WHAT IS ADOBE AUDITION?

Adobe Audition is a digital audio workstation developed by Adobe Inc. featuring both a multitrack, non-destructive mix/edit environment and a destructive-approach waveform editing view

Audition is a comprehensive toolset that includes multitrack, waveform, and spectral display for creating, mixing, editing, and restoring audio content. This powerful audio workstation is designed to accelerate video production workflows and audio finishing — and deliver a polished mix with pristine sound.

Along with tools for color, audio, and graphics, Premiere Pro works seamlessly with other apps and services, including After Effects, Adobe Audition, and Adobe Stock. Open a Motion Graphics template from After Effects or download one from Adobe Stock and customize it — all without leaving the app. And Premiere Pro integrates with hundreds of partner technologies.

Features Of Adobe Audition

• Improved playback and recording performance [NEW] Playback over 128 audio tracks or record over 32 tracks, at low latencies, on common workstations and without expensive, proprietary, single-purpose acceleration hardware.
• Improved multitrack UI [NEW] …
• On-clip gain control and waveform scaling [NEW]

ADVANTAGES OF ADOBE AUDITION

Pricing, System Requirements, and Setup

Audition began its life as a program called Cool Edit by Syntrillium Software. I remember it from its multitrack-enabled Cool Edit Pro days. Adobe bought the product from Syntrillium roughly 15 years ago, relaunched it soon after as Audition, and has developed it ever since.

As with other Adobe software, you “buy” Audition by subscribing to one of the company’s Creative Cloud (CC) plans. Audition by itself costs a rather high $20.99 per month on an annual plan, or $31.49 on a month-to-month plan. It’s also available as part of a package with all of Adobe’s professional products, including photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, and more, for $52.99 per month as part of an annual plan or $79.49 month to month, although students and teachers can get it for as little as $19.99 a month. When you stop paying, Audition stops working and you keep nothing.

Whether any of these plans make sense to you depends on your needs. If you’re the type of audio engineer who buys a program once and uses it professionally until it’s no longer supported, years down the line, Audition will prove a much more expensive proposition than Logic pro X a flat $199.99 forever, with free upgrades). But if you tend to upgrade your audio workstation often, paying hundreds of dollars up front and then $99 or $149 every couple of years to get new versions, Audition makes more sense. Audition’s best value proposition is if you’re already working in Adobe Premiere and pay for a full CC subscription anyway, in which case Audition is already part of the package. Still, to put all of this in perspective, three years of working with Audition will cost you at least $755, and possibly more if you choose a different plan or go month-to-month. That’s a lot.

To install Audition, you need a PC running Windows 10 64-bit or a Mac running macOS 10.12 (Sierra) or newer. For this review, I tested Audition CC 2019 on an Apple MacBookPro15-inch (2017)with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD running macOS Mojave 10.14.6, with a Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 USB interface attached. I ran into no bugs throughout the review period, which is nice to see (although increasingly common, even with Audition’s complex competitors).

There’s no hardware copy protection dongle required with Audition, as there is with pro tools You do need to run the Creative Cloud desktop app in the background, which you install as part of the setup process. By default, Audition CC collects usage data, and to stop it you have to manually opt out once the program is installed.

5 Ways to Clean up Audio in Adobe Audition

There are always going to be imperfections in your production audio. Instead of scrapping it, use these tips to clean it up in Adobe Audition.

No matter how experienced your audio crew, there are always issues that will find their way into your recording. It happens. But resist the urge to scrap your audio and go straight to ADR, because you might be able to salvage that audio. There are several options you can utilize in order to save this audio, but one option that’s gaining steam within the industry is Adobe Audition.

With that said, here are five tips for cleaning up your audio in Adobe Audition. For each tip, we’ll run through how you can fix the issue and then post a helpful professional tutorial to guide you step by step. Let’s get started.

1. Fix Distorted Audio

There may be moments in post when you discover that your field recorder settings were simply too hot. This is a problem that frequently rears its ugly head in documentary film work, especially for those working as a one-person crew. When your audio is too hot, it’s going to distort — but fear not. It can be fixed.

1. Access the Waveform of your audio by double-clicking on the track.
2. Head over to Window > Amplitude Statistics.
3. A new window will open. Click on the Scan option in the lower left-hand corner.
4. Once it scans, find the section that says Possibly Clipped Samples.
5. Click on the small Diamond Shaped Node next the number. This will take you to where your audio is clipping.

For an in-depth look at how to use the technique above, check out the great tutorial from Mike Russell. He’ll run through the Amplitude Statistics process, then show you how to fix distortion in two different ways.

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2. Use the Spectral Frequency Display

Have you ever been out on location filming and some secondary interference messed with your audio? Maybe someone on set sneezed or had their cell phone ring. Maybe an airplane flew overhead. Noises like these can be taken out of your audio with the Spectral Frequency Display.

1. Open your audio Waveform by double-clicking it in the Files Panel.
2. As the Waveform opens in the Editor Panel, look toward the bottom of the panel.
3. There is a small divider. Click and Hold to pull that divider up, revealing the Spectral Frequency Display.
4. Now you have a visual reference to find the noises you need to take out.

Check out the tutorial below where Maxim Jago from Lynda.com takes us through the step-by-step process of using the Spectral Frequency Display to clean up your audio.

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3. Use Adaptive Noise Reduction

Another way to reduce unwanted noise from your audio is through the use of the Adaptive Noise Reduction effect. This effect works really well at removing ambient background noise and wind noise. This effect can be applied in real-time through the Multitrack Editor, which is really handy. Here’s how to get started using the Adaptive Noise Reduction effect.

1. Activate your Waveform by double-clicking your audio source in the Files panel.
2. With your Waveform selected, head over to either the Effects Rack or the Effects Top Menu.
3. Then go to Noise Reduction/Restoration > Adaptive Noise Reduction.

Now that you know how to access the Adaptive Noise Reduction effect, let’s find out how to precisely use the effect to clean up audio. Here’s another video from Lynda.com that runs through the process.

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4. Remove Echo

Echo is another issue that you may hear in your audio from time to time. It happens, especially when you’re filming at a location with a lot of reflective surfaces. Surfaces like concrete, tile, brick, and metal will reflect sound and bounce it all over the space, which in turn can give you some unwanted reverb.

Unfortunately, Audition doesn’t include any really polished effects that can handle this issue. However, there are several plugins you can purchase that won’t break the bank. Two great plugins you can use: Acon Digital’s DeVerberate and the SPL De-Verb plugin from Plugin Alliance.

In the tutorial below, Curtis Judd gives us an in-depth tutorial on how to utilize both of the above plugins to reduce and remove echo issues from your audio. Now, you should be completing your audio mix in something other than your NLE, but if it’s a quick video project and you have echo issues, know that you can use these plugins with Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

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5. Use Frequency Analysis

Another way to locate noises in your audio is by using the Frequency Analysis option. By activating this window, you’ll be able to see the frequencies in your audio file, which then allows you to find where random issues of clipping, excessive bass, and other noises are located. Here’s how to access this menu option.

1. Go to the Window top menu, and click the Frequency Analysis tab.
2. Choose Logarithmic from the Scale drop-down menu.
3. Start your playback. To Freeze, click one of the eight Hold buttons.

Now that you know how to access Frequency Analysis (as well as how to apply frequency holds), let’s turn to a full tutorial (once again from Mike Russell) on how to effectively use this feature for audio clean up.

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