Sound Forge alternatives

David-Rees wrote on 12/18/2025, 4:48 PM

I've been using Sound Forge since 1995 (Sonic Foundry - Sound Forge 3). Its been a fantastic workhorse for editing and managing stereo files (I use Cubase for multi-track as well as various Izotope products). They went through Sony and now Magix. I have a sent a few tech support tickets to Magix, and the last 2 never received any human responses. The last ticket I sent was a month ago and no replies (although I have a ticket number in an automated email response). I decided to google "Does Magix offer good customer support" and can see the answer is overwhelmingly "no". I use the product for client work and often have short deadlines. I've reached the point in my business work that I can't afford to use products that have poor to zero tech support. Can someone please recommend to me what the best alternative is to Sound Forge? It pains me to move on after 30 years, but at this stage in my life I can't hitch myself to a non-responsive horse. Can someone please give me some options for some professional software along the lines of Sound Forge that I might want to consider migrating to?

Comments

SP. wrote on 12/18/2025, 5:21 PM

@David-Rees Magix support was usually good until they were sold to new owners at the beginning of 2025. In summer 2025 they introduced their AI bot customer support and over the last three months they basically stopped answering support tickets. Either they only have one support staff member left who is totally overwhelmed by the amount of tickets or there is no more support staff and only the AI bot. The AI bot might give useful hints for easy questions but it's totally useless if you have account problems or license problems because that needs human intervention.

I recommend to contact the parent company of Magix:

https://www.rmep.com/imprint

https://www.rmep.com/news/rm-equity-partners-acquires-magix-software-gmbh-and-appoints-a-new-management-team-led-by-robert-rutkowski

To answer your question regarding alternatives, if you do a lot of scripting, I don't think there are any alternatives. Besides that, there are many similar audio editors. I think Acon Digital Acoustica is an affordable and feature rich toolset. It also has many audio cleaning capabilities.

rraud wrote on 12/19/2025, 10:58 AM

Use an earlier version if possible. I use SFP-15 a lot. SF 16 &17 had display issues using third-party 32 bit VST-2 plugs and the peak playback meters were messed up. The VST issue was 'mostly' resolved with SF-18, but other issues remain. I am also a SF user since v3.

David-Rees wrote on 12/19/2025, 11:30 AM

When I posed my question to ChatGPT, it recommended 1) Steinberg Wavelab Pro, Adobe Audition, and Acon Digital Acoustica Premium . For client work its important to me that its a robust application that's professional, popular (not going to go away) and well supported. My goal here isn't to bag on Magix, but to learn about the alternatives. Thanks.