Hart's Dynamic Media Blog

As you might expect, there's been a ton written about the Production Premium CS4 releases over the last few days. I've attempted a quick roundup of some of the ones that have come across my desk, although I fear I'm already a days behind in the roundup!

• Elsa Wenzel from CNET on Product Premium CS4 (Elsa also posted first looks of a lot of the other products and suites.)
  
• ZDNet
  
• Jonny Evans at Macworld UK
  
• Oliver Peters at DV Magazine
  
• POST Magazine
  
• Jan Ozer and Franklin McMahon on CS4
  
• Oliver Peters from Videography
  
• Videomaker on Production Premium CS4
  
• Jim Darymple from Macworld on Premiere Pro CS4
  
• Simon Yuen from Zoom in Online on Premiere Pro CS4
  
• Trish and Chris Meyer on After Effects CS4
  
• Flash Magazine on Flash CS4
  
• Creativepro.com on Flash CS4
  
• EMediaLive on Encore CS4
  
• Robert Barnett at PC-Review Online on CS4
  
• David Roth Weiss from Creative Cow on his take on CS4 as an editor

  Posted by Hart Shafer at 4:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you wanted to check out the CS4 launch webcast on Tuesday morning but missed it you now have a second chance: the whole stream has been posted to Adobe TV. Enjoy!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's always hard to believe when a launch finally comes, but it's here! This morning we unveiled the whole CS4 lineup in our webcast and all the juicy details have been posted. There's a lot out there so I thought I'd point all of you information-hungry folks to the places you can learn more.

First, check out the official products sites. You can start on the main Production Premium site to read about the suite features, and there are links there to all the individual components. There's also features list for the suite, and below I've got links to the main pages and feature lists for all the point products as well.

You should also check out Adobe TV, our (relatively) new video site that's now been filled with CS4 videos. Start with the video professionals page, which includes feature tours of the suite, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Flash, Photoshop, Soundbooth, and the rest of the gang.

And remember, the new feature overviews are just the highlights. There are hundreds of details throughout the suite that don't get mentioned in the high-level overviews. Dig in and enjoy!

• Production Premium CS4
  
• After Effects CS4
  
• Photoshop CS4
  
• Flash CS4
  
• Illustrator CS4
  
• Soundbooth CS4
  
• OnLocation CS4
  
• Encore CS4

  Posted by Hart Shafer at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I can't say anything specific, but here's a heads up for those of you who don't visit the Adobe.com main page often: we'll be announcing CS4 via webcast on September 23rd. Sign up now for your invitation!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been living, breathing, thinking, and dreaming audio software for just over 10 years. Starting with Syntrillium in 1997, to Adobe with the team in 2003, and through the release of Audition 3 last November, it's been my pleasure to work with some of the most brilliant minds I know to bring what (I hope) are some of the best audio tools in the world to you all. It's been a ton of fun, and while audio (and music in particular) will continue to be my first love and passion, it's time for me to move on and try something new. Ten years is a long time for anything, even the best job in the world.

So what now? Well, I'm not going too far--I've been asked to take on the enviable role of product manager for Production Premium. Now my mission is to broaden my view of the world and try to keep an eye on the whole video and interactive workflow--from planning to playback, from the web to HD, from mobile to movies. I'm thrilled by the chance to stretch into something new but still stay close (and in touch) with the audio team and products I love.

And the audio team couldn't be in better hands. I'm thrilled to say we found someone who's a perfect fit for the audio product management position: Lawson Hancock. Not only does Lawson have lots of software product management experience, but he's also a musician who left Macromedia several years ago to finish his album. But I'll let him introduce himself--Lawson has just started up a new audio team blog where he and the rest of the team will keep you all up to date on the world of audio at Adobe. Make sure to stop by and bookmark or subscribe to the new blog! And this blog? Well, I intend to keep it going with a spread focus on all sorts of Dynamic Media topics.

Finally, I just want to thank all of you, our users. The last ten years have been a thrill and it's entirely because of your enthusiasm and passion for our tools and how it they fit into your own work. The shouts of joy when I show a new version--and the honest calling out when we fall short--have kept me engaged and excited like nothing else, and I look forward to seeing what you, and the audio team, create next.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 4:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Happy New Year to everyone! I know it's been pretty quiet on the blog front lately. Who knew that things would stay so busy after we shipped Audition?

In any case, as with most everyone the New Year is a time for me to reflect on the previous twelve months and look forward to the next twelve. For the audio team 2007 was definitely a great, if exhausting, year. It was a real thrill to bring a brand new product to market with Soundbooth, and equally fun to ship what we think is a killer new version of Audition just a few months later. One of my personal measures of job satisfaction comes from seeing an ever-increasing number of people use and enjoy products I worked to create. Having two audio products in the stable for different kinds of folks means that we're touching more people than ever before, and the strong uptake of Audition 3 by old and new customers alike has been a real thrill.

Looking forward, I always try to predict what the year will bring and I'm almost always wrong on more than half of it! We've got some cool things planned and I'll look forward to sharing more when I can... In the meantime, I've been remiss in linking to some of the articles that you might find interesting. Today, I've got three reviews of Audition 3:

• George Peterson from Mix Magazine
  
• Bob Nicholl from Designer Today
  
• Gary Eskow from Digital Content Producer
  

I think Bob's review is particularly interesting because he sees Audition through new eyes as a general designer. Also, Gary's review comes from the perspective of a video pro and so he talks more about the relationship between Soundbooth and Audition and why Adobe "bothers" to have two audio products.

I hope you all have a wonderful, prosperous, and great sounding New Year!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We're pleased to announce that Adobe Audition 3 is now shipping. We really think this is a killer release with something (or many somethings) for everyone, from old hands to newcomers alike. The information about the release is up at the main Audition page or you can go directly to the “what's new” page. We also have the trial version posted. It's fully functional for 30 days so you can dig into the product and really see for yourself whether it's what you need.

Now if you'll excuse me, there's a party this afternoon I need to get ready for! :)

Posted by Hart Shafer at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I'm back in the office this morning and just trying to dig back out--it'll take a while. But right there at the top of my email queue was a note that George Petersen over at Mix has posted his take on the beta of Audition 3 that we sent over to him a while back. Enjoy!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

It's been especially hard to keep my mouth shut about this one lately, but I'm thrilled to report that we announced Adobe Audition 3 this morning. The team is especially proud of this release, not just because of overcoming the challenge of producing it at the same time as Soundbooth, but mainly because it adds both brand new exciting capabilities and polishes existing workflows. Take a look at the new features summary, or the more thorough What's New PDF, to see what we've added--we think there's something for everyone.

