Topic: couple Audition questions

[Gordon]

first of all I'm a wavlab fluffer    love the program.   since going 24/96 what I don't like is 2 gig file limits.  so I bought Audition 3.  love the no 2 gig limits.  HATE the slow as hell processing time.  anyway I can deal with that I guess.


so questions

all files open as 32 bit float (very good thing).  now I do a few simple edits (fades etc) and go to save it.

under options the "enable dithering" is checked.  it's a 24 bit file originally.  audition opens it at 32.  do I need to have that (dithering enabled) checked?  either way the file it saves is 24.  did both.  seems to me it shouldn't be checked since it's really 24.  just wondering?  thoughts?


figured out how to raise gain (amplify).  is there a way to check the gain of the file first like in wavelab?  in wavelab you can "check peak gain" so you know how much you can raise the gain.

and dithering, resampling?  need plugins to do it right or not??

and why the fuck is it so slow??  I mean a simple copy and paste take 5-7 mins!  copy should be as simple as a right click copy and done! 

[ShawnF]

I'm still using Cool Edit Pro, but I think most of these things still apply to Audition.

I wouldn't save it as a 24-bit file until you're entirely done with the processing.  Save intermediate work in the 32-bit normalized float.  When I'm fully done I use a plug-in (Waves IDR or L2 with IDR if I need to do some limiting) for dithering back to 24 (and to 16 also, normally).  Then save as a 24-bit file with no dithering.

I think the built-in resampling algorithm is very good--this was part of a test done with some other methods a while back and it came out at or near the top, as I recall.  The built-in dithering, though, is not as good as some plugins.

Not sure what you can do to increase your speed.  Maybe play with the size of temp directories?  You could disable the undo, but I wouldn't suggest that.  I just live with it and am usually pretty happy with it.

[Brian Skalinder]

This all assumes you're opening a 24-bit file, editing some portion of it, then wanting to save as 24-bit once again.  If you're only doing a couple minor edits - like fades - you have a couple options:

<1>  Untick the dither checkbox when saving as 24-bit.  This means you'll truncate the edited portions of the waveform from 32bfp to 24-bit, but if you're only doing fades or some such, you'll likely never hear the difference.  And unticking the dither checkbox ensures that you aren't needlessly dithering the 24-bit portions of the file that are still 24-bit.  The way Audition works:  if you apply an edit to even one sample of a 24-bit file, Audition will consider the entire file / workspace 32bfp, even though you've only edited a single sample.  What this means is that if you dither to 24-bit, you're (needlessly) dithering 24-bit to...you guessed it...24-bit.  Hence, you may want to consider disabling dither in this instance.  That said, if you're doing heavy editing, it makes sense to tick the dither checkbox, since you don't want to truncate if you've applied any substantial / meaningful edits.

<2>  After highlighting the portion of the waveform you're editing, dither it back to 24-bit with a plugin.  Then save the file as 24-bit with the dither checkbox unticked.  The edited portion of the file has already been dithered from 32bfp to 24-bit, so no need to dither it again.  And the rest of the file remains 24-bit, since you didn't edit it, so no reason to dither it, either.  This method will work for any number or size of sections you wish to edit, as long as you only edit each section a single time.  If you perform more than one edit to any portion of the file, you don't want to use this method, as you'd be editing, then dithering, then editing again, and dithering again - no point in dithering multiple times.

[fmaderjr]

Audition 3.0 is not slow on my 15 month old computer. Copy & paste takes a few seconds. I don't know much about these things but there must be some other program on your computer that is causing problems with Audition.

[fmaderjr]

I was assuming you were just trying to copy a small section of the file and paste it somewhere else in the file to correct a problem. Copying and pasting a very large file can take several minutes for me and was that way for Audition 1.5 as well. I never thought that taking several minutes to copy & paste a file a gigabyte or larger was anything out of the ordinary, but I've never used  Sound Forge or any of the other quality programs to compare.