Performance Preferences

Options Menu:
Preferences

Use the Perform tab in the Preferences dialog to specify preferences for opening and saving files. To display this tab, choose Preferences from the Options menu and click the Perform tab.

What do you want to do?

Specify a folder for temporary files

Specify a folder for storing temporary files, or click the Browse button to specify a new folder.

Sound Forge stores its temporary data in this folder. Using temporary file space allows you to edit very large files and keeps Sound Forge from using large portions of RAM on your computer. Your temporary directory must have enough space to accommodate the total size of all files you plan to edit along with space for any clipboard data and undo buffers.

If you change the temporary storage folder, you will have to restart Sound Forge for the change to take effect.

Specify a peak file (.sfk) ratio

Choose a ratio from the drop-down list to specify the zoom ratio above which Sound Forge will use a peak file instead of scanning all of the data to draw the waveform.

Lower values allow for faster scrolling at those ratios, but increase the peak file's size. For example, setting this value to 1:128 instead of 1:256 will make the peak file two times larger, but will make scrolling at 1:128 faster and scrolling at 1:65536 or higher ratios slower.

To calculate the size of the resulting peak files, divide the size of the file by the peak ratio. For example, a 100 MB sound file will need a 0.39 MB (100/256) peak file when using 1:256.

Specify a wait cursor threshold

Choose a value from the drop-down list to specify the zoom level above which an hourglass cursor will be displayed between data window repaints. If the cursor seems to flicker on and off when redrawing wave data, you may want to increase this value. This value is ignored during playback.

Show the position of the playback cursor

When this check box is selected, the Position field in the status bar will show the cursor position during playback. Disable this option if you have a very slow computer or video card.

Show the record counter while recording

Select this check box if you want the record time displayed in the Record dialog while recording. Clear the check box if you have a very slow computer or video card.