Some of the highlights include:

• MIDI recording and editing in a piano roll sequencer
  
• VSTi support
  
• Spectral frequency selection paintbrush
  
• Spectral frequency healing brush
  
• Marque editing in the spectral pan and phase displays
  
• Multitrack auto-crossfades and fade handles on every clip
  
• Grouped-clip editing in the multitrack view
  
• New effects including Convolution Reverb, Analog Delay, a new Mastering tool, and a Guitar Suite
  
• Time stretching using the Radius engine from iZotope
  
• A dedicated top/tail view in the edit view for tuning the start and end of a file
  
• On-clip controls for volume and fades in the edit view
  
• New Adaptive Noise Reduction and Phase Correction tools
  
• Improved performance with N-core support in the mixing engine

More personally, this rounds out quite a year for me and for the whole audio team. It's been an exhausting, challenging, exhilarating ride trying to bring a new take on audio to the world at the same time we were advancing a well-loved product to the next level. I couldn't be more proud of the team and, while there are always things we wished we could have done better, and others we wish we had done more or less of, on the whole I hope you'll agree that this is a bang-up release for our audio workhorse and a huge step forward for Adobe in audio. Now I'm going to take my fatigue, my wife, and myself on a vacation so don't be surprised if this spot is dark for a little while. :) More news when I return!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)

The first impressions and semi-reviews for Production Premium are really starting to flow. First we have a two-part look at Production Premium specifically focused on motion graphics and interactive professionals by Kevin Schmitt on Digital Producer. Kevin starts with:

I was somewhat skeptical about what the forthcoming Adobe CS3 Production Premium bundle would offer outside of Flash and After Effects; after all, I have precisely zero skills when it comes to the "front end" of production (shooting, capture, editing, etc.).

All in all, I'm pleasantly surprised at the amount of usefulness I've gotten out of Soundbooth even in its beta form, which is high praise coming from someone who tends to avoid audio at all costs.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

EventDV.net has posted an article on 12 products to watch post-NAB, and Adobe Production Premium is there at the top of the list! Not much new content, but it is a nice one-paragraph summary of Production Premium with an event focus as part of their listing.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 5:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I think I received about 3x the number of questions about Adobe Media Player than anything else I talked about in my NAB post, so instead of trying to re-hash the press release, I've concentrated on gathering some links to the news that came from our preview.

• Reuters
  
• USA Today
  
• Forbes
  
• Digital Media Net (includes an FAQ and screenshot)
  
• Infoworld
  
• MacNN
  
• ZDNet
  
• CNET
  
• eWeek
  

Hopefully browsing through these links will give you a better idea of what Adobe Media Player is all about than me trying to explain it for a few paragraphs.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Jim Guerard, our VP of product management for Dynamic Media (Flash, audio, video, Adobe Media Player, and more) at Adobe joined Cynthia Wisehart as a guest blogger on Digital Content Producer. Jim doesn't keep his own blog (something about already having too many irons in the fire--we'll let him off the hook this time) so it's fun to see him posting and talking directly about what we've been up to. It's worth a read for the high-level take on where Dynamic Media at Adobe is coming from and where it's going. A quick quote:

From a distribution standpoint you can ‘create once’ in this extensive, cross platform environment–editing, digital audio, motion graphcs, etc. and then take it to film–as Rob Legato and Ron Ames do for Scorsese, or Stu does at The Orphanage–or take it to broadcast as the BBC will be doing, or to disc, blu-ray, and of course Flash.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 5:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm back and just starting to dig out from under the backlog from last week. It was positively the busiest and most fun NAB I've ever had. For those of you who missed out on the fun we've posted a few on-demand video webcasts. The first two videos are from our Monday night event and show a demo of the CS3 apps as well as a preview of the new Adobe Media Player. The other videos are interviews with some of the Dynamic Media staff straight off the show floor talking about some of our announcements.

The Adobe Media Player was the great surprise of the show for many people. We had announced this project (codename Philo) back at the MAX conference last October and it had kind of flown under the radar. Or, for folks (like me) who saw it just greeted it with a "huh." and moved on. But with the preview the excitement from the content creators in the audience was palpable on the show floor as they saw what this could mean for them. I was watching the demos with the rest of the audience and was personally excited that I might have an easy way to put my TV shows on my laptop for travel some time soon. :)

My other observation of the show that I wanted to point to was already written about by Steve here. The number of podcasters, vloggers, bloggers, and other "new media" types covering the show was boggling. I"m not sure if it means a virtualization of trade shows, but it sure does make a lot easier to keep up on what happened even if you didn't attend. On that note, there's been a ton written about Adobe at NAB and I'll try to link to some of it soon.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you're going to be joining 100,000+ of your closest friends at NAB in Vegas next week, make sure to stop by Adobe's booth (SL3220, where we were last year) to check out all the newness. We'll have our theater showing demos all day, and 12 demo stations where you can see the new versions up close and ask all your burning questions. Plus, we'll have a some things to talk about besides the CS3 releases (gasp, what could they be! How exciting!)

I'll be around all week and working the Audition/Soundbooth demo station for parts of Wednesday and Thursday. Make sure to stop by the booth and say hi if you can!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Normally I try to round up some coverage and blog posts about our announcements for your easy reading, but to be honest I've been overwhelmed and not been keeping up. You could throw a virtual rock in any direction online and hit some mention. I did see three summaries of Production Premium, though, that you might find worth checking out:

• Digital Production Buzz
  
• CNET
  
• Studio Daily
  
• Designorati

  This morning I also saw another Soundbooth overview at Digit Online.

  Finally, as a reminder, you can get the official scoop on Soundbooth here.

  Posted by Hart Shafer at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As in, the cat is officially out of the bag. This morning at 12:01 Eastern time we officially announced Creative Suite 3 and posted all the details for everyone's examination, and then this afternoon we webcast the official gala launch event. Thirteen individual products, six suites, and a bunch of other technologies all designed to work together. As you can imagine we're pretty excited, if a bit tired. :)

The facts for Soundbooth are pretty well known since it's been out on the labs site (and will be until we finish--in fact, we have another beta update coming in a few weeks) but there's some new details up on the official site. And if you want to hear more straight from the horses' mouths, Tim Wilson from Creative Cow has podcast interviews with Steve Kilisky (After Effects), Giles Baker (Premiere Pro), Mark Randall (former CEO of Serious Magic and current Dynamic Media chief strategist), and me posted. But I'm not sure how my colleagues feel about being called horses.

