I am wondering whether to invest in Adobe Audition 3, but as it's pretty pricey (£288 amazon.UK) I was going to hold off and see if v4 is due out some time soon? Anyone happen to know. As an adobe product does it follow typical release cycles e.g. 2 years etc?

I noticed Wavelab is coming down in price - however I like the multi-track ability of Audition (I still remember from the Cool Edit days - and always wished I'd picked it up when it was so cheap!)

Cheers,
Zam

You may want to steer more towards Sound Forge 9 - cheaper (I believe) and essentially the same feature-set, now that they have added multi-tracking (I myself am still on v8, so can't tell you how good it is).

Can you show me how to do Cool-Edit style multitrack in SF9?

seems too me that adobe is on roughly a 2 year up update schedule for audition (maybe closer to 20 months between 2 and 3) so seeing as AA3 came out last fall I'm guessing you have at least another year.

AA3 has some great features, but I wouldn't recommend it if you use a lot of plugins, its VST handling is very, very buggy.

Adobe Audition 3 can do something that neither Wavelab 6 or Soundforge 9 can!

Dynamic (offline) timestretch/pitchshift (not with envelope but you choose the start tempo or pitch and the final tempo or pitch) And it uses Radius algorithm which is supposed to be among the best.

I'm so disappointed with Soundforge and even more with Wavelab, being the more expensive alternative to AA3, that they cant do this.

Still, I have found cheaper deals on SF9 and WL6 (second hand) than on AA3.

Arggggh....

Sound design is something I'd use this dynamic ts/ps, but also batch processing some strings samples attack would also benefit from this.

/Johnny

I was not real impressed with Audition 1.5, and skipped version 2, but when version 3 came out I had the chance to upgrade for $99. Audition 3 is light years better than 1.5 and is a very capable app. I don't use it for multi-tracking, so I can't give any feedback on that (I use Cubase 4) but as an editor it is very good. I use it to process audio for video and have had no problems using UAD-1 VST plug-ins. I don't use it for much else, so I can't tell you how the app would perform in a "start to finished" song production. If you're looking to do multi-tracking, I would suggest downloading the demo first, as i've heard that the MIDI handling of VSTi is not so good.

I have Cubase SX 3, Live 6 & Audition 2 (all kinda outdated by 2 years or so). Audition 2 is my choice for multi-track recording/mixing and audio editing. The workflow is great though it didn't like my RME Hammerfall driver for a while until the latest release this month.
Cubase is still the king of VST (Audition choke on some of my VSTs) and Live is my performance tool.

Audition has always had some problems with VSTs. I mostly use it for editing and use the Multitrack for quick applying of effects to multiple takes (mixdown). I've attempted to make full songs in it (just to see if it would do it) but the lack of automation and buggy VST support makes it struggle as a full blown host compared to others. If you need it as an editor I'd say it's a great investment but get yourself a 'real' host if you want to make complete songs IMO.

BTW I now own CE1 (very old), CEP1.2, CEP2000 (yuk!), AA1.5, AA2. I will probably upgrade to 3 later this year.

As Hink says, I would expect it to be middle of next year for AA4. In the meantime, AA3 is superb (except the MIDI thing). It's really THE audio editor imho.

Zam, what are you using now, and what are you using it for? What part of your needs are not being met? It's essential to know where you are and where you want to go before we suggest directions!

I really hope you were joking when you said that. You are really underestimating the power of Audition 3 or the newer versions to come. If you have no hands on experience. dont comment on it.

+1

Exactly how bad is AA3 with vst plugins? Are there any brands in particular? Or overall vst handling? I use mostly freeware vsts.

/Johnny

That would be hard to tell. As you may have 2 or more plugins from the same company that function differently in AA. So the outcome will vary from plugin to plugin. Its the reason I havent updated yet.