Effects Brought Back in Audition CS6?

[topmonkey]

I, like many Audition users were disappointed to see many features stripped away when Audition 3 moved on to CS5.5. I was particularly frustrated that the convolution and vocoder effects were removed will these return in CS6? They are particularly useful tools for sound design (which is what I do), especially when creating transitions from one sound to another. I also thought the 'Generate..' effects were a major oversight, though I see a new version of 'generate tones' is to be in CS6, but what about 'Generate Noise'. Is it possible to have a full list of effects in CS6?

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

The convolved reverb is back, but I've seen no signs of a Vocoder (mainly because it isn't there...). Yes, there's a revised tone generator, but noise isn't included. I'm moderately confident that noise is in the backlog, but I have to warn you that like anything that isn't there upon release, it  would look like a new feature if it was added later, and there appear to be one or two problems (think SarBox) about doing that - or there have been in the past with Adobe, anyway. Thing about noise generaters is that there are plenty of free or pretty cheap ones about, and whilst a few people think that they're indispensible, unfortunately a lot of others don't...

As for a full list of effects - well, I'd be the first to admit that the list of new and added effects doesn't look very long, and it's also rather confusing because you have to add it to what's already in CS5.5. If I get a chance tomorrow, I'll try and do a complete list, rather than the way it is. Is what's in the new and added list complete? I honestly don't know until I've been through it!

[Paul_Ferguson]

I'm not qualified, and probably no one is interested, but a useful document would compare the features in Auditions 3, 5.5 and 6.  It could be a sticky in this forum.  If this forum had stickies, I mean. 🙂

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Forum only has FAQ's, and it wouldn't be an easy thing to create a list like that - a lot of the differences are subtle, especially when it comes to suite integration, and some of the subtleties of MV. I think that in general, it's probably wiser to have done what the devs have done, producing a list of what the next version will do, roughly in comparison with the CS5.5 release. That's not so bad to do, because the new one is based very firmly on that, whereas Audition 3 is a somewhat different animal.

I think that what it comes down to is that most people think 'I want x - does the new version do it?' and they want to see it in a list. And also, they'd probably like a list of what isn't in it, just to give them something to complain about...

[Paul_Ferguson]

SteveG(AudioMasters) wrote:

I think that what it comes down to is that most people think 'I want x - does the new version do it?' and they want to see it in a list.

Well, that's how I think, so you might be right.

The reason I was thinking of a chart that compared features in three versions is it would be easy to steer people with questions to it.  Plus, I might actually learn something.

[_durin_]

There's a great feature matrix web page prepared for the launch.  I'll see if I can get permission to post it, or at least its contents, here.  Might be a few days as I'm out of the country right now. 

Also, while Sarbanes-Oxley is the SarBANEs of my existence (see what I did there?) in many ways, Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions may enable us to release features between standard release cycles.  I know the idea of subscription-based software licenses is scary to many, and until I'm much more knowledgeable about the service and how Audition fits in, I don't want to say something incorrect or that I'll regret.  (The internet remembers F O R E V E R.) When I have all the information, we'll talk.

Here's a quick list of the effects present in Au3 that are not yet ported as of CS6:

Generate Noise

DTMF Signals.  (This can be accomplished manually within Generate Tones, to some degree.)

Pitch Bender

Stereo Field Rotate

Stereo Expander

Pan/Expand

Graphic Panner

Binaural Auto-Panner

Convolution

Dynamic EQ

Quick Filter

Scientific Filter

Dynamic Delay

Echo Chamber

Multitap Delay

Envelope Follower

Frequency Band Splitter

Vocoder

[SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Accepted solution]

The other slight snageroo with effects list comparisons is that as of CS6, they aren't really going to be comparisons as such anyway. For instance, even if you say that the Dynamics Processor is present in AA3, 4 and 5, that doesn't tell you that in 5, it has side chain access, does it? You are going to end up with one heck of a lot of footnotes if you're going to do this justice, what with all the changes...

