KVR Audio

drjohnny79 · Post by **drjohnny79** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 7:46 pm

Optomadic: Ok.

In what ways do you think AA is superior compared to other audio editors? (Wavelab, Soundforge)

Is it the work-flow? Functions?

The major argument for me would be the radius timestretch, and it being able to "morph" or glide between settings.

I've also used Cool Edit 96 back in the days, and liked the way of working, but I cant say it was better than Soundforge or Wavelab.

/Johnny

headquest · Post by **headquest** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 8:08 pm

The big thing for me is the frequency specturm editing features in AA. Perfect for removing unwanted breath sounds in a vocal, for example.

Optomadic · Post by **Optomadic** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 8:10 pm

CEP is no real comparison to AA. There are some minor simularities but Adobe pretty much rooted them out when they released AA2.

I cant say in comparison to Wavelab or SF what is better but I can say that there are thing in AA that make it one of the best editors out there IMO.

- Frequency Domain editing (lasso, marquee)
- Editing in spectral view.
- Adaptive Noise Reduction.
- Phase repair
- Mutlitrack mixdown features.
- Easy scripting functions.
- Cue list previewing (can play them succesive or in a pattern).
- Excellent batch processing (I dont understand WL's)

These are just a few things I use it for every day and what make it the choice for me.

kadar · Post by **kadar** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 2:57 am

drjohnny79 wrote:Exactly how bad is AA3 with vst plugins? Are there any brands in particular? Or overall vst handling? I use mostly freeware vsts.

/Johnny

Did you mean vsti ? or the effects ?

VSTi, i wouldn't bother because AA is at a very primitive stage with MIDI and Instruments.

Effects, I couldnt rely on anything else with stability.

Ofcourse AA seems to crash every now and then when you try to refresh the effects, but thats not a big issue for me. What sucks the most is that you cant have multiple MIDI in/outs in AA. But i still

it

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 4:14 am

pricer wrote: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).

Multi-tracking is not possible with SF9 AFAIK. It supports multi-channel files [up to 32 channels I think] but that is not nearly the same thing as Cool Edit's multi-tracking ability [which I assume is intact in Audition]. I have also not been able to work out how to create an empty multi-channel file or add channels to an existing stereo file, so I've not been able to do anything I couldn't do with SF7.

drjohnny79 wrote:I'm so disappointed with Soundforge and even more with Wavelab, being the more expensive alternative to AA3, that they cant do this.

I got SF7 brand-new for $99 and upgraded to SF9 last year for something like $120. OTOH, Adobe wouldn't give me an upgrade path to Audition from Cool Edit 2000, so it would have cost me three times more. And the on-line price for Audition from Adobe is $50 more than SF9 from Sony.

headquest wrote:It's really THE audio editor imho.

I always thought CE2k was streets ahead of SF7 but I have to say that SF9 has overcome many of it's issues and is right up there. I realise Audition is probably well ahead of CE2k too but one of CE2k's strengths for me was it's GUI, which Adobe have done their best to ruin, so I'd be a little skeptical. SF has always processed much faster that CE2k, too. Has Adobe done anything to address that?

kadar wrote: 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.

Instead of giving people shit, how about you enlighten us as to it's strengths compared to SF9? From where I stand, SF9 is a pretty complete package and none of the things in Optomadic's list are things I struggle with in it.

headquest wrote:The big thing for me is the frequency specturm editing features in AA. Perfect for removing unwanted breath sounds in a vocal, for example.

What the...? That is my no. 1 use for SF9 and I do it pretty much the same way I used to in CE2k. I just select the breath and make it silence. SF9 helps a lot here because it auto-snaps to zero and I can get rid of a fair amount automagically with a Gate effect first. How does this "spectrum editing" thing help? Surely its just a fancy filter of some sort?

Hink · Post by **Hink** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 4:24 am

BONES wrote:I got SF7 brand-new for $99 and upgraded to SF9 last year for something like $120. OTOH, Adobe wouldn't give me an upgrade path to Audition from Cool Edit 2000, so it would have cost me three times more. And the on-line price for Audition from Adobe is $50 more than SF9 from Sony.

I'm sorry BONES, but I read that and laughed thinking "who would pay three times the cost of a product via upgrade anyhow?" Then I thought "me in a few years and a few versions down the line", I'm just on the "easy payment plan". I'm not laughing now BONES, thanks a lot

koolkeys · Post by **koolkeys** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 4:27 am

The spectrum editing is a view, a colorful representation of the frequencies where you can use various tools to pinpoint specific frequencies to edit or audition at any point on the timeline.

http://www.adobe.com/products/audition/upgrade/

It's one of the first points on that page. Click on the picture to enlarge it. It's not an extensive description, but it's a start.

It's for more than removing breaths. I would even say it's overkill for that. But you could even use it to remove a kick drum from a drum beat, and much more.

Brent

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 4:43 am

Pretty much what I thought, except you can do what you like with it, rather than simply apply a filter. I'm sure it would have its uses, although off the top of my head I'm not coming up with anything useful, given the temporal limitation of that view.

koolkeys · Post by **koolkeys** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 4:47 am

Well it's actually quite deep, with Photoshop-like tools to use on your audio. But there is also a phase view and more similar views and tools that make the feature set in this area a bit deeper.

