Hello–
I must be missing something. I use Sound Forge 6 (have for years) as my wave editor because my sequencer program doesn’t have a good one.
Now that I have WL8, Sony is giving me an awesome deal to upgrade SF to Pro 10. I read all the enhancements from 4 to 10, but they seem like I’ve got all that in WL 8.
Am I missing something? Should I save my money and stick with SF 4 and WL8?
He he, that’s what I thought 
I haven’t used Sound Forge in many years because I haven’t been on a PC in over a decade, but generally speaking, I think that you’ll find Wavelab’s Edit mode to be much like Sound Forge from what I remember of it.
I was a bit excited about SF 10 being available on Mac finally, because they seem to have combined CD Architect into SF, but for some reason they left out the CD sequencing aspect of SF 10 on the Mac version (and it’s only on the PC version of 10). Since I have Wavelab, SF seemed like a redundant program to me on either on Mac or PC. CD Architect is a nice simple program, but it’s not as advanced as Wavelab montage mode as far as making DDP files and other common modern mastering needs.
I don’t know all the details of SF, but I would say that if you have Wavelab, you probably don’t need SF. I’m sure that somebody could find a unique reason to have SF & WL, but generally speaking, Wavelab edit mode can do what SF does, plus you get the montage mode with Wavelab among many other things.
Very cool. This helps.
SoundForge handles multi-channel files; WaveLab doesn’t. However, having no spectral view or editing is a huge limitation in this day and age - and SpectraLayers doesn’t handle files with more than two channels (the product that Sony bought did, but that facility has not been continued in the Sony version of the product).
Having had SF since 4.5 (now at 10), the workflow is in muscular memory. Only recently has WL acquired some of the time saving features (SF CTRL-K edit preview for speech editing), SF will ingest poly wav files (but has a lousy mixdown) but WL wont (except for strict surround format), WLs analytic tools are way ahead of what SF should be, the integrated CD Architect in SF works very well (doesn’t do DDP), and what NR2 doesn’t do, RX// Adv does. SF10 is long overdue for an up-version (delayed no doubt in favour of getting SFPro/Mac into prep school).
WL6 worked for some surgical noise removal, but the workflow of both WL6 and WL7 was still presented a sufficent learning curve (especially without a proper manual for 7) that SF stayed in the No. 1 spot. Now, if I can get Steinberg shop to co-operate, I will have a play with WL E 8 (upgrade from WL LE 7 on the netbook which was the only W7 computer I had) to check out the the new program before shelling out for the WL7 upgrade (and W7 from XP on the DAW).
What is best depends on what you have to do, and the particular workflow demands and what you have engraved on your brain. From my background, WL8 needs to fall a little more feely under my fingers before it gets preference over SF. I’m not sure how much you would find in common between SF6 and SFPro10 - the learning curve might be as steep as going to WL. SF6???
I appreciate this detailed comparison. I messed with the SF 10 demo and the workflow from 6 to 10 is a lot less of a learning curve than WL4 to 8 that I just did. I was still on the fence about upgrading but you brought out a great point about muscle memory. There are things that when I know I need to do them, I automatically turn to either SF or WL.
With my SF 6 being dated (Sonic Foundry) and since uninstalling the SF 10 demo is slightly messed up now (can’t get the registration window to stop popping up even after the registration tool was run multiple times) I think I am going to go ahead and do the SF upgrade. 
I think having the right tool to do the right job is important and I’m sure there are things that SF does better/easier than WL and vice versa–so it would be nice to use the best of each to get the best possible product with the easiest workflow I can–and $90 is really a great price for SF10 Pro.
I totally agree that, when real work needs to be done, one reaches for those tools with which he/she is so thoroughly familiar that the tool introduces absolutely no challenge to completing the task efficiently in as little time as possible.
My acquaintance with SF came via my exploration of Vegas Video in its early versions for video editing. In those days, Vegas includes a “video” version and an “audio” version. To my mind, the audio version was just the video version with the video turned off.
To a certain extent, I suppose I also looked at SF as a sort of Vegas Audio spin-off (I am certain that impression is not warranted, it’s just my impression).
I played with SF, but never really dug into it. To get real video work done, it became my habit to fire up Vegas. For intensive audio work and CD mastering, I always preferred Wavelab, and, tempting SF/Sony SF offers not withstanding, I just never could justify spending money on SF upgrades.
Vegas was always quite capable of burning CDs, but I always preferred Wavelab for that task.
In the old days, months could go by when Wavelab would not recognize my CD burner of the day. I knew all the work arounds, but, sometimes, WL would simply refuse to cooperate. In those instances, I knew that I could fall back on Vegas, as it never exhibited such a problem. Fortunately, those days are far behind me. New WL versions have given me no problems in this area.
As previously stated, I agree that the interface with which you are most familiar is probably the best for you.
Caruso