Anyway, I said I'd do a list of the effects in CS6, and having just gone through it, I can see why Durin doesn't want to - it's quite a long list! What I hope it does though is put Durin's list of exclusions into some sort of perspective...

Amplitude and Compression

Amplify

Channel Mixer

De Esser

Dynamics Processing

Hard Limiter

Multiband Compression

Normalize (process)

Single Band Compressor

Speech Volume Leveler

Tube-Modelled Compressor

Fader Envelope (process)

Gain Envelope (process)

Delay and Echo

Analog Delay

Delay

Echo

Diagnostics (yeah, I know... but they're in the Effects list!)

De Clicker (process)

De Clipper (process)

Delete Silence (process)

Mark Audio (process)

Filter and EQ

FFT Filter

Graphic EQ 10 band

Graphic EQ 20 band

Graphic EQ 30 band

Notch Filter

Parametric EQ

Modulation

Chorus

Chorus/Flanger

Flanger

Phaser

Noise Reduction / Restoration

Capture Noise Print

Noise Reduction (process)

______________________

Adaptive Noise Reduction

Automatic Click Remover

Automatic Phase Correction

De Hummer

Hiss Reduction (process)

Reverb

Convolution Reverb

Full Reverb

Reverb

Studio Reverb

Surround Reverb

Special

Distortion

Doppler Shifter (process)

Guitar Suite

Mastering

Vocal Enhancer

Stereo Imagery

Center Channel Extractor

Graphic Phase Shifter

Time and Pitch

Automatic Pitch Correction

Manual Pitch Correction (process)

Stretch and Pitch (process)

Also Generate Tones and Match Volume are in the Effects pulldown menu.

[topmonkey]

Thanks Steve for taking the time to provide the full list of effects, much appreciated.

Obviously existing effects will have been advanced since Audition 3.0 but just comparing the list, I don't think there's enough there to make me want to upgrade. If the convolution effect had been kept then I probably would have.

If fact going through the list of 'Still Using Audition 3' in the CS6 Reveal PDF:

• Improved audio playback engine and cross-platform support. Increased speed, performance,

and quality means increased productivity. Use Adobe Audition on Mac OS or Windows.

- Expected, already use on Windows with few problems.

• Faster, more precise editing. Dozens of new enhancements accelerate your workflow, such as

real-time clip stretching, Automatic Speech Alignment, Automatic and Manual Pitch Correction,

Skip Selection edit preview, View Markers For All Files in the Markers panel, and more.

- New pitch features sound good, though I already use V-Vocal for pitch-correction in Sonar and I would never use Automatic Speech Alignment, unless it worked for vocal harmonies too.

• Dozens of user-requested improvements. CD burning, clip grouping, parameter automation,

multiple clipboards, tone generation, the metronome, and many more favorite features have

been brought back in Adobe Audition CS6.

- A few things have been brought back but not the things we really asked for.

• Roundtrip editing with Adobe Premiere Pro. Ramp up your productivity with fast, efficient

roundtrip editing between Adobe Audition CS6 and Adobe Premiere Pro CS6.

- Not bothered. Can't afford Premiere anyway.

• File exchange with other NLEs and DAWs. As a cross-platform tool with OMF and XML Interchange

compatibility, Adobe Audition can save and import project files to and from NLEs and

other DAWs.

- Possibly useful but I tend to do multitrack work in my DAW and audio editing in Audition.

• Native multichannel support (5.1 surround). Work with multichannel projects, creating entire

surround soundtracks or polishing up 5.1 audio.

- Audition 3 already has 5.1 support.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

topmonkey wrote:

• Faster, more precise editing. Dozens of new enhancements accelerate your workflow, such as

real-time clip stretching, Automatic Speech Alignment, Automatic and Manual Pitch Correction,

Skip Selection edit preview, View Markers For All Files in the Markers panel, and more.

