Product Reviews

Adobe's Audition started life as the shareware audio editor Cool Edit and grew in power and price to become Cool Edit Pro, was acquired by Adobe in 2003 and is now part of the company's video-production suite. Despite these changes, Audition remains extremely straightforward, and its smart new appearance makes it all the more inviting. The main arrange window is quick to navigate with fast screen redraws and clever use of the mouse scroll wheel to handle scrolling and zooming. Bins for files and effects make Premiere users feel at home, and the Mixer window is the only one that relies on pop-up windows for setting EQ and effects parameters.

Audition stands out

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from its competitors for two reasons. First, there's a lack of MIDI support; MIDI files can be imported and used to trigger external synthesizers, but there's no MIDI recording or support for software instruments within Audition. Second, it includes sophisticated destructive audio editing on top of its non-destructive multi-track recording and mixing. Rival software such as Cubase SX and Sonar also include destructive editing, but Audition's editor has more in common with dedicated programs such as Sony's Sound Forge or Steinberg's Wavelab. There's a comprehensive set of effects and processes, plus a Spectral Frequency Display that plots the frequency content of sounds, enabling you to identify and remove any unwanted noises from recordings.

Audition 2 is a significant improvement over its predecessor, with support for ASIO sound cards, improved mix automation, a highly flexible mix architecture and an excellent multi-band compressor. But the basic MIDI support limits its appeal, especially when software instruments are sparking a renaissance in MIDI. For musicians, Cakewalk Sonar and Mackie Tracktion are more versatile and better value. Still, Audition slots neatly into Adobe's Video Bundle for times when Premiere's audio tools don't cut it.