Adobe Audition

Version 1

Adobe Audition was released on August 18, 2003. It had bug fixes but no new features, and was essentially a more polished Cool Edit Pro 2.1 under a different name. Adobe then released Audition v1.5 in May 2004; major improvements over v1 included pitch correction, frequency space editing, a CD project view, basic video editing and integration with Adobe Premiere, as well as several other enhancements.

Version 2

Adobe Audition 2 was released on January 17, 2006. With this release, Audition (which the music recording industry had once seen as a value-oriented home studio application, although it has long been used for editing by radio stations) entered the professional Digital Audio Workstation market. The current version included two sections. Multitrack View supported up to 128 digital audio mono or stereo tracks at up to 32-bit resolution. In the track controls section one could select the input and output for each track (the program supported multiple multi-channel sound cards), select "record", "solo", and "mute", and access the effects rack. New features included ASIO (Audio stream input output) support, VST (Virtual Studio Technology) support, new mastering tools (many provided by iZotope), and a redesigned UI. Adobe also included Audition 2.0 as part of its Adobe Production Studio bundle.

Version 3

Adobe Audition 3 was released on November 8, 2007. New features included VSTi (virtual instrument) support, enhanced spectral editing, a redesigned multi-track interface, new effects, and a collection of royalty-free loops.

CS2 activation servers' shutdown: Adobe Audition 3, with some other CS2 products, was released with an official serial number, due to the technical glitch in Adobe's CS2 activation servers (see Creative Suite 1 & 2).

Version 4 (CS5.5)

Audition 4, also known as Audition CS5.5, was released on April 11, 2011, as part of Adobe Creative Suite. Audition 4 was shipped as part of the Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Master Collection and Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium, replacing the discontinued Adobe Soundbooth. Audition 4 was also made available as a standalone product. Enhanced integration with Adobe Premiere Pro allowed editing of multitrack Premiere projects, and users of third-party software were served by the introduction of OMF- and XML-based import-export functions. Other new features included improved 5.1 multichannel support, new effects (DeHummer, DeEsser, Speech Volume Leveler, and Surround Reverb), a history panel, faster and fully supported realtime FFT analysis, and a new audio engine (more reliable and faster) for non-ASIO devices.

According to Adobe,^[3] Audition CS5.5 was rewritten from the ground up to take advantage of parallel/batch processing for performance and make it a platform-agnostic product. Audition CS5.5 now works on Windows and Mac platforms. Over 15 years of C++ code was analyzed, and many features of the previous Audition 3 were ported or enhanced. Notable features that were present in Audition 3, but removed for CS5.5, include VSTi support and MIDI sequencing. Unlike all the previous versions, this is the first release to be available as a Mac version as well as a Windows version.

Version 5 (CS6)

Adobe showed a sneak preview of Audition CS6^[4] in March 2012 highlighting clip grouping and automatic speech alignment (which had its technology previewed^[5] in September 2011). Audition CS6 was released on April 23, 2012, as part of both Creative Suite 6 Master Collection and Creative Suite 6 Production Premium. It included faster and more precise editing, real-time clip stretching, automatic speech alignment, EUCON and Mackie control surface support, parameter automation, more powerful pitch correction, HD video playback, new effects, and more features.

Version 6 (CC)

Adobe Audition 6, also more commonly known as Audition CC, was released on June 17, 2013. It is the first in the Audition line to be part of the Adobe Creative Cloud. Also, Audition CC is now the first 64-bit^[6] application in the Audition line. This can provide faster processing time when compared to Audition CS6. New features include sound remover, preview editor, and pitch bender.^[7]

Version 7 (CC 2014)

Adobe Audition 7 was released in June 2014 with the name Adobe Audition CC 2014. New with this release came support for Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus formats, custom channel labels, a new UI skin, High DPI support, enhanced clip and track colors and navigation, minimize tracks, tools for splitting all clips at the playhead, and more.

Version 8 (CC 2015)

Adobe Audition 8 was released in June 2015 with the name Adobe Audition CC 2015. This release offered Dynamic Link video streaming which enabled Audition to display a Premiere Pro project sequence as a video stream at full resolution and frame rate and with all effects, without needing to render to disk. Other features included support for displaying that video content on an external display, scheduled recording, customization of level meter crossover values, automatic session backup, automatic storage of assets alongside session files, import/export of markers, options to relink media, and the addition of Brazilian Portuguese language support. The 8.1 update in the fall of 2015 first unveiled Remix which could analyze a music track and recompose it to a different duration, tools for generating speech based on the OS text-to-speech voice libraries, new options for ITU-based loudness conformation, and the ability to expand and create custom functionality and integration with the Adobe Content Extensibility Platform (CEP) panel support. This update also removed "Upload to Soundcloud" support as the API had been abandoned by Soundcloud and was no longer functional.

Version 9 (CC 2015.2)

Adobe Audition 9 was released in June 2016 with the name Adobe Audition CC 2015.2. Of most importance with this release was the new Essential Sound panel, which offered novice audio editors a highly-organized and focused set of tools for mixing audio and would soon be introduced to Premiere Pro allowing non-destructive and lossless transfer of mixing efforts between the two applications. This release also supported exporting directly to Adobe Media Encoder, supporting all available video and audio formats and presets.

Version 10 (CC 2017)

Adobe Audition 10 was released in November 2016 with the name Adobe Audition CC 2017. A new, flat UI skin and the introduction of the Audition Learn panel, with interactive tutorials, spearheaded this release. This also marked the introduction of the Essential Sound panel and the sharing of all real-time Audition audio effects with Premiere Pro. The 10.1 update in Spring, 2017, offered deep channel separation and manipulation features when working with multichannel audio recordings in Multitrack view, significant improvements to interchange with Premiere Pro sharing all effects and automation non-destructively when transferring a sequence to Audition for mixing, and added spectrum meters to many audio effects. This update also offered the visual keyboard shortcut editor common across other Adobe applications, and offered native support for the Presonus Faderport control surface and mixer.

Version 11 (CC 2018)

Adobe Audition 11 was released on October 18, 2017 with the name Adobe Audition CC. (The year moniker was dropped from all Creative Cloud applications.) With this release, users were able to easily duck the volume of music behind dialogue and other content types with the new Auto-Ducking feature available in the Essential Sound panel. Multitrack clips were enhanced with fixed z-order, new fade features such as symmetrical fade in/out and fixed duration/curve adjustments. Performance of mixdowns and bounces improved up to 400%. Smart monitoring provides intelligent source monitoring when recording punch-ins and ADR. Video timecode overlay can display source or session timecode without burn-in, a new Dynamics effect with auto-gate, limiting, and expansion simplifies compression for many users, and support for any control surfaces and mixers which use Mackie HUI protocol for communication rounds out the release. Dolby Digital support was removed from this release, though import continues to be supported through most recent operating systems.