Mastering with analog gear + two more questions

osflaa wrote on 11/9/2019, 2:59 AM

1. When I master songs I use a combination of effect plugins and analog gear. My chain is usually: effect plugins - analog gear - effect plugins - plugins for analysis. In a DAW this is easily done by inserting a hardware in/out (or pipeline) plugin where I want it to be in the plugin chain. However, I have not found a similar plugin i Sound Forge Pro 13. Is there something similar to this in SF? I have found a way to play back the mix, send it to the analog gear and record the output of the analog gear in SF. However, then I have to apply plugin effects both before and after doing this so the process is divided into three separate steps. Is there a better way to do this?

2. When I click on other windows than the data window, I can no longer use the space bar to start/stop playback. Is there a way to permanently keep the link between start/stop and the space bar?

3. When I use the spectrum analysis tool I would like to have a visual indication on the tonal balance of the song and not just the peak levels at each frequency. In the VST Voxengo Span I do this by increasing the "average time" (can be adjusted up to 10 sec) to see a slow moving curve based on values integrated over some time. Is there a way to do this with the spectrum view in SF?

Thanks for any help in advance!

Comments

rraud wrote on 11/9/2019, 9:52 AM

1: I have not used outboard gear w/SF. (except for direct recording)

2: Which data windows?

3: Right-clicking the spectrum window will reveal additional settings. You can also draw boxes to zoom in/out on the bandwidth. At the left of the window is a fader to zoom in/out on the amplitude.

osflaa wrote on 11/10/2019, 2:42 AM

Thanks for your reply!

2. Probably the wrong term in SF, but when I wrote data window I meant the window(s) that contain the audio file(s). When I click on other windows I can no longer start/stop playback using the space bar. This is perhaps because SF would not know which of the audio files to play back if I have multiple files open at the same time..? Anyway, a bit inconvenient when I only have one audio file open.

rraud wrote on 11/10/2019, 12:06 PM

The 'Timeline' window is the main window when working on a file. Do you mean start/stop keys or other timeline functions are disabled when a Windows 'Explorer' window is open? ('Documents' for instance) If so, there is no way to work around it AFAIK.

You can play files in an explorer window though.. in the "File> Open" window, there is an "Auto Play" check-box... when enabled, an audio file will playback when it is single-clicked.

osflaa wrote on 11/15/2019, 2:24 AM

I only talk about the windows inside SF. I would prefer to use the space bar to start/stop playback when I'm tweaking plugins and want to listen to the changes. I have to click on the timeline window first to make this work. Please have a look at the video in the link. The clicks you are hearing is me pressing the space bar.