Finally, Audition is not part of this launch because it's on a different schedule from the suite products. We're working on the next version and will have more to say about it later this year.

Now, I'd encourage you to go poke around the Creative Suite site to get a flavor for what we'll be shipping as soon as we can finish!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

One of my Google News alerts pointed me to this article on CBC.ca that says that the growth in podcasting has been a lot slower that many were anticipating. When poled, 13% of Americans have downloaded a podcast "ever" up from 11% last year. Considering the initial explosive growth of podcast listening in the past couple of years, with estimates as high as 25% of Americans listening, this seems like pretty anemic growth. Have we already reached the point where everyone who's interested has started downloading, or are we just in the lull before mass adoption?

There's an idea outlined in a book called Crossing the Chasm that says there's a difficult point in any product's adoption where early adopters are happily using whatever it is but use hasn't made the "leap" to the early majority yet. Countless products have gotten enthusiastic, even rapturous, receptions from the early adopters and bleeding edge technologists and then totally failed to capture a significant share of the majority of consumers. Think Tivo: no one I know who has lived with Tivo or another DVR says they could ever go back, and yet Tivo has yet to breach into truly widespread adoption.

So, the real question is whether podcasting is going to "cross the chasm" and start getting into 20, 30, or even 50% adoption. And of course, does it matter? One of the great things about the Internet is the ability for groups of people to thrive in "micro niches" that wouldn't possibly be big enough to support a local store, activity club, or music scene but the wide access on the Internet makes it possible. Can podcasting still be revolutionary if only 15% of people ever listen? And is requiring a revolution too heavy a burden? Is it enough for a new technology to be merely interesting?

Posted by Hart Shafer at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Lots of you have probably already seen this, but next week Adobe will be hosting a webcast of the official Adobe Creative Suite 3 launch. This is the first time (that I know of, at least) that we've done a public broadcast of any launch like this so it's everyone's opportunity to hear the big news all at the same time. If you're able, make sure to tune in to hear what all the teams have been up to--I guarantee exciting new stuff!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I've clearly been a bit remiss in my blogging lately, as work's had me on the road and last week I was felled by the plague. Ok, a cold. But it was a bad one.

Probably the most interesting story in the last month was in regards to piano player named Joyce Hatto who had several albums revealed to be frauds. And by frauds, I mean several of her recordings were commercially available from other performers and simply EQed or sped up a bit to make them sound a little different! Apparently Joyce had several albums of her own but her husband, in a misguided attempt to celebrate her, decided that her discography needed some augmenting. Andrew Rose, a long-time Audition user back to the Cool Edit days, has a great summary of the whole story on his website. We came across the story because Audition was used to do the analysis to confirm the hoax.

Otherwise, we have Crunchgear.com, which has a little how-to on creating a music demo on the cheap. And of course a there has been a ton of coverage on both Soundbooth and our Mac announcement for Production Studio. It's been a lot of fun being out and engaged with our Mac customers now that they know we're coming back. Folks are taking a long, hard look at what Production Studio can do on Windows and starting to think about how it might fit into their work. The experience has been really gratifying and a whole lot of fun.

Finally, here's a sampling of some of the articles and postings I've seen lately for your reading pleasure.

• Broadcast Newsroom
  
• Mac Audio Pro
  
• dvguru.com
  
• sys-con
  
• Mac User
  
• MacNN
  
• Movable Beast
  

Posted by Hart Shafer at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's been a good day for the awards (or, rather, for me finding out about the awards). First, I just learned that the February 2007 issue of Videomaker Magazine picked Audition for Best Audio Editing Software and Encore DVD for Best DVD Authoring Software!

Also, digitalcontentproducer.com, which is the joint web site for Video Systems and Millimeter magazines, has awarded both Adobe Production Studio and DV Rack with their Vanguard 2006 award. In their own words, "The Vanguard Awards honor groundbreaking yet practical products that were introduced in calendar year 2006."

(By the way, I haven't mentioned it before but for those of you who shoot a lot of video, you owe it to yourselves to check out DV Rack. It allows you to capture direct to disc in the field, complete with scopes and other great shot-management tools. It is one of the great tools Adobe acquired with Serious Magic last October.)

Posted by Hart Shafer at 1:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well, Macworld was a blast--Premiere Pro and Photoshop both won best of show! It was a lot of fun to be at the show with our Mac plans out in the public. Every time we showed the Production Studio running on a Mac we had a crowd that was standing room only, back to the back wall, and the response was overwhelming. We also had a great time showing Soundbooth on one of the demo stations all day. We got some great feedback and some even better suggestions. Good times!

Other than that, it was fun to be there for the iPhone madness--with the way people crushed in on it with cameras flashing while it was rotating under glass it was like the Louvre unveiled a new Van Gough. I'm interested to get my hands on it sometime. I do a lot of email from my Treo, so I'm suspicious of the on-screen keyboard, but the iPod features sure looked compelling. It's probably just as well... I doubt the $500 or $600 would fly past my better half. :) As for the actual video-related Apple announcement, I think iTV would be a whole lot more compelling to me if it recorded something. I'm still just not interested in buying 320x240 video. If it were a bit higher rez and had some sort of "rental" model for the movies and I'd probably be hooked. Still, it's yet another sign of the wave: broadcast is on its way down and just about all other video delivery is on its way up.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A very happy new year to you all. As cliched as it seems, last night as I was checking in on my email, getting together a few things, and generally getting ready to come back from a nice holiday, I was thinking about everything that this year would bring and I couldn't help but get excited by what a great year it's going to be here at Adobe. So much in the wings, and so much to do to make it all happen. It's thrilling.

But--first thing's first. This week I'm diving back into getting ready for Macworld. This will be my first real trip to Macworld. Last year I happened to be in San Francisco on other business and simply stopped by for a few minutes, but this is the first year I'll be attending the whole show. If you are planning on attending, make sure to stop by the Adobe booth to check out the demos of Soundbooth. We'll have a demo station for it, as well as ones for the Lightroom and Photoshop CS3 betas, and some great theater presentations of other Adobe magic (wooOOoo).

