CS6 At Last

Just need to know when, where & how much

That, indeed, is THE question!

Seriously, the (new) features list looks to have answered a very large number of the posts requesting features to be added or restored.  Yes, those wanting MIDI will doubtless vent their anger here or at the Adobe forums; I would have liked to see MIDI more fully implemented but I understand why this was not a priority in any way for the AA team.  As SteveG and others have pointed out, Adobe were "late to the party" with MIDI; a number of other companies already had fully-functional MIDI sequencers/editors.  Adobe would always have been in the situation of trying to "catch up".

Looking forward to getting ALL the details re dates and prices!

Jeff

Yes I wanted midi, but I'm not angry as I know there's a lot of work involved in creating a decent sequencing program. It's my guess that anybody who needs midi already has it with the following programs, Pro Tools, Cubase, Sonar or Reaper. At least that's the information I've gathered over the years. As far as AA6 goes the only thing that I find useful is the cd burning, which should have never been dropped in the first place, and should be restored at no charge. Am I going to buy the upgrade ?? Highly doubtful.  Right now I'm studying Sonar X1 to become proficient with it, as it's going to be my main DAW software. Even the lowly Essentials program does everything I need it to nicely. About the only thing I'll need Audition for is basic editing and converting to mp3's. I can do that with the older versions I already have.

After reviewing the older versions of Audition, I'm reverting back to AA3 for the ease of clicking back and forth between screens, CD burning capabilities and the Loopology.

Given that there are no stupid questions only stupid people and not knowing how these sort of things are coded - would any of these be able to be added as some sort of 'plug in' at a later date rather than in an 'upgrade' version?

Well, it does look as if it will be worth considering buying the upgrade.

I'm particularly pleased about the .mp2 support at last, which has been asked for by me since about CE96.

I hope the DAW controller options are broad and possibly somewhat adaptable for different control surfaces. I've been using controllers, including the Red Rover, a lot recently. With the more complex devices eg my Tascam 1884, the interface was always useful but not quite "there".

I'm particularly pleased about the .mp2 support at last, which has been asked for by me since about CE96.

For what its worth, the import of .mp2 uses mpg123 and TwoLame for export.  So if there are bugs, there's a chance they could be fixed out-of-cycle as they are both open source.  Import of .mp2 via DLMS in Audition CS6 uses a licensed library from MainConcept that the other Adobe applications use.

I hope the DAW controller options are broad and possibly somewhat adaptable for different control surfaces. I've been using controllers, including the Red Rover, a lot recently. With the more complex devices eg my Tascam 1884, the interface was always useful but not quite "there".

Red Rover, Mackie MCU, Logic Control, and Avid EUCON are all supported.   To use the Tascam 1884, you'd need to make sure that that device has a Mackie Control mode.  Mackie HUI emulation won't work with this version of Audition.

Red Rover, Mackie MCU, Logic Control, and Avid EUCON are all supported.   To use the Tascam 1884, you'd need to make sure that that device has a Mackie Control mode.  Mackie HUI emulation won't work with this version of Audition.

That all sounds very promising. The Tascam FW1884 does use Mackie Control. The problem I have had with AA3 and earlier was that I have never managed to use many of the functions beyond the basics (which work really well). This is a problem when working with other people because I cannot disable the myriad of buttons that seem to do undocumented, almost random, things. So someone pressing a seemingly innocuous button can accidentally cause chaos.

I also have, and must start to use more, a Frontier Design Alphatrack,

Sounds great to me. Anyone know if the new one will still run on XP -- or will we need to move to Windows 7 to run it?
I've stayed on XP with CS5.5 and that has worked here for us.  I'm hoping can do that for this new version too, but
probably will not hestitate to move over to Win 7 if that's not possible. 

Like with AA3, we run CS5.5 here on several systems - all currently XP though.

For those that have been running 5.5 on Win 7 - any big advantage to the 64 bit version versus 32?  These
are mainstay AA systems so only interested from the AA standpoint, not so much for other stuff.  UA says though
that shortly their plugs will be moving to full 64 bit -- but I think there will still be 32 bit versions for running on XP.

With 5.5 we recently did a very long program completely on it, with many tracks and a lot of effects. It was the first
time I decided to do that kind of project completely on CS5.5 only. Previously I'd been using a  mix of AA 3 and 5.5
for various tasks but was forced to do many for m/track still on 3.01 because of missing features in CS5.5 that were
impt for the partic. projects.

CS5.5's  better stability, even with a huge amount of edits and such a long project was impressive.

Also quite a few UAD, Izotope and Waves plugs were used in it. It all worked out pretty well, and despite really a huge amount of edits in the SESX files (and also loads of edits directly to the WAVs within them) CS5.5 did not crash the way AA3 used to with such dense projects. It only crashed or locked up a couple times during all the work at all and we were pushing it hard on this long set of projects.   Like many users, we save often and so when it did crash  was able to get back everything except the most recent few edits made since the last save.

Also very happy to see some of the old features will be back in new version.  One reason we were doing so much
back and forth work between 3.01 and 5.5 was that 5.5 does not allowing exporting stems -- for many things that
is a key capability for us, so had to use AA3.01 for those projects. Also missed grouping and quite a few others.