- New pitch features sound good, though I already use V-Vocal for pitch-correction in Sonar and I would never use Automatic Speech Alignment, unless it worked for vocal harmonies too.

Automatic Speech Alignment is a time-based feature designed mainly for use in ADR to compensate for vocal talent who can't lip-sync... it takes an existing speech track and the replacement, and attempts to line up the new words with the old ones. I haven't tried this in anger because I don't do video any more, but it occurred to me that if you want to do vocal overdubs and want to improve the alignment, it might be able to help. Depends entirely on how the detection algorithm works with non-speech.

• Native multichannel support (5.1 surround). Work with multichannel projects, creating entire

surround soundtracks or polishing up 5.1 audio.

- Audition 3 already has 5.1 support.

Not like this it doesn't! Multichannel support extends into plugins (where they support it) and lets you do all sorts of things you couldn't do previously. For instance, I don't do surround stuff (IMHO it's significantly over-rated), but I do have a Soundfield microphone, which produces 4 channels of B-format output that I can 'steer' after the event - more useful than you might think. Previously I had to do this in a very convoluted way outside of Audition, but now I can do it using a plugin within Audition itself - and the result sounds a lot better. It's also the revised routing arrangements that make things like side-chaining possible.

[topmonkey]

It would be interesting to see how Automatic Speech Alignment copes with non-speech - one to try out in the trial version when it arrives.

Totally agree regarding surround stuff - it has never caught on in the consumer market so not of much use to the average joe bloggs editing audio.

One question does come to mind - if I did upgrade to CS6, would my Audition 3 installation remain? So could I go back and use Audition 3 for the convolution, vocoder and noise based effects (if only they had just included them!) with Audition CS6 installed as an upgrade?

[_durin_]

Automatic Speech Alignment is NOT intended for non-speech material, and even then it should not be expected to create miracles.  It does an excellent job, we believe we can continue to improve the algorithm in the future to make it more accurate and allow more flexibility, but this is not intended to be a music-related feature.  You might get some creative or interesting results, and I have, but its value lies in taking two pieces of speech with the same words and a relatively similar timing, and squeeze/stretch the bits to match the ADR take to the original source.

Don't think it's not cool and slick - it absolutely is and will save a LOT of time in ADR workflows.  But it is not yet a one-click solution for every alignment problem.  It is also not useful for simply aligning separate copies of the same recording like Premiere or PluralEyes offers.  The algorithm actively manipulates your recording and is most suited to short passages that are already close, but not quite right.

[topmonkey]

Automatic Speech Alignment sounds like it's no use to anyone in the real world and just an Adobe 'wow' moment for the promo videos, especially with the new clip time stretching functions, it would be much better to use these to manually align dialogue and probably almost as quick. But we'll see...

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

topmonkey wrote:

Automatic Speech Alignment sounds like it's no use to anyone in the real world and just an Adobe 'wow' moment for the promo videos, especially with the new clip time stretching functions, it would be much better to use these to manually align dialogue and probably almost as quick. But we'll see...

I think that the problem here isn't that you couldn't do it manually if you wanted, but that most editors can't be bothered. And I see enough out-of-sync material on the TV to make me think that if there was an easy way to fix this, more editors would do it - it's the fact that it's almost overwhelming us that's the problem - they simply don't have the time to correct anything other than the most blatent stuff.

[topmonkey]

A very valid point. If you have an hour's worth of dialogue to fix, I can see the appeal. But is this waht most people use Audition for? I don't know.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

topmonkey wrote:

But is this waht most people use Audition for? I don't know.

Well, it might well be something that the CS6 purchasers would use, certainly. Standalone users? Not so sure...

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

_durin_ wrote:

Automatic Speech Alignment is NOT intended for non-speech material, and even then it should not be expected to create miracles.  It does an excellent job, we believe we can continue to improve the algorithm in the future to make it more accurate and allow more flexibility, but this is not intended to be a music-related feature.  You might get some creative or interesting results, and I have, but its value lies in taking two pieces of speech with the same words and a relatively similar timing, and squeeze/stretch the bits to match the ADR take to the original source.

