Sound Forge Pro 15.0 is now out

[Xoo]

I'm not sure /VSTNOGROVEL actually stops it scanning - I still see the scan screen (albeit I have very few VSTs in the scan path, so it's quick).  It also possibly should be -NOVSTGROVEL based on the batch file Convert To.bat provided with SF 15 (in the IAScripts folder).

[Matthew Sorrels]

The flags are /NOVSTGROVEL and /NODXGROVEL

 

[Xoo]

Not according to the batch file (-novstgrovel - I mistyped originally).

[Matthew Sorrels]

/NOVSTGROVEL /NODXGROVEL seems to work for me.  Prevents it from scanning on startup.  Dash may work just fine too.

 

[Starship Krupa]

Not having it "grovel" for VST's at startup is going to be huge, but I have a question: is there some way to pass it this parameter when Sound Forge is launched by double-clicking on an associated file? More than once that VST scan has brought my workflow to a halt because I launched Sound Forge in that way.

[JimK]

On 3/13/2021 at 4:21 PM, scook said:

On 3/13/2021 at 2:54 PM, scook said:

DAWs are designed to work with projects containing multiple audio files so they are not setup to take a single wav file as an argument on their command line. Some DAWs have extensive audio editing features but they are intended to be called from inside the DAW,

IIRC, old versions of Audacity worked, newer versions (around the time of that post) did not.

Since that time no one has reported success using Audacity.

Just because no one has reported success is not the final word on the subject.

Hiya @scook, I am reporting success but it's not worth it.  

I already had Audacity installed and I'm a tech nerd so I couldn't help doing some testing using your tool. Note I Used 2.4.2 (26 Jun 2020) because that is what I had, there is one update since then; v3.0.0 (17 Mar 2021) update that might ease some of the finial issues I mention at the end but the patch notes don't seem to indicate that.

I am able to launch Audacity from the command line with a wav file with no problem at all

audacity "D:\Music\Apps\MAGIX\Music Maker\TemplateEffect\29\fx-preset\Vocoder\Electrostatics.wav"

Opens the wav file just fine.

I added Audacity using your tool. 1st nothing loaded or popped up and I was unable to select audacity from the menu again. So I edited the entry using you tool to include Modal = No. After trying again I received a pop up from audacity saying there was "Unknown option 'REGION'.

So basically Audacity does accept path/*.wav just fine with no problem, it's dying because it is receiving things that it doesn't recognize as additional arguments. 

I threw together a batch file to display everything CW is sending,

hi.bat

@echo
@echo %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
@echo
@pause

and the reg settings for it

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cakewalk Music Software\Tools Menu\Hi]
"Type"="WaveEditor"
"ExePath"="C:\\Programs\\CbB Tools\\hi.bat"
"MenuText"="Hi"

here is what was sent:

"C:\Users\admin\AppData\Local\Temp\Tool copy 1 of Electrostatics (1).wav" /REGION:36000 204000

I thought I remembered glancing over something in your apps help file about region, so after rereading the help file I saw that you can remove that attribute by changing Region Flag = No

Now the file will open in Audacity very easily. So Success...however it's down hill from here.

There is no normal "Save" in audacity where you can just save as whatever was opened. There is only "Save Project" and "Export". If you click save project it wants to save in its own format to its own folder (what you mentioned about DAW/Multiple file). It tells you that you need to use export if you are saving a single file for other programs to open. Using Export you can save as a .wav but it drops you in it's own folder not the folder the file was opened from. If you go to the folder it was opened from and save it then CW will recognize the file was edited and ask if you want to reload it and the edits are there. Saving as wav requires two pop ups, one to choose .wav from the filetypes it can save, and another that wants you to add titles/authors/etc. Since it is from a temp folder and requires extra pop up dialog windows this seems too clunky to actually use. Also since Audacity doesn't get passed the Region attribute, which it doesn't understand anyway,  it loads in the whole file and you would need to reselect the section you want to work on and make sure not to edit the other parts. Subsequent edits did seem to remember to save in the temp folder. So it technically works but has too many bumps.

But hey I did get it to work

Here are the details

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cakewalk Music Software\Tools Menu\Audacity]
"Type"="WaveEditor"
"ExePath"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Audacity\\audacity.exe"
"MenuText"="&Audacity"
"Modal"=dword:00000000
"RegionFlag"=dword:00000000

And finally... Nice App , it was easy to use and made things go quicker.

[scook]

Thanks for the feedback.

The image is a new version of Tools Editor released yesterday and updated today.

Yeah, it sounds a little clunky given Audacity does what one would expect of a DAW and not an audio editor.

But if someone is determined to use it as an audio editor I guess it's good to know it can be done.

[JimK]

1 minute ago, scook said:

The image is a new version of Tools Editor released yesterday and updated today/

Yeah downloaded it about 3 hrs or so ago

[Matthew Sorrels]

12 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Not having it "grovel" for VST's at startup is going to be huge, but I have a question: is there some way to pass it this parameter when Sound Forge is launched by double-clicking on an associated file? More than once that VST scan has brought my workflow to a halt because I launched Sound Forge in that way.

Sure but it requires a bit of work.  In RegEdit look under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT for entries like forgeXXX where XXX is the version of Sound Forge you have (I have 12 so it's forge120).  There should be several entries for various file types.  Here's what I have:

Each one has a shell entry and under that an Open and a command.  Inside the command the default entry is what Window's uses to launch the app.

