hi @Burton-Allan! well, the main difference is that the programs are intended for two different things. samplitude is a multi-track daw and sound forge is a wave form editor...so if you need multi-tracking, then go with samplitude, but if you're doing editing, cleaning, restoration, mastering, etc, go with sound forge. also the bundled software that comes with each program is a bit different, so you may want to review the lists of the bundled stuff to see if one has a bundled plugin you need more than the other. hope this helps!
@Burton-Allan Samplitude is a multi-track DAW, comparable to other DAW softwares like Cubase, Studio One, Logic, Pro Tools, Cakewalk etc. for composing, recording, mixing and mastering music.
Sound Forge is a multi-channel audio editor, comparable to Adobe Audition, Acon Acoustica, Audacity etc. for recording, editing and batch processing audio files.
You'll get Sound Forge Pro 16 (non-Suite) with the Samplitude Pro X8 Suite, so that might be a better value than getting the Sound Forge Pro 17 Suite. The problem is, that SF 16 has a buggy VST integration and won't get any bug fixes in the future.
Hey, thanks everyone for the feedback. SP - you commented on VST plug-ins. I already have Sound Forge Suite 16, but, I have a lot of 32-bit plug-ins I still use including the bundled Izotope Mastering Package that was in Sony Sound Forge 11. They all work in Sound Forge 16 - but - not well. Even when they display, you can't always see the manual control settings in the popup that displays. So, while it works, I sometimes, have to work in Sound Forge 11, for example, to fully use those plug-ins from Izotope. I see the upgrade to Sound Forge 17 - says it improves the use of plug-ins. Do you think this might fix this if I bump to Version 17? I'm not thrilled about paying for an upgrade to fix a buggy feature that was supposed to work in Version 16. Seems that should be fixed without paying for an upgrade. Yes, I know there are other things in the upgrade, but, if you have any first hand knowledge of how the VST's work better in version 17 or just what I can expect from this "new" and "better" VST feature in Version 17 and if you think that might solve this issue, it might make me reluctantly pay to fix the bugginess. Thanks!
History: Prior to Adobe's acquisition, 'Audition' was previously known as Cool Edit Pro and published by Syntrillium,. I used it for a while but preferred Sound Forge and Vegas (Vegas was audio-only at the time)
@Burton-Allan I don't have version 17. I'm still using version 15 because the VST integration was changed in version 16. After a number of post about problems with VST I decided not to upgrade.