Customizable

Audition also gives you a choice of different "skins" for determining what the GUI looks like. You can even customize the color scheme and save it as a preset. Personally, I like the Stealth setting as it was easiest on the eyes. Speaking of color, you can choose specific colors for individual clips in a single track, rather than only having one color globally for the entire track. I used this feature a few times for isolating a specific region/clip that I wanted to find easily as I scrolled along the timeline. Here's another great feature: BWF metadata entry. Most DAWs give you ID3 tag metadata entry as an option, but not all give you BWF metadata entry. However Audition for Mac does give you this functionality, as well as metadata entry for RIFF and XMP file formats. Pro Tools users have always had a huge variety of third-party plug-ins to choose from and Audition steps up to the plate as well by allowing users the ability to use VST and AU (audio units) plugs from third-party vendors, so you can grow your capabilities as you need to.

Audition is great for audio production alone, but it really excels as an audio tool for video producers. New, native 5.1 surround support includes quite a few tools for surround projects, like a surround panner in the mixer view and lots of other tweak-able parameters for surround files. You can also use the spectral audio tool in 5.1 files just like you can with regular stereo or mono files. So, basically, there's no excuse for not having perfect audio when you use Audition on your video projects.

Overall, I think Adobe has a winner in Audition for Mac. It's everything that a Pro DAW needs to be while giving you some extra candy to enjoy along the way. If you are a PC/Audition user who is looking to migrate over to Mac without having to take on the challenge of a whole new learning curve for your DAW, then Audition for Mac will make your migration that much easier.

LaComb is president of Digital Sound and Video, Ormond Beach, FL.

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