Change that command to have the extra parameters you want passed in.  Make sure to leave the "%1" in quotes

If you do this right I think launching files from the explorer should do the right thing.  But this kind of file association and registry stuff breaks very easily and can just not work at all.  You may have to change how exactly the file is associated with Sound Forge in order to get it to go through these entries.  You may have to change the entry for say .wav to directly launch Sound Forge with the right arguments.  To be honest I wouldn't recommend Sound Forge as the default for audio files, I'd pick something that is a better audio player.  But you can specify optional command line arguments for Explorer launched files.

[Starship Krupa]

49 minutes ago, Matthew Sorrels said:

To be honest I wouldn't recommend Sound Forge as the default for audio files, I'd pick something that is a better audio player.  But you can specify optional command line arguments for Explorer launched files.

Thank you Matthew for your detailed help. I apologize, I misspoke: I'm not double-clicking, I'm right-clicking and Open With....

(I'm the pickiest dork about what music player I use (Music Bee in ASIO or WASAPI). One of those tiresome sorts who will make you put on the headphones and listen for the difference between Music Bee or foobar and Windows Media Player or Groove Music.)

You've put me on the right track, I bet I can figure it out from here.

[Matthew Sorrels]

6 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

You've put me on the right track, I bet I can figure it out from here.

The Open With stuff does work similar.  Google/Web searches might help a bit with finding some of the various ways things can be hooked up.  It might take a bit of work to figure out the right changes but getting those extra parameters is possible and it makes starting Sound Forge so much nicer it isn't funny.  Good luck.

[Jim Hurley]

For the last several releases, Sound Forge has opened with an optional tutorial window.

You can disable the view of that, but you can't disable the creation at startup of the tutorials, as far as I can see.

What happens behind the scenes is that 'sftutor.dll' in the install folder  opens the install file 'forge.tut' which is basically a 7-zip archive of a web page.

Then sftutor extracts that and then opens a 'show me'  function that uses internet explorer to do the tutorial which can highlight parts of Sound Forge as it proceeds.

This tutorial is deleted when you close Sound Forge. At least with my settings that happens,

Even though my temp file is set to 'D:\Temp' in Sound Forge, the tutorials will be build in 'C:\Temp', or whatever the environment TEMP variable is pointing to.

I have tried to disable this in several ways.

The first was by using Sysinternal Suite 'Procmon' tool to examine the system calls during this time.

I did not see any obvious Registry calls that might bypass these steps.

Next I tried renaming 'forge.tut'. That will generate a startup error, but if you ignore it,  it may work, as Sound Forge appears to open OK. But I don't like that.

Next I tried to delete sftutor.dll but that throws an installation error.

I used to have a 'dummy.dll' lying around for this purpose - rename it to sftutor.dll and nothing will happen. But I have not used that in years and I can't find it anymore.

So I gave up and just let it be.

The tutorial comprises 297 Files in 8 Folders, so it isn't insignificant.

Has anyone else been bothered by this enough to do something about it?

My post at Magix forum:

https://www.magix.info/us/forum/sound-forge-pro-15-builds-tutorials-can-this-be-disabled--1270691/

Edited March 21, 2021 by Jim Hurley

[Xoo]

I tried fiddling with file permissions and SF works, but throws the (same?) error as when forge.tut is deleted (which I did by accident a while back!).  So that doesn't work.

It's actually a .zip file, so I created an empty zip file and put that in the SF folder calling it forge.tut.  Same error, so it's obviously looking for some kind of structure in the zip.

However...

- Take a backup of the forge.tut file

- Copy it outside Program Files (Desktop?) and rename it to forge.zip

- Open it (even in Windows' built-in zip tool)

- Delete everything in the common, images and templates folder (but leave the folders), and the files in the root

- Rename it back to forge.tut

- Copy back to SF folder

- Run SF - no error message and far fewer folders created (3 folders under the root).

I've attached the zip file here.

forge.zip

[Xoo]

Re. /NOVSTGROVEL...I have this set (and NODXGROVEL) and yet I still see the scan window (see below).  Does anyone else with this parameter set?

It's quick to scan but my sense of neatness makes me not want it to appear at all.

[Jim Hurley]

I think that scan is just looking for new and changed plug-ins. I think the 'grovel' is when each plug-in is queried of all it 'can dos' and stuff like that. Usually that makes lots of system calls, registry changes, etc.

There will always need to be a new/changed scan, but not the initial 'grovel' type.

This is my assumption, I have no direct knowledge.

 

 

 

[Xoo]

Ah - that would make sense.

[Matthew Sorrels]

They may not have added this to Sound Forge 11.0 (from you screenshot).  If you take the Sound Forge binary and strings it (a utility that will extract strings from it) you can find the grovel commands.  Try it and see if they are in your binary

Good Strings Utility for Windows
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/strings

If you search through the results you should see something like:

[Xoo]

SF 15 (just happened to be looking at the older install directory when I screenshotted).

[Jim Hurley]

Sysinternals is full of useful debug aids.

One thing I like to use for string search is PEStudio. It is an older 32-bit app and it sometimes crashes on big files, but it has so many useful features related to security and privacy.

For example. if I want to see what Protein(*).dll does:

 

[Jim Hurley]

17 hours ago, Kevin Perry said:

Re. /NOVSTGROVEL...I have this set (and NODXGROVEL) and yet I still see the scan window (see below).  Does anyone else with this parameter set?

It's quick to scan but my sense of neatness makes me not want it to appear at all.

 

I don't see that sort of scan display.

Mine looks like this: