It's been six months...

Here in Oz we've advanced several hours into 17 July, which means Audition 2 is six months old.

While the collective experience certainly hasn't been plain sailing, I must say my experience has been very positive.

OTOH, I'm inclined to agree with those who believe that Adobe owe us a free 2.01 version, addressing a range of quirks, bugs and omissions, regardless of Adobe's normal policy in this area.

I've had few issues myself, but an "outsider" reading the forums since January 17 would feel that there is plenty of reason to spend his/her money elsewhere (and it's true I'm not helping here).

ASIO was eagerly awaited, but it seems to have brought with it some unwanted side effects, in my case erratic meter movements. Changing to ASIO4ALL may solve problems for many, but it's not a perfect solution - for me it often seems to cause several seconds of stuttering before properly starting to playbeck. ASIO driver problems which may or may not be solved by ASIO4All seem to be so wide spread that it's difficult to see how the drivers are to blame. The common factor here is Audition.

My next problem was with Full Reverb. With AA1.5 I was able to apply FR to a bus and route several tracks to it and playback live. Now I can't, I must regress a couple of years and add an extra track for every input requiring reverb, apply a wet only reverb and freeze the track. Or not use FR . Whether that's an ASIO side effect or not I feel it's a backward step that Adobe should have been able to avoid. Being able to freeze a bus would help here (although in a very annoying way).

A serious omission is a reasonable way to control presets. Whether migrating from an older version or migrating between machines, there needs to be a simple way of doing this.

Whether MIDI is an omission that should be addressed is a matter of opinion. I do a lot with MIDI and AA's lack here doesn't stop me doing what I want at all. Maybe I'm just lucky. For Audition to acquire all the MIDI features I already have would take till about version 5 I feel, but I can do what I want now. I can create MIDI files easily, render to wave in a variety of ways, line up the results in AA no problem at all, print high quality sheet music and much more. I just don't expect Audition to be a fully capable MIDI program any time soon. And I've never felt the need for a single program that does everything.

For many people the new code has broken the program, requiring an unacceptable (to them) change to their workflow. In some cases the problem can be solved by the user being flexible enough to adapt, in other cases version 2 seems to have required an impossible change. In my case I was able to adapt and move on, fortunately.

It seems we must simply accept that Audition 2 is a new program with new code and therefore we can't expect it to behave exactly like 1.5. OK, but it doesn't look like it's ALL new code: under External Controllers>Configure I see the option to remap my control surface switches to different Audition commands, but this doesn't work at all, just like it didn't work in 1.5. If the code has been re-written it sure behaves exactly like the old code! I choose to believe that the old code was copied untested into the new program.

I think others may have stories of quite a few more quirks, bugs and omissions, but I must say I've found plenty to like about AA2.

I like the interface and the workspaces, I don't care much about the limited choice of colours.

The multitrack mixer is an important improvement in too many ways to list here. The re-written code definitely works more smoothly with my control surface. This may seem like a small improvement, but it's really a huge improvement in the overall "feel" of the Audition/control surface combination.

One of the biggest changes for me is the file handling when recording. It's now possible to record "live" with Audition. At the end of a bracket you can save the session and set up for the next bracket without having to wait for the wave files to be saved. Before version 2 you really needed a separate program to record a gig.

[Edit] I'd almost forgotten this: with 1.5 I had an issue with the mouse pointer jumping to a totally different place within the program. This happened when "snap to" was enabled within the mouse driver and was most noticeable when Audition windows were spread over two monitors. Now fixed (which is why I'd almost forgtten about it...)
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Well, I seem to have taken up more space with the negative than the positive, but overall, I really like this version. I may have opened 1.5 once or twice in the last six months, but I haven't actually used it at all since version 2 arrived. Overall an important step forward IMHO.

Very good Alan. You've covered all the sentiments I feel as well except my problem with Full Reverb is don't use it. I couldn't even get to freeze the thing, it froze my system

Mark

Very thoughtful summary, Alan.

I agreed with your summary Alan. Its been a bit more of a learning curve going from 1.5 to 2.0 than i had from Cooledit Pro to Audition 1.5 but now that i have the program 'licked' i feel quite confortable with it.

I work in radio where we use Audition as our editor for field laptops and general multi-track production - its used by a wide range of people: journalists, producers, audio engineers, casuals and most often by people with no previous experience with wav editing or even (unfortunately) PC skills!  My key disappointment with 2.0 is that it doesn't present as good a solution 'stright out of the box' as 1.5 did and we have had people at my organisation tearing their hair out with the changes.  plus, it seems to take a bit more tweaking to get it doing exactly what you want.

The interface, because of its flexibility, is actually confusing and infuriating for people (ie losing transport Controls, time control re-sizing etc) and for older users of 1.5 the mixdown functions (exporting/bouncing) aren't immediately apparent and a little frustrating.  The biggest problem is the mixdown level situation (ie dropping -3db when mixed down) especially when working in MONO, which while i understand it, is deeply confusing for the average user.  They ask "if my levels are good in multitrack, why are they -3db when i mix!?"

