Audition 1.5 Windows

After some rehearsal, the cast recorded the dialogue onto minidisk, and then I loaded the recordings onto my PC, and tried several sources of editing software (some of them free downloads) to add the incidental music, sound effects, background ambiances etc.

Of all the software I tried, Adobe Audition was head and shoulders above the rest. Once I got to grips with the facilities for removing extraneous noises, enhancing bits that hadn't recorded well etc, I was delighted with the product.

I would recommend it to anyone who needs the sort of more sophisticated functionality that making a radio broadcast can involve. The results (a play called Ripping Off Angels) can be found on www.off-the-wall-plays.co.uk, or downloaded from iTunes, or from podcast.yahoo.com.

Although the version 1.0 came out, I did not bother upgrading - why should I, when CoolEdit was working for me? But seeing now that version 1.5 was released I decided to upgrade from CoolEdit to this version.

The upgrade came with a box with a double CD, holding software and a bunch of effects and loops - and a DVD with training material. Adobe sees the Audition as part of their video / multimedia package, so on the DVD you will find training tours for Adobe's other products. I, however, do not own those so I am mainly interrested in the Audition-part.

Installation: Smooth as silk! After accepting the license code the software installed itself nicely and then opened up a demo multitrack session with 8 stereo tracks. If you can hear this, your systems is properly OK! It actually looked like it was using some of the settings from my installation of CoolEdit, although I cannot be sure. Nice!

Everything well-known to CoolEdit users are where it should be. My mouse found its way with no problems to the things I normally know so well. The colors are different and the screen layout is filled with some more information, so that a 15" monitor is not quite OK anymore, and you should make sure that the resolution is as good as you can get it.

A very good thing is the ability to handle video! Although I do not use any Adobe products for videohandling, I just dragged & dropped an MPEG or an AVI-movie into the multitrack window and presto: The system extracted the audio and video tracks and placed them into tracks of their own, making it very easy to edit the sound for a video. Notice, that this is not a video-editing software, but a sound editing system, so the video stuff is limited.

And I am also impressed by the speed of the product. It seems that Adobe has put a great deal of effort into performance optimization. Very good!

It should be noted that the requirement of the product are modest, by todays standard. The system used approximately 270 MB RAM and only (when working heavily) some 40% of my CPU (running at 2GHz). That is not much, meaning that the response is swift and inviting.

I have not tryed out the VST and ReWired engine and all the other new goodies, that is around, but I'll look forward to a happy holliday to do that.

Oh, yes: And Adobe's homepage for the product includes a lot from the old Syntrillon home page, so I can't be disappointed at all...

Strongly recommendable!!

I already own Sibelius (music scoring/composition software) and as a amature singer I needed a way to record backing tracks and layer my voice over the top ... sometimes making several takes, filtering my voice (I'm not that great, so some filters pitch-alter & echo my voice nicely enough to make me sound better) and record the final stuff onto CD. Audition by Adobe turned out to be the perfect solution.

I tried the 30-day version from the Adobe site first. After the first day I bought the full software.

So far I have ripped tracks from music CD & wav (created by Sibelius), added my voice onto several seperate tracks (multi-versions of some takes cos I never get the first take right ;) ) and played with the filters (which you can layer one on top of the other).

Software performs nicely too - uses several threading techniques so that whilst it's loading or saving files, or applying a filter you don't have to wait until it's finished ... you can carry on working.

I'd imagine this would be great software for video makers.

I also bought a "how to" tutor book along with the software because I feel the need to learn how this works properly.

Back to the studio :)