Launching
Sound Forge

Before launching Sound Forge, make sure that you have set up your computer's recording options, as described in the last lesson, Recording Setup.

To launch Sound Forge, click on the Start menu in the lower left corner of your screen. Locate Sound Forge under Programs in your Start menu and click it to open the application. The main interface window of Sound Forge will appear.

(Note: When you open Sound Forge, a Tip of the Day dialog box may appear. If you like, take a few moments to read through the tip. When you are finished, click on the close box to make it go away.)

Below you can see the Sound Forge interface window, or workspace, where you will do all of your sound creating and editing. The first time you open Sound Forge, the workspace will be empty, just as you see here:

When you open a sound file, it will appear in this window.

The menu bar displays the Sound Forge menus: File, Edit, View, Special, Process, Effects, Tools, Options, Window, and Help. These menus contain various commands or functions for creating and editing sounds.

When no sound files are open, the Process, Effects, and Tools menus are not listed because these contain functions that require an open file.

Here is the menu bar with no sound files open:

Here is the menu bar with a sound file open:

To create a new sound file, either click the New button on the toolbar, or pull down the File menu and select New:

To open an already existing sound file, either click the Open button on the toolbar, or use the File->Open command.

Each opened sound file has its own data window displaying a sound wave. The data window can be moved, resized, or minimized, just like any other window.

Across the bottom of the data window are some buttons. The zoom buttons (labeled in blue in the graphic below) let you zoom in on the sound wave to see more detail, or zoom out to see more of the wave. The zoom feature in most applications enlarges or shrinks both the height and the width of your view at the same time. However, Sound Forge lets you zoom in and out of the height and width independently:

• The Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons change the horizontal scale of the graph; in other words, they stretch or compress the width of the sound wave, while leaving the height the same.
  
  
• The Level Zoom In and Level Zoom Out buttons change the vertical scale of the graph; in other words, they stretch or compress the height of the sound wave, while leaving the width the same.
  
  
• The Maximize Width button maximizes the width of the data window so that you can see as much sound wave as possible.

The playbar buttons (labeled in red in the graphic below) let you jump to the beginning or end of the sound, play it, stop it, or loop it so it repeats continuously.

Practice with the interface to get familiar with it:

1. Open Sound Forge.
2. Notice the contents of the menu bar.
3. Open the "tutfill.wav" file, located in the Soundforge folder under the Program Files folder on the C: drive.
4. Now that a sound file is open, notice the additional menus in the menu bar.
5. A data window should appear that looks like the one displayed above.
6. Click the Zoom In button a few times to see how it works; now try the Zoom Out button.
7. Click the Level Zoom In button a few times to see how it works; now try the Level Zoom Out button.

Copyright © 2002, Bloomsburg University Virtual Training Help Center.
All rights reserved. This material may not be used without permission.
Contact Dr. Mary Nicholson at mjnich@bloomu.edu