

The old Sonic Foundry Acoustic Mirror impulse files can be "reverse engineered" back into .wav impulses that work with other processors by imprinting them on the test tone files and using the "recover impulse" functions which makes a new impulse that is in .wav format. I successfully did this yesterday just to try it out and it worked well with the Samplitude Room Simulator. I plan to eventually go through the collection and do this with all the ones I like (or maybe all of them, if I feel it's worth the time).

I consider the old impulses to be an interesting time capsule, and there's some unique spaces - Hexagon room at the Unitarian Church in Madison Wisconsin?...know anyone else who has that? Ha! Some of them show their age, but there are plenty that are good and useful with sound quality as good as anything else I hear these days. And as far as Acoustic Mirror is concerned, it also shows its age, but its still my go-to for doing convolution within Sound Forge. I've been using Sound Forge for all my 2-track and sample editing for 20 years and while the destructive editing workflow is old fashioned, those of us who have used it for so long have developed a practice and workflow where it all just works. Though I am happy to use Room Simulator or Convology XT or whatever other convolution plugin when I'm doing a project in Samplitude, Acoustic Mirror is still my first choice when I'm editing files in Sound Forge. It's like I'm working in two different ecosystems and each has their strong points.