Audition CS5.5 AKA Audition 4 is launched

Pretty much the entire reasoning behind this form of development is as a reaction to what happened with AA2.0. The idea is that regardless of what's in or not in it, the release has to be pretty solid in performance terms.

Wish it were. Film & TV audio post is the area I work in. But it seems to me that the design priorities are to make the app fit in just with PP, not the wider requirements of Film/TV post.

Eg
The new ability to edit poly wav's is potentially a great feature but to be blunt it is almost unusable. Unless one happened to want to edit a 5.1 mix.

What happened in Film/tv a few years ago is that file based audio recorders are being used on on the type of productions that are likely to have actual audio post production. A great deal of what is seen & heard on TV in the UK has the sound so called mix done in the NLE.
It seems to me a Daw is only going to be used on more up market material. A lot of video editors not having the time, inclination or knowledge to even consider an app like AA.

What IMO is fundamentally flawed in the EV page when it comes to editing > 2 chan recordings is:-
1) There is no solo. No convenient way to listen, edit a single track or a selection of tracks.
2) A Massive problem there is no "monitor section"
Eg say you have a typical location sound 8 chan poly: it may well have say 5 radio mics, a boom + a stereo rough mix (that is all the picture editor will load in their NLE).
The way AA4 is conceived is that each track will come out of a loudspeaker as per the ITU 5.1 layout. The chan mapping is shared & common to both the MT & EV pages.
A possible but inelegant way round this is to insert the Chan mixer. The problem is you would have to remember to disable it if you actually want to use any Fx. Clearly at the very least there should be the ability to insert the Chan mixer in a monitor path rather than the main path.
But tho the chan mixer is quite powerful it is far from easy to use. And AFAIK there is no way to switch quickly between presets.
So what is essential is a monitor section (just as has been the norm since multitrack recorders started to be widely used in the 1960's)
3) zero crossing selection does not work for > 2 tracks.
4) there is no convenient way to slip individual tracks
5) The track content metadata info (IE what is actually on each track) is not read from the BEXT (or iXML). What perversely is read is the chan assignment in a MOV. Unlike audio recorders this appears to be at the whim of the camera manufacturer it certainly isn't like the metadata in location sound recordings that DO contain useful info. I guess this capability may have some use when interchanging between PP & AA. But mostly it's a PITA when say using audio extracted from a MOV. The channel routing is screwed about with in unhelpful ways by the QT chan mapping data. Eg have a Mov made on Sony  DVC-Pro50. This has 4 chan of audio all mapped to "C". The actual edit as per a say a FCP NLE using Tr 1&2 as stereo.


Basically I fail to see what the poly edit functions as they are can be used for.

Another major "not fit for purpose" odd choice is that locating clips in MT using the time stamp has to / must be a single keystroke operation. Not as now a global hidden option.

 



 

 

Pretty much the entire reasoning behind this form of development is as a reaction to what happened with AA2.0. The idea is that regardless of what's in or not in it, the release has to be pretty solid in performance terms.

Wish it were. Film & TV audio post is the area I work in. But it seems to me that the design priorities are to make the app fit in just with PP, not the wider requirements of Film/TV post.

That would be Adobe's take on it, yes. That's why I said that apparently it works. I can't see Audition being used seriously for video either - for a lot of reasons.

As for the poly wavs - well, the way it's set up is no use to me either as it stands. As for EV being suitable for multichannel editing - well, that hasn't really been thought through at all. One of the big snags with this in EV is that you still have to make it straightforward to use, otherwise one of the major attractions of Audition is out of the window - an uncluttered approach.

What the whole thing amounts to is that the potential is there - but it hasn't been realised yet. 

But I don't understand why such a fuss is being made about round trip for video thing - like you, I think that this will be the exception, rather than the rule. For most crap production, it's just too expensive and quite frankly, unnecessary. And I can't see CS being used much on feature productions either, which is about the only place you might be able to justify it. At that level, you'd do it differently anyway, I suspect.

So where does it fit in? Probably nowhere until a few more basic things are sorted out...

What I do these days in connection with audio is pretty trivial, and really I'd be fairly daft to spend any money on anything audio related.  So my opinion is not of great relevance, but having said that, my instinct is to skip this version and wait for the "real thing" which will follow in 18 months time (I guess) - hopefully there will still be an upgrade from version 3 at that point, and hopefully I won't have given up audio editing altogether by then!

You might call this version "Audition 4 Prolog" in the style of US video game releases...

For me AA3 did almost everything I needed bar performance - apparently this has been fixed to be as good or better than the likes of Vegas & Reaper.
Assuming its even close is going to fantastic and worth the upgrade price.

What I do these days in connection with audio is pretty trivial, and really I'd be fairly daft to spend any money on anything audio related.  So my opinion is not of great relevance, but having said that, my instinct is to skip this version and wait for the "real thing" which will follow in 18 months time (I guess) - hopefully there will still be an upgrade from version 3 at that point, and hopefully I won't have given up audio editing altogether by then!

You might call this version "Audition 4 Prolog" in the style of US video game releases...

