Any recording types used Adobe Audition 2 yet?

Cafe Society
1

I just bought a 300-gig hard drive, put on XP Pro and purchased Adobe Audition v 2.0. I’ve been using this program since it was free and called Cool Edit 96 by Syntrillium. They progressed from there to Cool Edit 2000 and Cool Edit Pro, and then sold the company to Adobe, who changed the name to Audition.

I convinced the engineer at work to outfit all the studio computers with it, because it was so much better than what they’d been using. I couldn’t believe the reaction from the staff, though. They were terrified of it! But that’s another story. I came here to say that it’s only superficially Cool Edit anymore. Adobe has improved it light years beyond what the Syntrillium guys were able to achieve. I would have been happy to continue using Audition v 1.5, on Windows 2000, but they don’t make it anymore, and v 2.0 only runs on XP. I figured I’d better hurry before they make a version that only runs on Vista!

I’ve only had it since Saturday night, but I’ve had the time to try out some of the things I normally do in Audition. I downloaded some free ASIO drivers for low latency in multitrack recording. They’ve changed the look and feel of the program, and all of its functions run like greased lightning now. I restored a 45-RPM record with it, and I was able to run a declicking routine on it in less time than previous versions took to save the Undo data! It has improved click removal functions, that work so well, and so fast, that I was moved several times to say “Holy crap!” It let me to do in less than an hour, what would normally have taken all evening. It makes me want to redo all the records I ever remastered!

The multitrack section is vastly changed. It now has channel strips like a mixer, an idea that looks suspiciously pilfered from ProTools. It loaded up old .ses (session) files from previous versions, that put all my multitrack elements on the screen on their respective tracks. There’s a mastering rack now. It takes VST plugins, instead of just DirectX ones (but it still takes those, too). I could buy a keyboard controller, plug it into the game port, and buy software replications of keyboards, synthesizers and other instruments, and play them, with effects, in real time through the program. It will also allow me to plug a guitar into the sound card through a mixer, and will layer it with multiple effects, also in real time. I haven’t tried that yet, but it was in the demo. You can mix MIDI tracks with live ones, too. And do audio soundtracks, watching the video in the upper left of the screen. It comes with Loopolgy, a program that lets you create music out of licks and riffs and rhythms played on real, vintage instruments. Only now, they’re 32-bit .wav files instead of 320 kbps mp3s.

I don’t really expect much response to this thread, but I had to tell somebody! I know there are recording musicians on this board, and I hope they see this. I don’t normally rave about software, but they’ve improved Audition so much, it’s freakin’ incredible. If you’re not already working in a Mac environment, but you want something better than Acid, or Sound Forge, I urge you to look at Audition. This was the best $350 I ever spent!

2

I used it for a little while before I moved over to Cubase and Wavelab because I needed a more robust mixing and editing package (and stronger VST functionality). One thing I miss (and I cannot explain it for the life of me) is that Audition is the best voice recorder I have ever heard. If I am working on a project where I can get an independant vocal track I’ll still use Audition to record it. That shouldn’t make any sense, but it’s the truth. If you’re restoring music with heavy vocals this is the way to go. Though I have to admit that I do love Cubase.

I have no experience with the program before Adobe bought it, but from what I have come to understand, they’ve done a great job moving it forward. It is very straightforward and really gets the job done. Very easy to use and learn.

3

I too have been using Cool Edit for a long time. I got Cool Edit Pro as soon as it came out. Even though it was for a long time the most heavily used app on my computer, I never upgraded to Audition. Part of the reason was that I was gradually shifting my work to the Mac platform. The other reason, though, was that Cool Edit Pro pretty much did all I wanted it to do.

I think there’s definitely room for an outstanding soundfile editor on Windows. Improvements in performance are great but I’m not sure how I feel about the software trying to do everything, multitracking, MIDI, etc. That’s a niche covered by quite a lot of software already.

The original Cool Edit Pro’s multitracking was special in that it was essentially non-real-time. That meant that even with a rather wimpy system, you could still work with a large number of tracks. I used to run 20+ tracks at a time on my cheap Pentium machine.

Nowadays, that’s much less relevent. With Cubase, Sonar, Pro Tools, Nuendo, Live out there, can Audition stand out in multitracking?

4

I’ve used it since '96, but I’m still on Audition 1.0. It’s always been my go-to .wav editor for basic processing and editing, and I’ve even gotten into using its multitrack mode for knocking out quick demos if I just need to get a couple of tracks down in a jiff - in the time that it would have taken to set up Cubase, I’ve knocked out my demo.