Posted by Hart Shafer at 9:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Congratulations to Phil, as he was randomly selected from all the comments to win the T-Shirt! If for some reason he is unable to fulfill his duties as T-Shirt-winner, I'll randomly select someone else to take his place.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A while back I decided that I wanted to make my 100th post into some sort of prize, like the book I gave away a few months ago. Well, my 100th post came and went without me realizing it but I still have this super-cool Audition team T-shirt that I’ve been saving for the occasion so I thought I’d give it away anyway.

Sorry for the horrible picture…the only camera I had handy was an iSight, and I couldn’t get the lighting to work. It’s hard to tell from the picture, but it's quite a cool shirt--I think it was the most popular one we’ve ever made for the team.

To win this lovely piece of design work just leave a comment on this post and describe your favorite thing about Audition in 50 words or less. Make sure to include your email address in that field so I can contact you. I’ll pick one comment at random at the end of this week and then mail the T-shirt out shortly thereafter. Good luck!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

We all got back from the Podcast Expo on Saturday night, exhausted but energized at the same time. Doing any trade show is always a somewhat harrowing experience, and there’s nothing like talking for a couple days straight to wear you out. But it was great to meet everyone who came by our booth to talk about podcasting. The actual work of getting things put together for a podcast almost exactly mirrors the broadcast workflow, but the people doing it are largely fresh to the whole experience so they’re a lot of fun to talk to because you can see their excitement. Coming face-to-face with such raw enthusiasm for their ability to get their message out was energizing.

As for the subject of this post, several of us had a chuckle when we looked around on Saturday morning before the show opened and realized just how much of the exhibit hall was decked out in friendly, pastel shades of blue and green. Both of the top sponsors, PodcastReady and Podango, had their logos in blue and green (as seen on this sponsor list here) and it seemed like half the signs in the hall had similar shades too. Then I came home and read that this is a meme that’s been picked up before. My guess? It’s like bubble letters in the 70s, which I’m sure seemed like a good idea at the time (briefly), although to be fair the blue/green thing is considerably less hideous.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm happy to announce that Audition has won the Podcast and Portable Media Expo Best of Show award for PC Audio Editing Software for the second year in a row!

As I mentioned earlier, if you're in the area stop by and say hi. The show floor has been packed all day, and it's a lot of fun talking to a very different crowd then I see at most of the trade shows I go to, like NAMM, NAB, and AES. If this show is any indication, podcasting is really hitting its stride as an industry in itself.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 3:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Later this week I'll be heading down to the Podcast and Portable Media Expo which is being held this Friday and Saturday, the 29th and 30th, in Ontario, California. This is the expo's second year and I'll be down there with some of the Audition gang to show folks how Audition can be a great application for recording and editing your podcasts. Come on down if you're in the area (details are here), and if you do come the make sure to stop by booth #411 to say hi while you're there!

Also, just a reminder that we posted a short PDF on why Audition is great for podcasting on the Audition product page.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, this is a bit outside my normal topics, but a friend just sent me this link to a YouTube video of a Four-Year-Old drummer who is surprisingly good. My friend used the term "prodigy" and I'm not sure I'd argue that one. I've seen a few bands over the years that could have certainly used his talents!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 6:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here's a random one for a Wednesday morning. An artist named Martin Wattenberg has put together a method of showing the repetition in a song. You feed his algorithm a MIDI file and it will produce a graphic that looks like this:

Madonna's Like a Prayer

Not particularly useful, per se, but I found the shapes and images to be fascinating. More information about how the algorithm works can be found here and the tool itself is in java here. The link to the tool also includes a bunch of the MIDI files he's used so you can see the results on a wide range of songs.

Found via Music Thing

Posted by Hart Shafer at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The wave continues! I missed that Electronic Musician included a review by Allan Metts in its August issue. It doesn't look like the review is posted online, but Audition scores a 4/5 and Allan comments that "Adobe Audition has evolved into a powerful platform for multitrack recording, mixing and mastering" and concludes with, “If you need a solid program for multitrack recording and editing, with loads of built-in effects and lots of royalty-free content, then Audition is hard to beat.”

Posted by Hart Shafer at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Often there’s a second wave of reviews about 6 months after a product is released, and we’re clearly in the midst of that! Here’s another one for Audition 2, this time from more of a video perspective, posted on iofilm.co.uk.

Audition 2.0 is a great move forward on the previous version, particularly in its new look and feel. It is more than up to the task for most film and video projects and greater integration with Premiere Pro 2.0 and After Effects 7.0 can only make life easier.

The reviewer doesn’t go into as much depth on the individual features as some do, but he does spend some time discussing the mixing and automation in some depth and also provides a nice overview and his impressions across the board for the new features.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There's a PDF copy of a new review of Audition 2 up atPerforming Songwriter magazine. One of the cool things about this one is that the editor specifically chose one of his staff that didn't have any experience with Audition before so the reviewer, Dave Jones, comes in without any preconceived notions and comes out impressed. He concludes with:

Finally, a digital audio production studio that delivers all that it claims. Adobe Audition can handle all of your audio work from conception to mastering.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I was younger I read a lot of fiction and science fiction, and a fair amount of it was of the alternate history genre. How would the world have been different if this or that relatively small battle or other event had gone another way? The software equivalent happens a lot, although it’s generally more about things like what Xerox could have done with various things out of PARC (like the graphical user interface) then alternative endings to world wars.

We might have a new one to add to the list, now. I read this article on Ars Technica that indicates that Apple and Creative were initially going to work on an mp3 player together, and Creative decided not to go with the partnership. The iZen? How would that have changed the tech landscape? Considering how many people now refer to Apple as “the iPod company” (and that revenue from iPod and iTunes exceeded revenue from software and computers for the first time earlier this year) it’s safe to say that the impact would have at least been huge for them—and considering market share for iPod vs. Zen at this stage I’d have to guess it wouldn’t have been positive. Or could Apple have applied its firm aesthetic sense to mp3 players coming out of Creative? That seems unlikely.

