SOFO [Sonic Foundry] - The nail in the coffin (a sort-of obituary for a music software legend)

[User 905133]

Long time users of Sound Forge and Acid might remember Sonic Foundry.  Facing financial issues, the company sold music-making tools Sound Forge and Acid (as well as Vegas) to SONY and did a 10-to-1 reverse split.  As many people today know, Magix acquired Sound Forge, Acid, and Vegas.  Meanwhile, SOFO used the money from the sale to develop its video capture system business, MediaSite .

Recently, SOFO shareholders approved the sale of MediaSite to Enghouse.

I am not a lawyer or a corporate accountant and do not hold an MBA, but so far as I can tell for all practical purposes after bills are paid and management gets its severance pay, what was once SonicFoundry has nothing left to sell off.  I could be wrong, but I don't see anything that says shareholders of publicly purchased shares of SOFO will get anything, making this deal even worse than the 10 cents per share Corel shareholders held when Corel went private (i.e., "sold" to venture capitalists, IIRC).  

Nonetheless, fans of Acid, Sound Forge, and Vegas IMO should appreciate the company that was once Sonic Foundry for the role it played in developing some special software that in some ways laid the foundation for other companies to make tools for music makers.

 

Edited February 15 by User 905133
added Vegas

[Rain]

The name brings back memories. I loved Sound Forge so much back then. I wouldn't have changed a thing about it. 

And let us not forget Acoustic Modeler/Mirror, which had to be one of the first impulse response plugins out there, back in the late 90's early 2000's. You could only use it offline, and I remember spending a lot of time in Sound Forge sweetening individual tracks with tape and compressor impulses, and even using it for offline reverbs with some free impulses I'd found on the web. It seemed so revolutionary. The things would display 300% CPU usage while processing files. But it was worth it.

I remember Peter H. (Haller or Heller?) hanging out on the old Cakewalk NG and forums. Super nice guy, always helpful.

 

Edited February 16 by Rain

[User 905133]

11 minutes ago, Rain said:

And let us not forget Acoustic Modeler/Mirror, which had to be one of the first impulse response plugins out there, back in the late 90's early 2000's. You could only use it offline, and I remember spending a lot of time in Sound Forge sweetening individual tracks with tape and compressor impulses, and even using it for offline reverbs with some free impulses I'd found on the web. It seemed so revolutionary. 

Thanks for adding this.  I didn't use that feature, but I just found an SOS article on it.  Interesting bit of history there!

Quote

Since Acoustics Modeler is compatible with Microsoft's DirectX plug‑in standard, it can be accessed from any application that supports DirectX, such as the 'big three' PC MIDI + Audio sequencers (Cakewalk Pro Audio v6, Cubase VST PC v3.5, and Logic Audio v3.0), as well as audio editors such as Sound Forge v4.0 itself, and WaveLab v1.6. 

Quote

• Pros
  • Wide variety of realistic reverb effects.
  • Realistic price as well.
  • Ability to capture your own sounds.
• Cons
  • Heavy‑duty processor needed for real‑time operation.

 

[Triangleman]

Yep Sound Forge was an essential part of the early computer audio era.  I streamed a lot of events with their Mediasite streaming appliance, too.  I needed tech support one time and called the number and a guy in Wisconsin answered and helped me out.  Good stuff.

 

 

 

 

[craigb]

I used all those tools (in conjunction with Cakewalk) and thought they were all awesome!  Definitely some memories...

[Xoo]

Me too.  I loved SF when it came out and used it extensively 15 years ago to do a load of voice editing work for audio books.  I hardly fire it up now (except for CD ripping, pretty much) as I'm able to do pretty much everything I need with the tools directly available in CbB.  They missed a trick not making it ARA compatible IMHO.