Inside Sound

As a Product Manager I have to travel periodically whether it’s to tradeshows like NAB or NAMM, visiting customers or traveling to one of our other offices in San Jose, San Francisco, or Boston, MA. I don’t know about some of you out there, but I find traveling to be a big hassle. There’s of course the long security lines, crowded and delayed flights, but I also don’t like being in airports. Part of this is because of the noise from the constant PA announcements. Some airports around the country are trying to deal with this by producing higher quality terminal announcements using recognizable entertainment voices including the likes of Rodney Dangerfield. There was an article about it in this past week’s USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2008-02-11-airport-announcements_N.htm

One voiceover pro they profiled in the article was Ray Holbrook who does terminal announcements for Lexington, Kentucky’s Blue Grass Airport. Ray is a long time media personality in Kentucky and his familiar voice provides a level of comfort to air travelers in Lexington. Ray uses Audition for his voiceover work and was pictured recording with Audition in the print version of this article. The article didn’t mention Audition specifically, but it clearly was Audition in the photo. I suspect that like many broadcast professionals, voiceover pros like Ray are using Audition because it has all the tools you need to create great voice spots using a single software application.

Audition 3 also adds some new tools to make the voiceover creation workflow even easier. With the Top/Tail view you can simultaneously work on the end and beginning of your voiceover such as making sure things like the intro and outro sections work well together (fades, trims, etc.). Also, the auto crossfade feature saves lots of time when putting different audio clips together. This can also be combined with the group editing functions when you are working with multiple tracks. And of course you have all the power of spectral editing to cleanup any unwanted noises, pops, etc. This is really nice to have if you don’t want to have to redo a perfect take that has a sonic defect.

So the next time you hear a recognizable voice on a terminal announcement, there’s a good chance that voice spot was created and edited using Audition.

Lawson

Posted by Lawson Hancock at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We love our Macs, but a few of us are not loving that Audition still runs only on Windows. However, with an Intel-based Mac running Leopard and a copy of 32-bit releases of Windows XP or Windows Vista, Boot Camp could be the answer for you. In fact, our team has found that running Audition 3 in Boot Camp is no different than running it in Windows on a laptop or desktop with good hardware specs (For Audition system requirements, please go to: http://www.adobe.com/products/audition/systemreqs/.)

When I want to record multiple tracks of audio with full effects and monitoring, I run Audition using Boot Camp. Audition works smoothly on an Intel Mac because Boot Camp runs Windows natively, just as any PC would. However, when all I want is to make some minor edits, restore some noisy files or perform some batch conversions, I run Audition from OS X using virtualization software from VMWare or Parallels. Virtualization has opened the door to all sorts of new possibilities for our application library making the OS less important as systems get more powerful, CPUs get more cores and memory gets cheaper. Both Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion allow you to run Windows sessions without logging out of OS X (you can even use them with a Boot Camp installed partition). And since the VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop hardware configuration is customizable, you can adjust the amount of RAM available, which USB or Firewire devices it has access to or several other parameters.

So basically, if you plan to use Audition on an Intel-based Mac for one-track recording, light multitrack mixing, or editing and restoration, both Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion will do the job. If you want to record and mix multiple audio tracks, you should run Audition using Boot Camp.

Durin Gleaves

Posted by Louise Ping at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

There are a couple of new reviews of Audition 3 that just came out in the February issue of EQ and Remix Magazine.

Craig Anderton from EQ (not on-line yet)
Robin Smith from Remix

I particularly liked Robin's summary in the contents section of Remix: "Audition 3 gives you recording, mixing, mastering and video integration all in one. What will Adobe make next? Software that makes you waffles in the morning?"

Excellent idea! I love Belgian waffles on the weekends.

Lawson

Posted by Lawson Hancock at 03:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)