I’ve heard lots of different opinions about mp3 players, from how “they’re great for keeping up on lots of different music” to “mp3s are killing appreciation for quality” to “all those headphones are isolating everyone, creating zombies.” I can see all those angles, but with the number of hours I spend on airplanes I know I simply couldn’t imagine not having my hundreds of albums in my bag. My serious listening still happens at home, but that CD book I used to carry back and forth with me to college weighed enough to hurt my back.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 4:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Our own Adobe Design Center has posted a great essay by Tina Blaine, a member of the Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center faculty, titled New Music for the Masses. In the essay Tina explores some of the new trends in music-oriented video games, toys, and how they’re leading to some of the other new interfaces for music creation. Some examples are things like Elektroplankton for the Nintendo DS, which can be described as much more of a “music toy” than a game, and the Playstation 2 game Guitar Hero, where players wield plastic electric guitars in order to simulate wailing guitar licks and move your way up from playing in local basements to selling out stadiums to a worldwide rock tour.

(On a personal note, I had the opportunity to play Guitar Hero at a friends’ house while on a trip a while back and it was wicked fun. I started the game just kind of going through the motions and by the end I had to restrain myself from kicking over the TV like an amp stack or smashing the plastic toy guitar to pieces like the legends of old. Good times.)

The essay goes on to discuss more technology that offers unique inputs to music, like the MIDI-driving exoskeleton I blogged about in January and some super-cool conceptual interfaces where moving physical objects around on a board influence the total mix or instruments used in a composition. The technology is a long way from being mainstream (and perhaps never will be) but looking both forward at this stream of high-tech gizmos for music as well as at the current technology being used for music-related games I can’t help but feel like we’re on the threshold of someone putting together a few new key elements to create another breakthrough. Technology has always influenced music production, from creating better drums with stone tools, to violins with precision steel tools, to guitars and amp stacks with electricity, and on up the chain. Are Wacom-type tablets the next step? Or cameras that pick up a performer’s movements and convert them to music? Are we primed for the next technology-enabled jump in musical style/influence/instrument/production/sound?

Posted by Hart Shafer at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I checked my email this morning only to discover that I had more than 570 new comments. Of course, they all looked like spam so I unceremoniously deleted them all. If you commented over the last couple days and your comment hasn't appeared please re-post it--it got caught up in the flood.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A few more great reviews have come across my desk in the last couple weeks, including:

• Justin Kaiser at Radio Magazine
• A short spot by Diana Forbes, a.k.a. gadget Grrl at CBS4 Boston (Under Windows software and more)
• Franklin McMahon at Digital Content Producer (which is a joint web site from Video Systems and Millimeter magazines)

I'm especially happy to see more reviews appearing in the radio-related sources so our large contingent of broadcast folks can see how version 2 is behaving in the field. The music pubs can talk about creative control (which is important) but only the radio magazines know what it's like to try to put together 17 spots. Today. Before 3. :)

Posted by Hart Shafer at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A heads up for those of you who get Radio and Production magazine: the latest issue (May) includes a nice review of Audition 2.0. They don’t put the whole review online but there’s a teaser for it on their site.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 4:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A useless picture for a Friday afternoon:

Clearly my travels have kept me away from my reading, and I didn't even think of anything until a coworker came in and started laughing about it. I better get cracking or it's going to be a big enough earthquake hazard for the facilities folks to get on my case.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A while back I saw this article on how Google was going to be moving into selling radio advertising in much the way that they sell online text-based ads through their various programs. You know the ones I'm talking about--they show up not only on searches on google.com, but they appear on just about every blog, homepage, and forum on the internet.

The reason they are so popular is that they are the easiest way to start making money from your content online. Just sign up with Google, put a little block of code on your page, and watch the checks start to arrive. The ads are context sensitive so they always match what you're talking about on the web page so they seem more relevant. The site owner is happy because they're making money from Google. Google's happy making money from the advertiser. And the advertiser is happy because they are getting site visitors and paying per click instead of per impression, so it's easy to see the return on investment. (Setting aside the fears of click fraud for now).

Anyway, so I totally forgot about Google's move into radio until I was at NAB wandering around the audio hall, and BAM!, there was a Google sign. I was taken aback for a second trying to figure out why they were there, and then I saw the sign was really for "dMarc by Google." dMarc specializes in all aspects of radio advertising and also has Scott Studios and Maestro radio automation systems. Google's angle as far as I can tell is that stations using these systems can tag slots for advertising that they're willing to take directly from Google. Then, if there's an advertisement that will fit, some other material (say, a station promo) can be preempted for paid material automatically.

This is where the fascinating bit comes in. There is a core tension for a station--they won't get as much for an ad through Google than they will working with an advertiser directly since there's another party involved, but they want to fill as many of their open slots with paid advertising as possible and if the slot wasn't going to be paid for anyway...

The documentation I picked up from Google at NAB talks about how there is "no cannibalizing" and "no sacrificing of margins" because they maintain "complete station anonymity" and "rate card confidentiality" so that "advertisers never know what station their buying, on the market and overall listener demographic." Hey, that sounds great. Almost like free money!

But now the interesting part... if I'm Coke do I really care which station my ad runs on if I know I'm hitting 18-24 year olds in Detroit? Or 24-40 year olds in Dallas? At that point, what does going directly to the stations get me other than a lot more work? It seems to me I don't, which would mean that Google could have as large an impact on radio advertising as they've had on internet advertising. It only takes one station in a market that's having a hard time filling its advertising slots to start the trend and they could end up with major advertisers they may not have secured otherwise.

Of course, I'm a long way from business management in radio and this is basically public stream of consciousness so I have little doubt I'm missing something here! Drop a comment and let me know if this is happening in your area, or if your station has tried working with this system and how it's gone. Or maybe whether you'll do this kind of ad buy only over your dead body. I'm fascinated by the Google model so I'm curious to see how it plays out in another arena. Thoughts?

Posted by Hart Shafer at 5:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The awards and honors for Adobe Production Studio keep rolling on in from the NAB show last month. It has pulled in:

• The NAB AIM award (chosen by NAB attendies via ballot)
  
• Best of Show from Digital Content Producer
  
• 2006 Viddy Award from Videography magazine/CMP Media
  

Rock and roll!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 5:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, I almost feel recovered from NAB. It was a week that was as outstanding as it was exhausting--the Adobe booth was packed until just before the end of the show (when the whole floor was empty as all the folks attending tried to beat the rush to the airport) and the overall response was overwhelming. This is the first time I've experienced launching a product before a big trade show and in a way it was pretty liberating. Normally, we're working up until the last minute polishing what we're going to show and trying to make sure that the whole thing stays secret. Then, when we start talking we have a big rush of folks trying to see what we announced and we have the big job of showing what we've done (and convincing everyone what we did matters).

