Recording - October 2011 - 34

Adobe Audition CS5.5

Limitations Audition does, however, have some limitations—especially if you are used to other DAW software packages. There is no MIDI whatsoever; the MIDI implementation that was part of earlier versions of Audition has been abandoned, and there is no replacement planned. To its credit, Adobe has identified Audition as an audio-focused program, and providing a MIDI implementation (with full editing, soft-synth integration and routing systems) was outside the developers’ focus. The software also has no integrated looping system; the file loop mechanism that was part of Audition 3 has been removed. Given these limitations, a lack of ReWire implementation hurts all the more. It would be great to be able to integrate Ableton Live’s looping playback or Reason’s software synth package via ReWire, but it is just not available. The result is that Audition is a highly capable audio recording and editing system, but not necessarily a DAW in the modern sense. Luckily, interfacing with audio hardware is about as flexible as it gets; you select the audio interface that you want, have complete control over default I/O routing, and have overrides on each of the system channels. Creating Send channels allows your audio to be routed throughout your studio; they can be used for hardware sends, software routing or as sub-mixes of track sets. In fact, the whole mixer environment is beautifully laid out and provides a maximum of functionality without ever seeming crowded. In use I had a couple of different projects to complete during the course of this review; all of them were audio-focused and didn’t require MIDI programming, so Audition fit the bill nicely. The first was recording and mixing some tracks from my modular synth for a sample library project. I set up a basic system with the modular providing a stereo feed into Audition (through my MOTU 828 mk3) and started laying down tracks into the multitrack editor. There was nothing about the recording process that was surprising. Everything worked pretty much as I expected once I figured out the MOTU’s I/O naming conventions and how it matched Audition’s naming conventions. From there, it was as simple as selecting a track for recording and letting it rip. You get a nice tracking display as the recording progresses, and monitoring was provided by a passthrough mechanism available on the track display.
34
RECORDING OCTOBER 2011

Growing pains After recording was completed, I jumped right into editing. Alas, this got a little exciting. Being a newly written application means that there are some growing pains that have to be managed. When I tried my hand at extreme-mouse-jockey editing mode, I got a few crashes during simple timeline editing; and sadly the attempts at session file recovery just stalled. Luckily, all the data was streamed to disk, and it didn’t take long to make a new session with all of the files. The seamless moves between multitrack and clip editing allowed me to quickly chop, scramble and puree my original (and somewhat pedestrian) tracks into a jittering

Another project The next project that I took on was editing a two-track live recording taken from the board of a radio broadcast. This was a trio performance that was going to be released on CD, and I wanted to be able to take the good performance, edit out some of the clams, and produce a great album’s worth of material. Where the first project started as a multitrack session, this started in the file editor, but transitioned into the multitrack as I split up the performance into song-sized chunks. I started with some basic file cleanup and gentle compression, all applied to the entire performance using the file editor. One of the performers was having problems with the output of their laptop introducing occasional clicks, which gave me a chance to use some of the “restoration” tools that come with Audition. I tried the Declicker tool first, but the source material was just too messy to get good detection and repair. So I tried the Spot Healing Brush, which works on the spectral display, and allows you to select a

mess, then adding some effects and mix automation allowed me to bring it back into focus. Since there is no penalty for moving back and forth, I found that I was much more likely to manipulate the clips directly rather than perform less imaginative edits at the multitrack level. The result was something I can’t imagine having made with any other DAW. In order to make this track shine, I used a number of the built-in effects, and took full advantage of the built-in eq. They all were great; some of the effects are on par with the best of their type. I did run into a few problems: effects output levels sometimes were much higher than my settings would have implied (leading to surprising clipping), and after adding eq to all five tracks along with a couple of effects on each track, I was getting sample dropouts from CPU overload. Pre-rendering the effects on the tracks solved the sample dropout issue, but I was surprised at how few processors it took to make my machine whimper.

segment of the frequency range for automatic “healing” by analyzing nearby audio and altering the selection. It worked the first time, reminding me that the Spot Healing Brush is about the closest thing to magic available in audio software! Then I moved the entire performance to the multitrack editor, started breaking it up into sections, and began looking for the wheat among the chaff. Once I’d clipped out the best sections, I put each clip into its own track, added eq to each track, set up the mixer to provide send-based effects and laid a compressor on the output pair. A bit of mix automation let me get smooth, natural sounding transitions between tracks, and in no time I had the mix I wanted without having to stress about destructive edits on the main file. Efficient cleanup Another task where I chose to use Audition was to do cleanup on a few (massive) folders of audio files; these are



Recording - October 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - October 2011

