Customer Reviews

Adobe Audition 2.0 Classroom in a Book

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Let me preface this review by saying I have not quite finished the book and all the accompanying CD exercises. That being said, I am quite pleased with both the book and the examples that are on the CD. I have owned Adobe Audition for about 8 months, and for me the learning curve seemed steep. There several audio industry acronyms that often get tossed around in other Audition tutorials as though everyone knows and understands them. This is not just in the tutorials, but it pervades the Adobe User forum as well. The book goes a long ways toward explaining what is going on without drowning the reader with audio industry yak. The lessons are thoughtfully put together, and subsequent lessons build on concepts covered in previous ones. I learned more in one evening with the book and its CD than in weeks of studying other material including the Adobe Audition User's Manual. This book extremely useful, and does an excellent job of helping especially neophytes in learning and using the truly powerful capabilities of Audition. Was my moula well spent - absolutely!

There doesn't seem to be a lot out there for Audition to help Audition newbies like myself. Fortunately there is this book! It is well written and has taken a lot of the mystery out of the program. I'm sure that there is much more to learn, but this book does a good job of covering enough material to get one started with the program. A drawback would be the price -- it's not a large book, and seems pricey for the amount of material covered. The price of all Adobe Press materials are generally a little high in my opinion anyway. Amazon does offer a better price than most bookstores! This book has a "Getting Started" section, "Quick Tour", "Audition Basics", and 14 other chapters which cover just enough material to be easily absorbed. I like the approach this boook uses -- step by step detailed lessons. The book has a cd which contains lesson files to assist with the lessons. I have no complaints (other than the price). If you want to start learning Audition, this is a good book to consider!

Above all, make sure the version of Audition 2.0 Classroom in a Book IS FOR YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM. Also understand that you must have the program to make sense of the manual.

Classroom in a Book is a good guide, but it has two omissions.

Anyone is in their rights to expect that a guide of this sort would have at least a few passages about live recording---but there is exactly one passing sentence in the entire manual about live recording. In Multitrack View the tracks have a panel wherein (among a great many other virtual dials and buttons and such) there is an "M" button, a "S" button, and an "R" button. "M" is for mute, which is explained more than once (even more than twice over the course of the book). "S" is for "Solo", which is also explained to its death over and over again. But as for the "R" button there is only one sentence regarding it.

"R" is "Armed for Record".

Now, maybe someone with a background in audio-editing software knows full well what "Armed for Record" means. Even for a rank beginner like me it wasn't that hard to figure out, I'll admit, but still for a book to go on and on about the other two buttons and to just mention the third term without any further comment seems to me a fundamental lapse. In my case it made for the beginning of a series of exasperating stumbles.

Going at it blind, I simply clicked on "R" and got a message informing me that the best recording was achieved by switching to ASIO. I knew that ASIO meant "Audio Stream In/Out" and had something to do with the new sound card that I had installed. The old sound card that had originally come with the computer was still in there, but apparently from what the message said I would only get mediocre results if I didn't switch by going to Edit and clicking on Audio Hardware Set-Up and following instructions from there on. Needless to say, this was easily done, and in seconds I had switched the program to my new audio card, which any intermediate or advanced user would have known to do from the get-go. Why install the card and not make sure the program was set to it? Ordinarily I would not even admit to anybody that I had to be told to do this; it's embarrassing; but still Audition is a very involved program; there's a lot to learn; and I was just very new to this whole business.

Anyway, I switched, and that should have been the end of it, but sadly the minute I switched my "R" buttons went gray and became inoperable! What's that? Maybe there's no problem on a Mac; I wouldn't know. All I know is that I'm a Windows XP Home Edition guy as I write this; and I lost my "R" buttons!

To say this upset me and got me mad is an understatement. The next morning I was in a better frame of mind and logically went over the steps and saw that there was a pattern to what was happening. For some reason switching to ASIO will gray out the "R" buttons, but if you close the program and go back to it you'll have your "R" buttons back and still be in ASIO.

It's that simple, but there's no mention of it in the book.

Of course, "Armed for Record" must be followed up by clicking on the circular red button on what is called the "Transport Panel" at the bottom of the screen. You're left to guess this, but anyone who has operated a ghetto blaster or a VCR knows what that red circle is; but still it would nice for Adobe to spell this out for us intimidated newbies.

The other big omission gets back to the same lapse as the other one. The book does not bother to point out that switching to ASIO in Multitrack View will not carry over to Edit View. It may not seem like a big deal, but I freaked out when my stuff sounded so weak in Edit View. I couldn't figure it out. The louder I got it in Edit View the more obnoxiously deafening it became in Multitrack View because the two "views" were coming at me through two entirely different sound cards!

Finally I realized what the problem was. Duh . . .

On the positive side in the last analysis it's actually very nice that the two windows can have different settings to let me know how the same file will sound on different computers. My thing with this will be podcasting, and podcasting is about posting on the Net, so one should be aiming at a happy medium that accommodates ordinary cards and quality cards alike. I'm getting better and better at it. The quality will never be a sound stage level thing, but I'm fast approaching the same smoothness of an FM radio commercial.

So go with this book, yes, but keep my comments in mind as you go.

A good book for beginners. I found it helpful in most questions I had about the software. I think a better "Tips and Tricks" section would be the difference between 4 and 5 stars. Good book overall. Definitely worth the money. Ross at MountainWhispers.com Audiobooks

When following lessons to the letter I found that some of the results expected are not achieved due to the book differing from the actual sample files on the accompanying CD. Truly these are errors in publication (I found similar errors in the Photoshop Classroom In A Book and got those confirmed by Adobe and the book publisher).

Publishing an instructional guide with errors is quite frustrating when wanting to take the time to learn the product. I don't know if they corrected these in the 2.0 release, just be forewarned....

A great book and cd of data. Because of not the greatest help files and no tutorials that came with Audition 2.0 this program while very powerful can be quite intimidatiing. Classroom in a book is very helpful in getting started and learning how to use the program.

Book was delivered quickly and in excellent condition!
This classroom in a book is a very useful and helpful item in learning Adobe Audition.
Thrilled I was able to find it on Amazon.com and at a great price. Thanks!

Be aware that the CD does not come with the book. I ordered it to get the tutorials that work with the CD so I was disappointed. The book seems well layed out, however, there are later versions of the software with changes not covered.

Could be considered a waste of time by many who are more experienced with applications of this sort. The difficult part is sticking to the tutorials and not wandering off on your own. Everything covered here can be accessed via the help files and user guide. Adobe might want to consider putting a little more effort into features such as a midi sequencer than reiterating itself.

An excellent book for getting up to speed with this program. I had never used this program before and this Classroom in a Book series walked me through the main features in a very logical step by step fashion that was both easy to follow and understand. I'm sure that there are other books that may cover this program in a more in-depth manner, but you need to get a good handle on the core features and this book does exactly that.