Creative Suite 2 was the last we'll see of Adobe Audition as Soundbooth grabs its place and becomes part of Production Premium CS3 Suite. And, where did Soundbooth spring from one might ask ... we know that Audition was a thinly disguised Cool Edit Pro ... and it would seem that Soundbooth is an Adobe born and bred product. There are rumours that when Syntrillium was acquired a lot of the production team of Cool Edit Pro left the building, this left Adobe with a decision to make and they decided to build a better tool and one that fitted in with the rest of their Suite a little more readily.

And, the GUI above looks a lot more Adobe-esque, in my opinion, with its collapsible, movable and dockable palettes. Although apparently the release of the CS3 suite meant this product was rushed through production and came out with some big holes and missing functionality. Adobe have stated that Soundbooth is "Audio Editing made Simple!" but was does this really mean for the professional?

 

Soundbooth has a good work flow, is pretty straightforward and even an inexperienced user could be up and running in a short amount of time. Soundbooth's objective is to enable audio processing from recording to basic mastering but there are restrictions and top of the list would be single pass recording. Supported formats do not include MP3 or even MPEG4 which are suprising omissions, me thinks.

However, this tool has been built with the same ethos of Sound Edit 16 and Cool Edit Pro and aimed at professionals who don't specialize in audio, people who just want to do things quickly, basic tasks like getting rid of unwanted noise, removing unwanted sounds, making voiceovers, adding effects and filters ... basically being able to customise soundtracks quickly. It just isn't as bulked out with features but don't let that necessarily put you off.

My take? I was disappointed to hear of Audition's demise and professionals might be disappointed with the lack of features in Soundbooth. But, it's a lightweight tool that gets basic tasks done readily, it is easy to learn and use and I'm positive that come the next version this tool will be shaping up very nicely.