New features summary

Read on to learn about the new features in this release of Adobe Audition.

The December 2014 release of Audition CC addresses bugs and includes fixes for several potential crash scenarios. For more details, see this blog post.

The October 2014 release of Adobe Audition CC provides a refreshed user interface with HiDPI support, enhanced Speech Volume Leveler, MediaCore support, and more.

Read on to learn more about the new features.

The user interface in Audition is refined and updated to provide an improved user experience across devices, including support for HiDPI Windows 8.1 displays.

With HiDPI support, Audition provides a higher resolution user interface that displays text, icons, and other user interface elements in greater clarity. Audition also supports resolution scaling factors, ensuring user interface elements scale optimally and continue to appear sharp and clear.

The new Target Dynamic Range option in Audition provides better control over volume leveling for spoken content.

In previous versions of Audition, amplifying speech also amplified any background noises. Target Dynamic Range helps you minimize background noises while amplifying and leveling only speech.

The Target Dynamic Range option is available under Effects > Amplitude and Compression > Speech Volume Leveler.

For best results with most content, specify a Target Dynamic Range value between –45dB and –60dB.

Important notes

• Specifying a higher parameter value (up to –80dB) can significantly reduce background noise, but applies less leveling and amplification of speech content.

• Specifying a lower parameter value (down to –30dB) provides better speech leveling, but may amplify the background noise more than desired.

Audition is now a native MediaCore client resulting in expanded video file format support, faster loading time, and improved playback of video content.

This support removes Audition's dependence on the Dynamic Link Media Server (DLMS) to export and import video.

Audition can now import and export any format supported by the third-party MediaCore plug-in. Some of the newly supported formats include MXF, ARRIRAW, and Soundbooth ASND preview.

Audition can now read, modify, and generate iXML metadata.

iXML metadata is typically captured by audio recording devices or on-location audio recording software such as Metacorder for Mac. An important feature of iXML metadata is the ability to select and mark the best takes, and record on-set notes.

You can now preview Soundbooth project files in the Adobe Sound Document (ASND) file format directly in Audition CC. This functionality mirrors Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Flash Pro allowing you to import the mixdown preview into the Waveform or Multitrack timelines.

Adobe Premiere Pro CC offers extensive native media support, letting you edit all the major video, image, and audio formats natively. The 2014.1 release of Audition CC supports all the native video formats that are supported in Premiere Pro.  

Audition provides several user interface improvements to help you work with multitrack projects more efficiently. Visual enhancements such as improved visibility, minimizing tracks you’re not working on, and randomizing designated track colors help you work more easily with complex audio projects. 

In previous versions of Audition, the color contrast between clip waveforms and selected tracks was subtle and not easily noticeable.

Audition now provides a greater contrast between a waveform and the background of a selected audio track. By increasing the contrast of a selected track, the visibility of the clip content is further enhanced.

This visual enhancement of providing a high contrast between the clip and the track background lets you easily see which clips are selected at a glance.

Audition displays a high-contrast clip and track background by default. However, you can turn off this feature by using the Preferences dialog. Deselect the Display High-Contrast Clip And Track Backgrounds option under the Appearance category.

To easily distinguish between multiple tracks in a project, Audition randomly designates track colors.

When you add new tracks in Audition, each track is assigned a different color. Audition generates a different color for each new track by assigning a random hue value between 0-360.

The first track has the standard Audition green color (Hue value of 153), and all other tracks have different colors.  

This feature is turned on by default. You can turn it off using the Preferences dialog. Deselect Randomize Track color under the Appearance category.

To change the color randomly assigned to a clip, right-click (Win) or Ctrl-click (Mac) the track header, and select Track Color. Click the color that you want from the color picker.

If there are tracks in your project that don't need to be visible or you're not working on, you can minimize those tracks. When you minimize a track, the track is set to its minimum height and locked, preventing resizing when zooming. This feature is especially useful when you are working on large, complex projects.

To minimize a track, select the track in the Multitrack editor and select Multitrack > Track > Minimize Selected Track. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Shift+\ (Win and Mac).

To restore a minimized track to its original height, select Multitrack > Track > Restore Minimized Selected Track. Or you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+\ (Win) or Cmd+Shift+\ (Mac).

The vertical scroll bar is now redesigned to a navigation bar that lets you quickly move between multiple tracks.

Each track in the vertical navigation bar is represented by the track color, giving you a visual guide when dragging or changing tracks. This feature is useful when you are working with many tracks and comparing edits between multiple tracks.

To zoom into a track, right-click (Win) or Ctrl-click (Mac) in the vertical navigation bar and drag to zoom to the selected range. Right/Ctrl-clicking and dragging repeatedly increases the zoom factor. You can click the Zoom Out Full button in the Editor panel to zoom out of the track.

Audition displays track thumbnails in the vertical navigation bar by default. You can turn it off using the Preferences dialog. Deselect Display Track Thumbnails In The Vertical Navigation Bar under the Appearance category.

To support different surround formats and configurations, Audition lets you add new custom audio channels when you create an audio file.  

Custom channels are typically used in audio for cinema, broadcast, and video games. For example, audio used for broadcast has eight channels with a 5.1 mix (L, R, C, LFE, Ls, Rs) and two extra channels. The extra channels vary depending on the broadcaster. Audition lets you customize these channels as per the broadcaster requirements.

Audition now lets you split all the clips under a playhead without needing to select the clips. To do so, select Clip > Split All Clips Under Playhead.