It means i have to work my way through every version of 2.0 we load and set outputs to mono, and adjust the preferences to logorithmic etc and load Asio4all etc etc. ... usually on every persons windows logon for every machine.

i also miss 'mixdown selected waves' as this was incredibly handy for promo production, and i've had to change the way i now do this (ie mixdown by selected REGION').

My BIGGEST ongoing gripe with Audition which never seems to click with Adobe is... delete and ripple.   i use Wavelab for radio production as well, and the ability to edit something in multitrack, and have everything to the right of the session move up (ie by track or by entire session) is a blessing.  Protools does a similar function, and its omission from 2.0 baffles me a little.  At least add it as a toggle option! ha!

ok, enough from me, back to lurking...

ryan.

Alan and Ryan, I want to love 2.0 very much, but my current state of affairs (which CAN improve later) has my joy level decreasing with this version.

My next problem was with Full Reverb. With AA1.5 I was able to apply FR to a bus and route several tracks to it and playback live. Now I can't, I must regress a couple of years and add an extra track for every input requiring reverb, apply a wet only reverb and freeze the track.

I'm missing something here.  But having the ability to freeze a bus and unloading the source tracks from the mix load would be INCREDIBLE!  Alan, I thought there were multiple ways to route tracks to a Full Reverb bus and control your wet/dry levels in 2.0.  But on one occasion I needed the effect isolated for later alternate mixing, so I printed a wet file and saved the file (I suppose that's considered regression too).  Not that I have nothing against 2.0's Full Reverb.  It is one of the rewritten parts of the program.  In an effort to increase quality, the temp impulse files are now 32-bit, not 16, and are notably lengthier.  For a modest benefit, this slows the effect down considerably, but the most obvious and annoying part of its sound, the strong out-of-phasiness of the early reflections, is unchanged.  Now, combine this with the inability to import presets, and my later discovery after hours of work, that once presets are imported through a 1.5 session we find that the results can be sonically quite different with the controls at the same settings.  

I've commented elsewhere about the change in the panning law (why couldn't we have had a 6dB equal-power sine setting for backwards compatibility???) and the complete waste of finesse it makes when importing an old complex mix.  Oh, and imported track EQ doesn't translate with identical results either.  Add all these to your other points, such as ASIO, which is still a problem for me, the temp files required for CD burning, and my lower possible track count due to the elimination of background mixing, and you can see why I use 1.5 and CEP2.1 as much or more than I do AA2.0.

However, if I were a new user starting from scratch, I wouldn't choke so much over these issues.  For all intents and purposes, 2.0 IS a rewritten program, and some of these differences are annoying me more and more as the months go on.  So when I need the restoration prowess of 2.0, great, I use it.  When I need to rip a live CD recording and do a quick burn back to disc, I use CEP2.1.  When I need to rework an old session, I use 1.5.  Kinda crazy, isn't it?

It seems we must simply accept that Audition 2 is a new program with new code and therefore we can't expect it to behave exactly like 1.5.

Now you see why I'm struggling to wholly accept this.

The biggest problem is the mixdown level situation (ie dropping -3db when mixed down) especially when working in MONO, which while i understand it, is deeply confusing for the average user.  They ask "if my levels are good in multitrack, why are they -3db when i mix!?"

This really needs to go away.  That's what 32-bit float is for.  If it's frustrating for radio mixing, imagine my problems trying to maintain calibration between Multitrack View and when I open up the Multitrack Encoder.  

Speaking of multitrack, I have done plenty of passive (that is, no panning automation) 5.1 mixes by direct output assignment in Multitrack View.  However, the elimination of the "all devices" meter in 2.0 makes attempting this futile.  See, every change may benefit most users (presumably), but it will bite at least one.

My BIGGEST ongoing gripe with Audition which never seems to click with Adobe is... delete and ripple.   ...ryan.

Having done some modest video editing in Adobe Premiere, I heartily agree.  Especially if cue markers and automation data will shift properly, too.

Perhaps my comments are making this thread take on a whinier tone, but that's because I've used this product and its predecessors for over 10 years, and I want it to just be unbelievably wonderful in every way.  Perhaps when 2.0 has been updated enough times to bring the feature set to a point comparable to the maturity of the feature set in 1.5, I'll be completely gung ho.

Perhaps when 2.0 has been updated enough times to bring the feature set to a point comparable to the maturity of the feature set in 1.5, I'll be completely gung ho.

I think that's pretty much nailed it on the head, one way or another. There's a lot of new code, and new thinking in 2.0, and it certainly hasn't reached maturity yet.