I’m sure I’ll upgrade eventually.

5

I’m not the kind of guy who can answer that question. I’m not a multitrack engineer. I’m a multi-instrumentalist and I record my own multitrack demos. It definitely works in Audition, but I have no frame of reference to compare it to a dedicated studio mixing and recording package. I’ve never used one. What seems obvious in this new version is that they are offering more and better multitrack options and facilities. They must be competing in that market. I don’t know why they’d make a half-assed multitrack section. The one they do provide seems to be quite sophisticated. I’m sure I’ll never use a quarter of its potential.

I do broadcast production, and remaster records and other recordings. For these two purposes, I’ve found Audition to be unparalleled. I’ve used all the two-bit audio editors at radio stations all over, and they all suck in various ways. Even Cool Edit 96 beat them all hands down. I will be using Audition mainly for restoring records. I’ve used Sonic Solutions NoNoise, which costs multiple thousands of dollars, and is routinely misused by record labels worldwide, and Audition is better.

It was better before they recently improved its functions for this version. Its click removal and noise reduction sections are better than any program or hardware device on the market. If that’s all this program could do, it would still be a great investment of $350. Once you learn how to use it, it gives incredible results, even better than what I was able to achieve in earlier versions - a lot of which were pretty darned impressive in the first place.

6

If anyone is interested in expert review of the program’s new features and functions, here is a pretty thorough writeup by DigitalProducer magazine, with screenshots. It looks like they are going for the ProTools market.

7

Oh absolutely. The people I know who do audio restoration have been swearing by it since CE pro came out. Being a long-time CE user myself, I was definitely not very impressed by Sonic NoNoise, and it’s about four or five times the price of Audition!

8

Okay, reading the article, I’m not that impressed with the multitracking stuff. However, editing looks great. Spectral lasso! Woo hoo!

For, what, about 400$ that looks like really good value. The editing and anti-noise stuff alone is worth more than that.

9

Keep in mind you’re going to need a low-latency soundcard and much tweaking to pull this off. But once you’re there, it’s the best.
game port?

What takes so long to set up Cubase?

I set up my system so all I have to do is start up my soundcard software (Luna) , then Cubase, and off I go. I have a blank song that loads on startup. I took a song and deleted the audio and midi but kept everything else. Maybe I’ve been doing it that way so long I’ve forgotten what it’s like not to.

10

Well, I’m several thousands of dollars away from any of that happening. But I sure would like to have replicas of the sounds of a Mellotron and several Fender Rhodes pianos and a Wurlitzer electric, Bosendorfer and Steinway grands, Hohner clavinets, Moog synthesizers, a Hammond B-3, and the like.

It’s my understanding that you would plug a keyboard controller into the same place where you’d connect a game controller. Is this wrong? If I mangled the terminology, it’s because I’ve never played a video game, and I don’t speak the language.

11

It’s dated. A bit. The game port is a kind of interface for game controllers, as the name suggests. It is possible to plug-in MIDI devices to this port by using a special cable. Some consumer-grade soundcards came equipped with game ports for this purpose.

Prosummer-grade equipement typically comes with dedicated MIDI i/o. You don’t need to spend tons of money for a decent prosummer sound card. The M-Audio Audiophile 2496 retails for about 130$.

12

I have Audition 1.0 on my laptop and access to 1.5 in the two recording studios I use. I actually researched 2.0 when it came out and recommended against buying it. 2.0 is fine for people who record music, but since the studios are intended for students producing voice tracks with pre-recorded music, it makes no sense to sink the money into new software that has way more than we need.

Robin

13

Like jovan said, a good soundcard or external audio interface isn’t terribly expensive and the tangles that it smooths out is worth every penny. You don’t necessarily have to equip yourself to record a full band all at once, so in a lot of cases just a stereo interface will do the trick. I biased my (circa 2001) Cubase/Reason/Sonik Synth/Luna system more towards virtual keyboards and stereo (at the most) recording, so it didn’t kill me too bad once I got past buying the software.

One thing you can do if you already have a standalone, say, 8 track digital recorder with midi and a stereo interface on your computer is fly the tracks into your computer two at a time using midi time code to lock the two devices together. Again, to do this you need everything running rock solid. Keeping DirectX current always seems to help in this regard.