Brent

Ozpeter · Post by **Ozpeter** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 4:49 am

There's the healing brush in spectral view which works much like the healing brush in Photoshop. Paint over a click or other sound, and it's gone, often without affecting other audio. Then there's the pan and phase views. For instance, in pan view, open a Norah Jones track (say, or anything with a fairly dry, forward vocal). Draw a marquee round the vocal - it's that bright bit in along the middle of the display. Apply effects to reduce the level and add loads of reverb. Voila, a totally rebalanced version of the original with Norah singing from the back of a church.

Audition really is a Rolls Royce product but of course if you just want to pop down to the shops cheaply and park in a small space, a compact Ford may be all you need.

kadar · Post by **kadar** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 4:58 am

BONES mate, I didnt give shit but I was actually defending AA. Im not in a position to give you whats more in AA than SF. How about the fact that SF is NOT A MULTI TRACKER in the first place to be compared with AA.

Thats why I said dont comment if you dont have hands on experience. Dont take offense.

Hink · Post by **Hink** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 5:13 am

Ozpeter wrote: Audition really is a Rolls Royce product but of course if you just want to pop down to the shops cheaply and park in a small space, a compact Ford may be all you need.

Rolls Royce? I don't know Ozpeter, but that's a bit of a stretch (and I don't mean stretch limo). It's good, but I don't think Adobe is gonna fly out here every time I have a problem.

I really think it's closer to the compact Ford TBH, I'm loving Samplitude and I wouldn't consider it the Rolls Royce either.

I've been with AA since day one getting there from ce2k, but Samplitude swept me off my feet. The audio editing has similar features, but Samp goes beyond including Elastic Audio, objects, no need to go to a separate window to edit audio and by far the best mixer I've used in a host. Samp also has the ability to set multi autopunch points for one take, you could do that with earlier versions of AA but you can't with AA2. (I don't have AA3 but if it's returned I'd love to know)

As I think AA3 (from what Ive heard) is not quite there yet with midi I wont bring that into the equation. But AA still has a ways to go to be the one host solution Samplitude is. Then there is Sascha's fx in Samp

OTOH, Samp is quite a bit more expensive so one should expect more from it and imo AA packs a lot of bang for the buck. I lucked out and got a killer deal on a Samp crossgrade so for me I'm getting a lot of bang for my buck.

So I'd go with AA being more like a caddy or towncar and samp being more like a hummer...but that's just me

koolkeys · Post by **koolkeys** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 6:21 am

I don't know why the comparison still has to be with normal hosts. Yes, Adobe has put in features(and CE already had some) that make it more like a regular host than other dedicated audio editors. But let's not forget that Audition still is primarily an audio editor. And it has more audio editing features than ANY host does. I won't say it has more or less than other editors like Wavelab and SF, but there isn't a host around that beats it for audio editing.

In the audio editing world, it's up there with the best of them. What kind of car that makes it, I don't know. But it sure ain't no Pinto.

Brent

Optomadic · Post by **Optomadic** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 6:41 am

I have to agree with koolkeys. You can't compare AA to a host with a built in sequencer, full MIDI and VSTi support (yet!). I'm not sure it'l ever be such an application but if Adobe did somehow integrate more powerful sequencer and even sampler like features it would make it a killer app for sure.

headquest · Post by **headquest** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 7:16 am

BONES wrote:
headquest wrote:The big thing for me is the frequency specturm editing features in AA. Perfect for removing unwanted breath sounds in a vocal, for example.
What the...? That is my no. 1 use for SF9 and I do it pretty much the same way I used to in CE2k. I just select the breath and make it silence. SF9 helps a lot here because it auto-snaps to zero and I can get rid of a fair amount automagically with a Gate effect first. How does this "spectrum editing" thing help? Surely its just a fancy filter of some sort?

Hi BONES: sorry, as I'm the other side of world etc. so only just saw this. I think others already answered it. But just to say, the example of reducing breath noise is probably not the best illustration of how different this feature is (though the ability to do that right in your host with such ease is certainly useful and... great!).

Using the better illustration ozpeter gives, I have pretty much remixed/rebalanced tracks in the frequency view. By scrolling in you can get to individual notes and adjust their amplitude. I had a track recently where in the rendered version an organ line jumped out much more than I had realised earlier in the mix... rather than go back to remix it elsewhere, I just picked out the offending notes in Audition's frequency spectrum view and took them down by 3db.

There's so much more that's possible here of course, using the lassoo tool, healing brush, etc. As well as making audio editing and cleanup jobs a breeze, there are lots of potential creative uses for sound designers, etc.

Although I've not tried SF9 I don't believe it has these particular tools; nor IIRC can Wavelab, <shock> Samplitude, or even the new iZotope plugin do as much in this respect. So in a nutshell, that's why I think this is a big draw for Audition. Obviously there's a pile of other stuff that all these programmes can do, but here Audition excels.

Having said that, I wish Adobe would improve Audition's CD burn section to make it as good as CD Architect

Each of these programmes undoubtedly has its strengths and weaknesses.

Any news on Adobe Audition 4?