This time, the word had already been out for three months and we have plenty of people out there who have already gotten their hands on the products, or at least read all the reviews and commentary. So instead of us having to stand up on stage (or at demo stations) and spend all our energy just letting people know what the top 10 features were, we spent the whole week talking about the whole solution and what it would mean to everyone's work. People were there to see it in action before making their final decisions and came with their well thought-out questions around their own work. They didn't need to be convinced--they had already read the reviews--they just needed to kick the tires. It was a blast.

Outside the Adobe booth there was plenty of cool stuff to see. The talk of the show for the video guys was the Red digital cinema camera. They had it cloaked in a big (red) tent and just let a few people in at a time to see it (and I was told they didn't actually have a camera in there after all that). Still, the promise of interchangeable parts and relatively accessible pricing for such high resolution footage could be pretty revolutionary. If it ever ships--I'm always a little skeptical of "real soon now" products. On the plus side it was designed by Oakley so it looks like something the Terminator would carry.

Unfortunately, I snapped a lot of cool stuff using my Treo as a sort of visual notepad so I could relate them here, but I had to reset it over the weekend (for unrelated reasons) and I lost all my pictures! As such, I've shamelessly stolen this picture from Bob:

Which shows our booth in setup mode on Saturday. Anyway, it was great to meet so many of you that have been reading the blog, as well as all the other folks who came through the booth and maybe are just now checking it out. Putting faces to names is always a lot of fun.

There have been a few other gadgets and announcements to hit lately, and I'm hoping to get to them in the next day or two. Stay tuned.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 4:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm leaving to catch my plane in just a few minutes to spend the week in Las Vegas for the NAB show. When I tell most people I'm about to spend a week in Vegas, the response is almost always, "How fun!" but of course the reality is less glamorous (especially because I’m really not a big gambler). Still, I’m excited for the show because while we've been out showing the Adobe Production Studio (and of course, Audition) since January, this is the first really large show where it will be seen. Adobe will have another large presence this year in booth SL3732, which is closer to the South hall entrance where Avid and Apple work as hard as possible to deafen each other's customers.

Make sure to stop by to say hi if you’re there this year! I'll be in the booth quite a bit as will a bunch of members of the Audition team. You can read about all the things Adobe will be doing at NAB here and make sure to check out the theater schedule here so that you can make sure to hit all the shows that matter to you. I hope to see you in Vegas!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a comment on my last post Peter pointed out that the Wavepack filter also works in Audition 2. Wavepack gives another nice alternative to folks wanting to create audio files with lossless compression, and it has support for markers as well.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just got word that James over at vuplayer.com has confirmed that his .flt format plug-ins that he originally wrote for Cool Edit are working fine in Audition 2.0! I believe that in particular the FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) plug-in will be really useful to some folks, but James also has his own implementations of audio export for Ogg Vorbis, Windows Media Audio, QuickTime, and MOD music. If you like them, he simply asks for a donation so please make his day if you find them useful!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 6:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

ABC News has a rundown from PC Magazine on video solutions and talks about Adobe Production Studio as the best pro-level solution. I see these sorts of mentions a lot but this one caught my imagination because it includes the phrase, “Those ready to wrestle footage to the ground with their own bare hands…” I like the image of “bare handed editing” as some sort of new extreme sport, maybe with its own slot in the X-Games.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I came across another news article talking about podcasting and Audition. While it talks about many different solutions, including free software for people who want to get started on a shoestring budget, it points out that Audition is "more or less the industry standard" for podcasting. We're finding that's particularly true once folks are looking to make podcasts with quality equal to major radio broadcasts rather than sounding like a hobbyist production.

What are some of the things you like about Audition when you're doing podcasts (or traditional broadcast)? We're looking to put together a short document on why Audition is good for this work and I'd love some input from you all.

Also, I've mentioned it before but if you are already into podcasting you might want to take a look at Building the Pod, which includes lots of podcast-specific tips on how to use Audition.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Well, I think I must have really arrived on the blog scene because my comments inbox is filled with spam every day. Endless attempts to get me to approve some link to some site so that you folks will be tricked into going and so Google and other engines will think I like whatever it is that they're doing. I know it’s not directly comparable, but it reminds me of how a lot of artists have said (and I distinctly remember a quote from Nirvana) that they really knew that they made it once Weird Al did a parody of their song.

Anyway, I wanted everyone to know it's taking a bit longer than it did initially for me to review comments since I dig through all of them. Also, I might get more aggressive and start snipping out URLs if I'm not sure about them or they seem too commercial.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When I was in Singapore my hotel room had what looked like a normal, unassuming television.

Yet on closer inspection it was clearly something special. This television didn't just have normal 2-stereo, it had clearly-labeled, revolutionary 3-stereo! Plus, it's a system, which just means quality.

But, wait, there's more. There was also the "INCREDIBLE SOUND" option. Wow! One option and the sound can be incredible!

Being an audio aficionado myself I, of course, couldn't resist and kept it turned on. My theory is the incredible sound projects in the mysterious 3-stereo, which I'm clearly not tuned to hear, so it didn't sound any different. But I'm sure it was incredible.

(I clearly need a category for "so off topic you should just skip ahead, thank you." I blame the severe jet lag.)

Posted by Hart Shafer at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We finished our Asia-Pacific seminar tour in great style in Sydney yesterday. The event was held in a very nice theater at the Australia Technology Park, which is an old brick railroad service yard that’s been converted into offices and conference facilities. The architecture of the building was interesting, with exposed steal rivets and beams everywhere.

As for the seminar itself, it went very well. The crowd in the theater was smaller than some of our previous stops, but we had hundreds of people from across Australia tuned into a live webcast of the event. To all of you who tuned in, I hope you enjoyed the show!

(Bob presenting one of his marathon sessions)

Last night the team went out for a celebratory dinner down on the harbor, and I took the obligatory shot of the Sydney Opera House at night. This is a city I could definitely learn to love, but now all I have left is wrapping up with some meetings and then it’s the long flight home on Friday.