Recording - October 2011
Fade In
Contents
Talkback
Fast Forward
Postcards From The World Of Recording
Grace Design m103
Adobe Audition CS5.5
Radial Engineering Workhorse and 500-Series Modules: JDV-Pre, Shuttle, EXTC, and PhazeQ
Blue Reactor Multi-Pattern Condenser Mic
Great River Electronics / Harrison 32EQ 500-Series Equalizer Module
Millennia Media HV-35 500-Series Mic Preamp
Telefunken Elektroakustik AK-47 MkII Tube Condenser Mic
Pulse Techniques EQP-1A3
Audix CX212B Multi-Pattern Condenser Mic
A-Designs HM2 Compressor “The Nail”
It’s Your Music—Know Your Rights. Chapter 19: Album Release Checklist
Electro-Voice RE320 Dynamic Mic
Alesis iO Dock
Putting Together The Pieces
Reviewed & Revisited: Fable Sounds Broadway Big Band Kontakt Edition and Broadway Lites
Readers’ Tapes
Advertiser Index
Fade Out
Recording - October 2011 - Recording - October 2011
Recording - October 2011 - Cover2
Recording - October 2011 - 1
Recording - October 2011 - Fade In
Recording - October 2011 - 3
Recording - October 2011 - Contents
Recording - October 2011 - 5
Recording - October 2011 - Talkback
Recording - October 2011 - 7
Recording - October 2011 - Fast Forward
Recording - October 2011 - 9
Recording - October 2011 - 10
Recording - October 2011 - 11
Recording - October 2011 - Postcards From The World Of Recording
Recording - October 2011 - 13
Recording - October 2011 - 14
Recording - October 2011 - 15
Recording - October 2011 - 16
Recording - October 2011 - 17
Recording - October 2011 - 18
Recording - October 2011 - 19
Recording - October 2011 - 20
Recording - October 2011 - 21
Recording - October 2011 - 22
Recording - October 2011 - 23
Recording - October 2011 - 24
Recording - October 2011 - 25
Recording - October 2011 - Grace Design m103
Recording - October 2011 - 27
Recording - October 2011 - 28
Recording - October 2011 - 29
Recording - October 2011 - Adobe Audition CS5.5
Recording - October 2011 - 31
Recording - October 2011 - 32
Recording - October 2011 - 33
Recording - October 2011 - 34
Recording - October 2011 - 35
Recording - October 2011 - 36
Recording - October 2011 - 37
Recording - October 2011 - Radial Engineering Workhorse and 500-Series Modules: JDV-Pre, Shuttle, EXTC, and PhazeQ
Recording - October 2011 - 39
Recording - October 2011 - 40
Recording - October 2011 - 41
Recording - October 2011 - 42
Recording - October 2011 - 43
Recording - October 2011 - 44
Recording - October 2011 - 45
Recording - October 2011 - Blue Reactor Multi-Pattern Condenser Mic
Recording - October 2011 - 47
Recording - October 2011 - Great River Electronics / Harrison 32EQ 500-Series Equalizer Module
Recording - October 2011 - 49
Recording - October 2011 - 50
Recording - October 2011 - 51
Recording - October 2011 - Millennia Media HV-35 500-Series Mic Preamp
Recording - October 2011 - 53
Recording - October 2011 - Telefunken Elektroakustik AK-47 MkII Tube Condenser Mic
Recording - October 2011 - 55
Recording - October 2011 - Pulse Techniques EQP-1A3
Recording - October 2011 - 57
Recording - October 2011 - Audix CX212B Multi-Pattern Condenser Mic
Recording - October 2011 - 59
Recording - October 2011 - A-Designs HM2 Compressor “The Nail”
Recording - October 2011 - 61
Recording - October 2011 - It’s Your Music—Know Your Rights. Chapter 19: Album Release Checklist
Recording - October 2011 - 63
Recording - October 2011 - 64
Recording - October 2011 - 65
Recording - October 2011 - Electro-Voice RE320 Dynamic Mic
Recording - October 2011 - 67
Recording - October 2011 - 68
Recording - October 2011 - 69
Recording - October 2011 - 70
Recording - October 2011 - 71
Recording - October 2011 - 72
Recording - October 2011 - 73
Recording - October 2011 - Alesis iO Dock
Recording - October 2011 - 75
Recording - October 2011 - Putting Together The Pieces
Recording - October 2011 - 77
Recording - October 2011 - Reviewed & Revisited: Fable Sounds Broadway Big Band Kontakt Edition and Broadway Lites
Recording - October 2011 - 79
Recording - October 2011 - Readers’ Tapes
Recording - October 2011 - Advertiser Index
Recording - October 2011 - 82
Recording - October 2011 - 83
Recording - October 2011 - 84
Recording - October 2011 - 85
Recording - October 2011 - 86
Recording - October 2011 - 87
Recording - October 2011 - Fade Out
Recording - October 2011 - Cover3
Recording - October 2011 - Cover4
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