On the subject of VSTs, Zplane’s élastique time-stretching tool, originally bundled with version 10, is happily still here – and, even better, it’s now joined by iZotope’s tremendously versatile Nectar Elements vocal processor, which combines preamp, compressor, reverb, de-esser, gate, EQ and even basic pitch correction functions in one efficient module. You can also now optionally route your input monitoring through the plugin chain – useful, perhaps, to help a performer tailor their performance to your chosen production style. Other welcome additions include a miniature overview of the entire waveform at the top of the window (a big help for navigating longer files) and an updated plugin chain interface that makes it easier than ever to manage a non-destructive sequence of VST effects. It’s a world apart from the old Paste Mix approach. That means they can be dragged around, reordered and individually processed, making it a breeze to knock a raw recording session into shape.īest of all, non-destructive fading can be applied by simply dragging in from the top corner of an event, and where two events overlap, an automatic non-destructive crossfade is automatically applied.

Not to be confused with regions, events behave just like audio clips in Sony’s ACID software.

Another significant improvement is the new ability to split a file up into “events”.

Sound forge pro 12 review