And maybe our Alphatrack will run again with the new version. I like using it many times when running AA3.01.
Or maybe it won't -- might depend on the Frontier Design folks. Anyone know?

Sounds great to me. Anyone know if the new one will still run on XP -- or will we need to move to Windows 7 to run it?

Runs fine under XP...

Sounds great to me. Anyone know if the new one will still run on XP -- or will we need to move to Windows 7 to run it?
I've stayed on XP with CS5.5 and that has worked here for us.  I'm hoping can do that for this new version too, but
probably will not hestitate to move over to Win 7 if that's not possible. 

Yes, XP is supported in Audition CS6. The only notable OS support change will be Vista, which will be officially not supported, although it might still work and we might just warn you when you install on a Vista machine, we won't fix or support Vista issues/bugs. I probably don't need to explain the logic behind this decision.

Also very happy to see some of the old features will be back in new version.  One reason we were doing so much
back and forth work between 3.01 and 5.5 was that 5.5 does not allowing exporting stems -- for many things that
is a key capability for us, so had to use AA3.01 for those projects. Also missed grouping and quite a few others.

Stems export and grouping have moved beyond what was done in previous versions of Audition. For stems export, in the new features list we posted on our blog we called it "Advanced Mixdown", but this will be under Export->Multitrack Mixdown menu. With this you will now be able to, in one dialog, export (using a 5.1 session as an example) a mono, stereo, 5.1 master mix AND each track as a stem AND each bus as a stem AND export to a specific format and sample rate. We'll talk about some of this type of stuff in a little more detail on the Inside Sound blog (http://blogs.adobe.com/insidesound/) coming up.

For clip grouping, it operates roughly the same as AA3 (as you'd expect) but we've made it so you can now change the group color (silly but it matters sometimes) easily in the properties panel, "suspend" the group to work on single clips and then resume it (basically like a temporary ungroup/regroup without having to remember what was in it), add/remove clips from the group without having to ungroup/regroup, improved the group trimming to behave better than AA3's, we support stretching of groups so that it maintains proper time relationship of the grouped clips when they're all stretched together (AA3 did this, but it was an unintended 'feature' and was actually quite broken).


Cheers,
Colin
Audition Program Manager

The problem I have had with AA3 and earlier was that I have never managed to use many of the functions beyond the basics (which work really well). This is a problem when working with other people because I cannot disable the myriad of buttons that seem to do undocumented, almost random, things. So someone pressing a seemingly innocuous button can accidentally cause chaos.

Try it when it is released and be sure to give feedback to Adobe on this one.  For the extra buttons, there is a new button mapper that works for Mackie/Logic as well as Red Rover (EUCON you have to do the mapping in their software).  So, you should be able to unmap any extra buttons that aren't part of the default set like Play/Stop/Record etc.

Colin and Steve- Thank you very much for this.

And Colin, I'm very glad to see those features not only back but improved as you've mentioned.
Terrific that it will run on XP too.

Seems a lot of good thoughts and user feedback have gone into the development
of the new release.

Will look fwd to getting the new one as soon as it's available.

Colin - I bet you remember me from last version and some install hiccups from the upgrade discs!

Colin and Steve- Thank you very much for this.

And Colin, I'm very glad to see those features not only back but improved as you've mentioned.
Terrific that it will run on XP too.

Seems a lot of good thoughts and user feedback have gone into the development
of the new release.

Will look fwd to getting the new one as soon as it's available.

Colin - I bet you remember me from last version and some install hiccups from the upgrade discs!

I sure do remember. Luckily that issue was isolated and hopefully not repeatable (replication told me they thought it was certain media formula + certain drives...so much for so called standards!).

colin

If you add the full version of Audition CS6 to your "cart" on the product page, it's showing the estimated delivery date to be May 7th. By then, I might have a fresh new paycheck burning a hole in my bank account 

I spent my software upgrade money on upgrading Sonar X1 Essentials to the Studio version.. why ?? 64 bit. I will now be able to access my 8 gigs of ram memory. I also upgraded my East West sound sample program to the 64 bit version of Gold Complete. From what I've heard, other people who have done this are getting fabulous results.

Sonar makes sense to me because I can use it to host my sound sample programs, it has very strong midi capabilities, can print out simple music scores, and records audio very well .

Having the 64 bit version gives me access to my 8 gigs of memory which a 32 bit program won't...hear that Adobe ?? Maybe I'll upgrade when Audition becomes a 64 bit program. But for now, the only thing I see that I like about AA6 is the cd burning capabilities, and that's not worth $75 bucks to me. I have no use for lip syncing software. The "now you see it now you don't" effects policy of Adobe I find to be irritating. That's baloney, they should never have taken stuff away and call it an upgrade.

I hadn't planned to upgrade to CS6 but it seems that I'll be getting it anyway - I was already subscribing to Dreamweaver "in the cloud" and for an extra €10 a month (a special offer to existing subscribers for one year) it seems I'll be getting across the board access to the entire CS6 suite, including Audition. According to their French site the software should be available from 7 May, subject to change, and they promise to take not a penny from me until then...