Finally, a shout out to the guys who stuck around after the seminar after it was over to hang out and talk audio. It’s always great to meet users and put some faces to the names!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 1:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The whirlwind Production Studio seminar tour continued after we left Seoul on Tuesday, bound for Hong Kong. We were only in Hong Kong for somewhere around 16 hours from the time our plane touched down until the time it took off on Wednesday night. As we were joking the next morning, we were in the "nicest hotel room we barely saw." My only sightseeing in Hong Kong was this snap in the morning from the hotel window. We had about 400 people in Hong Kong, which was a great turnout, especially considering we started the event at 9 a.m. (and we all know how creative folks hate to get up early). Unfortunately I didn't get a good crowd shot.

(My total sightseeing in Hong Kong)

On Wednesday we flew down to Singapore, were we had a day of meetings before the seminar day. On Friday we set up and presented a marathon seminar to a full house. After we finished we all hopped on a plane again for a red-eye flight to Brisbane, and then a car out to Coolum, where there's a conference of IT and tech press going on right now. A day off on Saturday did us all a world of good, and tomorrow (Monday) we're off to Sydney for the last event of the tour on Tuesday. I hope to see a bunch of folks there!

(Bob puts the finishing touches on the presentation machine)


(The crowd in Singapore)

Posted by Hart Shafer at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We're currently looking for two experienced software engineers who are interested in working with a tight-knit team to deliver great software. At this point we're particularly interested in individuals who have deep experience and passion for UI/front-end development, and previous media development experience is a huge plus. One position is open in Seattle, Washington, USA (job ID PE120502) and the other is in Hamburg, Germany (job ID LM010606). For more details, or to submit your resume' or CV, visit Adobe's career opportunities page and search for the job IDs listed above. And please forward this information to anyone you know who might be interested!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 9:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We had a outstanding turnout in Seoul, with over 1200 people attending. The crowd was great, and I'd like to thank everyone in Seoul for their amazing hospitality.

I snapped a picture from on stage before my presentation. You can't see it in the picture, but there are dozens of people sitting and standing in the aisles and there was another room that was packed with folks watching the seminar on projection screens.

(View large image)

Posted by Hart Shafer at 5:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm off today for the seminar series so it'll be quiet around here for a couple weeks, but I'll try to at least post a few pictures from the road. Don't let it get out of hand around here while I'm gone, and if you're last one out in the evening, make sure to turn off the lights.

:)

Posted by Hart Shafer at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I mentioned a couple posts ago that I was coming through a bunch of cities. It turns out I have the most time in Sydney, where I've never been. I know that there are more than a few Audition users there I was thinking that it would be fun for some of us to get together after the seminar on Feb 28th for some food or drinks and chat about Audition, audio, and just generally put faces with names. That way I can meet some of you all even if you can't make it to the main seminar. Interested? Leave a comment and make sure to put your email address in the email field and we'll plan something! If anyone is game I'd also be interested in seeing some studios where Audition is in use while I'm down there. I'll be in town for a couple days past the seminar.

Finally, any suggestions for what I should do with my little bit of free time while I'm in town?

Posted by Hart Shafer at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Adobe Audition 2 requires a processor that supports the SSE instructions set, and there are some questions on exactly what chips support it. On the Intel side it's easy: any Pentium III or later and you're ok, including the Pentium M, Xeon, and Itanium. On the AMD side it's a little trickier. AMD first introduced support for the SSE set part way through the Athlon line, which means that Athlon processors at the produced early in the cycle don't support it but later ones do. If you have an Athlon XP or later you're set.

If you have any questions about whether your processor supports SSE, there's an adobe techdoc available that includes a link to a utility that can tell you for sure. (The doc references Premiere Pro but applies equally to Audition.)

Now, some folks may wonder why we decided to require SSE. Really, it just boils down to the fact that we were able to get some pretty significant speed increases in many parts of the program by using it and it would have been very expensive engineering-wise to provide a complete set of code that didn't require SSE for folks who had older chips.

There's also a question floating around regarding AMD support in general. Audition 2 works well on AMD processors, and we have a bunch of AMD-based machines here in the office that we test on regularly. We did use some Intel-optimized code for our FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) calculations which helps accelerate parts of the program (the spectral views, other analysis tools, and many effects) even further when running on Intel chips. And why did we use this Intel-optimized code? Intel provided us highly optimized libraries that have a bunch of developer-years of work in them, as well as the assistance of several engineers to help us integrate the work, so we were able to get a performance increase for many of our users without impacting the number of features our core developers were able to develop. We didn't find any disadvantage of using this code on AMD chips, but there was a good boost for folks with Intel chips, so the choice was easy.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 6:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The Adobe Production Studio roadshow has just kicked off--folks from Adobe will be spreading out to cities in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Japan over the next couple of months to present seminars that give you an in-depth look at the whole post-production solution. You can see a list of the seminar cities on the Production Studio site. If you don't live near one of the cities currently on the list, you can sign up to be notified if we add a location near you for a future tour. Unfortunately, the list is out of date but if you sign upfor Premiere Pro you'll know about Audition tours--we always travel together.

I'll be on the Asia-Pacific tour, so if you're in Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore, or Sydney please sign up and then come out to say hi!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 3:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The reviews are starting to come in more rapidly now. The latest is from Byte.com by reviewer David Em -- it's a good overview review of the whole Adobe Productio Studio, but which is a great read but you'll need to register to get the whole article. The Audition section is about 2/3 of the way through, and I quote:

"This version will give any audio app on the market a run for its money."

Posted by Hart Shafer at 3:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An independent group has put together a comparison of current sample rate converters, and I'm happy to say that Audition's SRC algorithm is among the best available, and clearly the best one that comes included with a host application! (And that's before you even consider price.) Our sample rate conversion has always been considered one of the best, but it's great to have independent, empirical confirmation.

Incidentally, our SRC process goes back to the Cool Edit 96 days at Syntrillium and was written by David, the original Cool Edit author. It's been sped up between then and now but the quality has been the same for almost 8 years.

