Adobe Audition for the Mac: A change of heart

Last June, Adobe announced that it would begin beta testing a Mac version of its Audition digital audio workstation software late this year. I've used Audition on Windows since the late 1990s, when it was called Cool Edit Pro and was published by a company called Syntrillium. Audition became a favored audio editing tool for radio broadcasters and podcasters, but Adobe hasn't updated the software since 2007. I wondered why Adobe was bothering to release a Mac version of an application that had been bypassed by Avid's Pro Tools, Apple's Logic, and many other DAWs.

A few weeks ago, Adobe released the first beta version of Audition for the Mac, and even in beta, it's an excellent piece of software. It follows the user interface design of Audition 3.0 for Windows fairly closely, but takes advantage of OSX's multitouch capabilities. Many of the effects have been improved--for example, the noise reduction processor is both easier to use and much more effective than its Windows predecessor.

So, I take back the snarky remarks I made about Adobe porting obsolete software to the Mac. However, it doesn't change the fact that the Windows version is still three years old, hasn't had even a minor point update since early 2008, and desperately needs an upgrade.