I spent part of yesterday with a bunch of people who use Audition for - well, editing audio. A lot of them use (because of what they do) Mac-based playout systems. And you'd have though that these were people who would jump on the new version, because for these particular tasks you don't need CD writing, and you can keep all your machines of the same type (even though, unfortunately, it has to be Macs...).

And what do they say? Well, I couldn't find anybody who was prepared to pay out on the upgrade - yet. Even for their PC versions. As I have suspected all along, they can't see why they should be moving backwards in feature compatibility stakes. Yes, they have been trying the Mac beta - and been unimpressed not with the performance, but with the feature set.

And I don't think that they're alone. Adobe have to address this pretty rapidly, or it's another debacle.

Just to add a bit of insult to injury, somebody has pointed out in the U2U forums that international pricing is even more out of whack than usual for at least Ozpeter, Alanofoz and others down here.

Despite the fact the the Australian dollar is now worth MORE than the American dollar, they're asking A$148.75 plus GST for the upgrade that is only US$99 in the States.  This means the price to us is more than A$163 (which is equivalent to about $175 American at today's exchange rate).

The trial is going to have to be pretty special for me to spend almost double the American price for improved performance but fewer audio features.

Audition have always jacked up the international prices but this is into the realms of gouging.  What's the UK price I wonder?

Bob

The trial is going to have to be pretty special for me to spend almost double the American price for improved performance but fewer audio features.

Bob, I'll give you a big clue about this particular group of users - if you'd been here, you'd have been there too! (That should be big enough, I think...) and what you said was pretty much the opinion amongst people I spoke to.

I don't know what the UK price stacks up to at present - I'll enquire.

*update* A staggering £94.36 inc. VAT for the upgrade in a box, or £333.60 for the full version. If you take today's exchange rate that's $150 for the upgrade here, compared to $99 if you are in the US.

UK price for the upgrade (including VAT) is £94.36 = $154.00 for boxed product, or £95.14 = $155.27 for download.  The download costs more because the European servers are in a country with a higher VAT rate than the UK (21% vs 20%), and that counts as the country of shipping for VAT purposes.  The pre-tax price works out at slightly over $128.

Paul

Hehe! you beat me to it by seconds!

I put it in the import calculator with a rough guess about postage, etc, and it comes in at about £88, though. That's 3.5% duty and then VAT. So perhaps it's the Govt who are benefiting more, not Adobe...

Well, your pre-tax price of $128 works out rather better than my pre-tax price of US$155.  I guess it's made more galling by the exchange rate that has the Aussie dollar worth about 5% more than the US one.  If I could buy straight from the States I'd only have to spend about $95 Australian!

Still, if I decide to look for greener pastures, it makes it easier for me to consider a full version of something else.

And I think I understand your broad hint about the group....if I'm right I've been exchanging emails with one of them just recently.

And I think I understand your broad hint about the group....if I'm right I've been exchanging emails with one of them just recently.

So I understand!

The other thing about importing Audition is that I'd rather hope that Adobe have come to an arrangement to collect UK tax, etc due at source (as do other American companies who export a lot) because if you let the UK Post Office do it, they automatically add an 'International Handling Fee' of £8 on top of any duty and VAT you have to pay. But if they don't have to do this, and just deliver the thing, you avoid that charge.

So when you consider the whole deal with all the stuff you can't avoid added, the Adobe price, at least to the UK, doesn't look quite so unreasonable, perhaps...

Well, in Australia the tax is added AFTER that Aus$148.75 price so that's not the reasoning.  It's just plain expensive!

I'm confused - I can't even find out how much the upgrade would be here (Spain).  However, ISTR that the last upgrade was a lot more expennsive for me than for anyone in the 'states, so I expect it will be more of the same.

It's going to be a hard sell for Adobe if they want me to pay more to upgrade to a version that gives me less functionality.

... I expect that I'll upgrade this time, but probably for the last time...

Hmmm... I take that back.

Nobody (except Durin) has mentioned the loss of the scientific filters or the graphic phase shifter (remember the last time they left that out?). For me the loss of the sci filters is probably the last straw. I like filters that do what a real circuit does (my electronics background).

I might wait and see what Audition CS6 provides. Or maybe CS5.5.1 

OTOH, shortly before I totally kicked the work habit at the end of last year I bought CS5 Master Collection for an academic price so low I'm too embarrassed to mention it here. Legal use much restricted of course. Seems I'm still eligible to buy such packages although there will be a delay before CS5.5 becomes available this way.

Nobody (except Durin) has mentioned the loss of the scientific filters or the graphic phase shifter (remember the last time they left that out?). For me the loss of the sci filters is probably the last straw. I like filters that do what a real circuit does (my electronics background).

Yes, they are on my list, along with a few other things, like the original notch filters. But, Durin would be cross if you said that he'd said that the scientific filters were actually 'lost' - he's made the point (as did I) that nothing is actually 'lost' as such - it's just not there yet, so it can only really be regarded as temporarily misplaced. The strongest hint about actually lost is probably MIDI, but even that is uncertain (unfortunately...)