[edit 5:11PM] What are the odds that this page would be updated today? Well, it has been and there are some new algorithms included. Audition is still among the best, but there are a few more posted now that compete (and even beat) us. Still, I'm proud of where we sit! :)

Posted by Hart Shafer at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Speaking of reviews, I never linked to a long Audition review that came out on digitalproducer.com (part of Digital Media Net). Frank Moldstad, the reviewer, doesn't give a numeric rating, but I really enjoyed reading how he summed up his review:

Audition 2.0 is a hot program for a wide variety of audio tasks, from seamless integration into a large-scale production workflow to a complete DAW for home studio use. And it's all wrapped and ready in a beautiful new modular interface that just begs you to dive in and start working. It's good to see that as Adobe continues to add interoperability between its appplications, this does not come at the expense of any functionality in Audition for standalone use. This is by far the best version of Adobe Audition , not to mention Cool Edit Pro, and I'd highly recommend it as either a dedicated audio DAW application or as the audio component in a multimedia production line.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe Audition 2 was featured in a short PC World review that went live last night. I'm excited to say that Audition recieved a 92/100 for a total rating of "Superior!" The other Adobe Production Studio applications were also reviewed: Premiere Pro 2 recieved 92/100, After Effects 7 recieved 90/100, and Encore DVD 2 recieved 88/100. Excellent!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There's has been some discussion about folks who purchased the download version of Adobe Audition 2 and what content beyond the program itself they should have access to. There have been some problems with people getting everything they should, and some doubts about whether the download version got the same things that boxed version customers should get.

First, I just want to say I'm sorry that there's been such a headache for some customers about this. We always strive to make these launches as smooth as possible, but we stumbled this time.

Second, while the download version doesn't have any physical goods, people who buy it should have access to all of the same content that comes in the box. Namely:

• The full manual (in PDF)
• All 4+GB of uncompressed music loops
• The Total Training videos
• The ability to register and download the registration incentive of your choice

Specifics about each of these after the jump...

Continue reading "Download Version Headaches" »

Posted by Hart Shafer at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (28)

(I wrote this on Saturday but didn't post it until today. I guess I was tired enough to forget to post once I got in!)

I'm on my way back from NAMM now (it's another on-the-plane post), tired and a bit bleary-eyed but excited about my personal whirlwind couple days down there. I came in the night before the show opened and had a packed two days talking to partners, the press, and customers about 2.0.

One of the things that struck me was just how crowded the whole show was. I walked onto the floor just a few minutes after the show had opened and I think it's the most packed I had seen the aisles in several years. In fact, almost everyone I talked to commented on how bustling the whole show was, from hall E with the folks who sell wood for violins to the rooms upstairs with wall-to-wall pianos, and everything in between. I'm guessing the music industry is a trailing indicator of the economy as a whole, since so much of it is driven as a passion once the basic needs (food, shelter) have been taken care of. If that's the case than the economy is trucking along here in North America at least--I've been to a lot of tradeshows that have been shrinking over the last few years, and NAMM was relatively slow the last couple years, but it was as big as ever this year. I think every space in the convention center that could have been used had a booth on it.

My personal winner of the hippest booth concept had to be Access Music, the folks that make the samplers, with their hanging rope wall. I’m not sure how inviting it made the booth, but it certainly stood out!

My winner of the most fun new product I saw had to go to Sibelius, who was showing a new sequencing product called Groovy which is specifically designed for teaching elementary school kids about music creation. Anything that helps teach more music theory to kids seems like a great thing to me.

I only wish I had the time to stay an extra day just for some time on the floor. I always feel like I’ve missed half the show and this year was no exception. I hardly saw any of the hardware on display, and was only able to check out a handful of demos. Ah, NAMM. It’s always interesting, always exhausting, and always LOUD.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 1:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Alright, it looks like the tryout download is now working as expected. The tryout link on the Adobe Audition page still links to the "notify me" page (and likely will until next week) but you can get the tryout from the main list of downloads here.

Enjoy!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Durin’s comment reminded to that I wanted to post about the fact that I was interviewed for two different podcasts before the 2.0 launch. The first was with Bruce Williams of Building the Pod. I joked that this interview was amazingly recursive--I was recorded into Audition for a podcast on creating podcasts in Audition that is entirely produced inside of Audition. Whew! Building the Pod is a weekly how-to for Audition. Even I was impressed by the power of the technology and what it promises for the future when we did the interview--even though I was in Seattle and Bruce was in Sydney we were able to do the interview via Skype over the internet and Bruce just recorded it straight into Audition

For t he second podcast I met up with Jason Lopez of Podtech.net, which produces regular podcasts on technology news and trends. Jason and I talked about the newest version, as well as some general trends in the audio industry. Jason has a background with traditional radio broadcasting as an NPR correspondent (among other things) and also produces his podcasts inside of Audition.

Finally, I don't think it's "aired" yet, but I was interviewed yesterday by Kevin Becka, technical editor for Mix Magazine, for a segment in their NAMM daily podcasts.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Some of my fell product managers were at Motion Graphics LA (MGLA) on Tuesday night to show off the production studio. Since it was mostly a graphics show the Audition section was short, but Giles Baker, the senior product manager for Premiere Pro, did a nice job with a quick showing of 2.0. The folks at Pixel Corps were kind enough to record and encode the event and now it's posted to DV Magazine's web site. They broke out the Audition section so you skip straight to it, but I'd encourage you to watch the rest of the videos if you're interested.

Note: I had some trouble when I downloaded the movie because it asked for a .tif file. I just said "search" and then canceled and then the file played fine. You'll also need the Quicktime player to view them.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, the good news is the tryout got through the posting process much faster than we had anticipated. The bad news is it won't download correctly! The web team is working right now to figure out what's going wrong and correct it so hopefully we'll fix it so the download will complete properly before the end of the day. I think I may be just as excited to get it into your hands as you all are to get it!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 4:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Just a quick note about the Adobe Audition 2.0 tryout: it’s coming as soon as we can get it out the door. It’s passed QA and so now the team is just working on getting it packaged up and put on the site. My hope is that we’ll have it up some time next week.

Posted by Hart Shafer at 4:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Hello, everyone! Now that Adobe has this blogging system set up and we've launched a new version of Adobe Audition (along with the new Adobe Production Studio), I thought this would be a great time to start up my own blog.

First, the 10-second bio: my name is Hart Shafer, and in 1997 I was lucky enough to answer a want ad in the newspaper and get hired by Syntrillium Software as their sixth employee. After doing several different jobs there I started working in product management for Cool Edit 2000 and have been the product manager at Syntrillium, and then here at Adobe, ever since.

My intent is to make this blog a useful spot for news and information related to Audition as I see it from my perspective. If there's anything in particular you would like to see me include, just let me know in the comments section. I hope you find it useful, or at least interesting!

Posted by Hart Shafer at 2:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)