Don't think it's not cool and slick - it absolutely is and will save a LOT of time in ADR workflows.  But it is not yet a one-click solution for every alignment problem.  It is also not useful for simply aligning separate copies of the same recording like Premiere or PluralEyes offers.  The algorithm actively manipulates your recording and is most suited to short passages that are already close, but not quite right.

Of course, now you all want to know what it sounds like with music, don't you?

Actually, it's not as bad as I thought it might be.

Here is a before/after example on an untreated vocal: Alignment_example.mp3

First half is the two vocals with only an aligned start. Second half has nothing moved, but the original second vocal has been replaced with the 'corrected' version in exactly the same place.

Okay, you couldn't actually use this, but hey...

[SuiteSpot]

You can safely have all versions of CEP & Audition installed on a PC without them impacting each other.

In fact I have most versions installed for some of the testing I had to do for ses2sesx and trust me when I say how painful it was having to use versions which used to be my 'favourites'.  Who can live without x-fades now and how slow are these old versions even on a killer pc compared to CS5.5?

I'm too am also looking forward to seeing how Automatic Speech Alignment will work with backing vocals - could be a real time saver.

I guess I have to count myself as lucky because there is nothing on the 'missing' list that I care strongly enough to complain about.

YMMV

[Paul_Ferguson]

SteveG(AudioMasters) wrote:

The other slight snageroo with effects list comparisons is that as of CS6, they aren't really going to be comparisons as such anyway. For instance, even if you say that the Dynamics Processor is present in AA3, 4 and 5, that doesn't tell you that in 5, it has side chain access, does it?

That's right, and I didn't know that 5's Dynamic Processor has side chain access!  (I haven't explored 5 as much as I might have because 3, by comparison, was still more useful to me.)  (That's going to change with 6.)

I've gone through the headings in the pdf help, but not seen it - where is it?  Or is it just a matter of routing the tracks to make it work?

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

therealdobro wrote:

That's right, and I didn't know that 5's Dynamic Processor has side chain access!  (I haven't explored 5 as much as I might have because 3, by comparison, was still more useful to me.)  (That's going to change with 6.)

I've gone through the headings in the pdf help, but not seen it - where is it?  Or is it just a matter of routing the tracks to make it work?

Be careful - I said AA 5, not Audition CS5.5... it's not in CS5.5.

[ptauger]

I'm one of those Audition 3.0 users who didn't bother with CS5, specifically because it offered no advantage, and considerable detriment, in the form of missing features.  I've just gotten CS6 and, overall, I'm pretty happy with it.  It's an improvement over 3.0 -- an incremental improvement, but an improvement nonetheless.  That said, some of the effects that were left out I, like others, had come to depend on in 3.0.  Perhaps it would be helpful if we could recommend third-party plug-ins that provide the same functionality?  For me, I've come to depend on Stereo Expander in 3.0.  I found a very strong alternative in Izotope's Ozone 5.  This is a pricey plug-in, but I already had bought a copy for Sonar, which I use for composition.  Ozone 5 works great with CS6 in real-time, offers a range of different stereo effects, unlike 3.0's single effect, and provides excellent control over a variety of parameters.

Now, if someone could suggest a plug-in for Multitap Delay, Dynamic Delay and Echo Chamber (preferably inexpensive).

[kingery12]

So I am now totally confused: The pitch bender effect is demonstrated on Adobe TV, it is in the adobe audition online help files, but it was never put in the program!? What am I missing?

[_durin_]

Pitch Bender returned and was improved with the Audition CC release. It is not part of CS6.

[kingery12]

Interesting. Thanks for the clarification.

[_durin_]

If you saw an Adobe TV video that said Audition CS6 has Pitch Bender included, can you send me the link? I want to make sure there’s no confusion.

Thanks.

[kingery12]

Will do!