But when you consider the sorts of things that are being complained about in general, and how much further the program has developed since CEP1.0 (giving rather more scope for 'undocumented features'), then, all things considered, I think that the list of gripes is nowhere near the level that it possibly could have been at. Yes, you could say that Syntrillium never would have released 2.0 in its present state, and that may be true - but I think that on balance, this release is about where it ought to be in the scheme of releases in general.

But Adobe really should consider a dot release fix for a few of the items mentioned, and one or two more that aren't in this list as well, because some of them are, to say the least, frustrating end users somewhat.

Well said, Steve.  I really do agree with you concerning the positives.

I hope our Adobe friends are listening concerning both sides of this picture.

Ripple editing with proper handling of markers and automation envelopes, and auto crossfading, are very high on my list of wishes for the next version - I concur with those above looking for such features.

...And proper soloing of busses without any "dry" channels included, as a true mixing console would allow.

I have changed over (a term perhaps preferable to "upgraded") to 2.0 and it has been a tough go. As a rule, I don't worry about updates, I simply learn the new way of doing things, and off I go. In this case I have left my older sessions in 1.5 (or earlier) format to avoid some of the wierd issues that have come up with 2.0.

Chief among these is the rigamarole associated with mixing down a session into a two-track file. Yes, I can do it, but it seems like running around the barn to get from the left side to the right rather than just facing to the right....

I started with CEP LE (came with a soundcard), and have installed every version from 1.2 through AA 2.0, and this is the first time that the changes have not been easily and intuitively* mastered: it has been like learning a new, and separate, program.

My recording schedule is much less than with 1.5, owing to my devoting the bulk of my time to playing bass in a band, but that seems to mean mostly that I'm looking in the manual pretty frequently when I do record.
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*intuitive in the sense that, once one learns the conventions of an earlier version, the same processes could be applied to the new features.

I'll toss in my two cents - and since AA is not my primary platform these days, it's truly worth little more than that.

The main thing that's kept me from venturing off on a significant mixing project in AA, is the impression that it can't handle nearly the processing load that Samplitude can manage.  That impression manifests itself in the form of imperfect playback on fairly small projects.

Yesterday, for example, I'm working on that violin /piano recital.  That was recorded and mixed in Samp.  I was running it through AA to prepare it for burning to CD and decided add a little OZONE to it.  Bring up the effects rack for the only track in the session, apply one effect, and playback starts to break up.

Playback also breaks up in Edit view.  I have tracked this down - it's related to graphics activity.  In EV I keep the Freq Analysis and Phase Analysis windows open.  I have to keep those small or playback really suffers.  Ozone is pretty intense graphically, so I can see why that would load things up.

Having said that, in Samp I can have the OZONE windows open for 3 tracks at once and playback continues flawlessly - I'm sure I could open more, but that's all I've had reason to open.

Also, graphics were not an issue in 1.5.  I ran the Freq Analysis windows BIG in 1.5, and always had the phase analysis window pretty large too.

So my hope for the next version of Audition is that it gets more efficient.  My commitment to Samplitude is fairly short term.  Had 2.0 been out a year earlier I probably never would have gone there.  Most of the features that drove me to Samplitude are now in AA - automation, inserts, multiple sends, master effects, etc.  I still do all of my destructive edits and NR in AA.

If AA were to have the same processing horsepower as Samp, the one feature I would REALLY miss if I were to move back to AA would be object-level effects - AUX sends, inserts, EQ, etc, by CLIP rather than by TRACK.

That would be a lovely addition to AA, but probably far beyond the scope of an intermediate patch.  

It's been six months...and still no update, patch, etc.!

...And proper soloing of busses without any "dry" channels included, as a true mixing console would allow.

Ditto on that one!

i don't want to be a whinger either! haha! but i think its good to have these kinds of threads where we can do a stocktake of issues that have come about with this new version... of what i think is a really fantastic audio editor and radio production tool.

As i think i mentioned previously i work in an organisation with around 20-30 licenced copies of Audition 1.5, and now around 6 versions of 2.0... which is being rolled out with any new PCs we lease.

And i just wanted to add one more thing that has disappointed me, and that is the issues that arise when using 2.0 sessions in 1.5 and vice versa.  We are finding it very difficult to save a session properly for someone else to work on (or ourselves in fact) on a different machine running 1.5... its really quite impossible to migrate old sessions properly, and upgrading all of our older machines to 2.0 is cost prohibitive.  Migrating sessions between older versions of the program weren't a walk in the park either, but transfered a lot easier.  Its a little thing really, but just one more niggling issue... and I could expand on this, but you get my drift... and its time to go home, that is all.

ciao.

ryan (ABC Radio Australia, Melbourne)

Over at 3MBS, Ryan, we have started the migration to version 2.0 and so far I have not heard of major problems - but I suspect much of what we do is short-life so opening old sessions isn't likely to happen much.

Do drop me a personal message if you think it would be any value in Audition users in our respective organisations having a mutual support mechanism outside of these fine forums.