Customer Reviews

Adobe Soundbooth CS4 [OLD VERSION]

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

 

 

Unfortunately, my experience was the same as the previous reviewer. Over a period of weeks, Adobe Soundbooth has dumped complete files (even without crashing) and when I try to retrieve even the SAVED versons later, they are blank. Weeks of work down the drain. Adobe needs to address these glitches before putting their products to market.

If you use this program, be sure to periodically do a "SAVE AS" to another hard drive or external hard disk and under a different file name ~ in case you need to retrieve your files later.

Right now I am VERY frustrated. Soundbooth CS4 Version 2.0.1 has (after nearly 20 hours of audio editing) corrupted my native Soundbooth .asnd file for a client's project. This translates into a boat load of time and money lost for me and an explanation to my client as to why I can't deliver their project this week. This is the second time this has happened... the last time I only lost 5 hours of work and blamed it on the fact that I did not have the most recent update of Soundbooth installed.

The error I get is "Soundbooth unsupported format or damaged" and the file size automatically defaults to 4gb. The file is unrecoverable as Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 gives the same error when I try to bring it in there. Yeah, then Premiere Pro does not function right until reboot. This has happened to two files that were around 1 hour in total length this morning and 1 last week.

Also, if you are looking to Soundbooth as a royalty-free score creator (like Soundtrack Pro), forget about it. The selection of free scores is not even worth mentioning. But I could have lived with this shortcoming because Soundbooth is intuitive and feature rich... I really like the auto heal tool... but nothing can auto heal the hours of work I just lost.

So, other than the MAJOR issue of lost work... I lovED the program and would have given it at least 4 stars. It really does have so many good things for jack-of-all-trades advertising professionals like me. But I'm done with the Soundbooth. I CAN"T afford another problem. In fact, this program makes me insecure about the whole Production Premium Suite.

Being a Mac user (for the creative side of my business), and an avid Adobe fan / user, and now jumping into video production, I had been trying to convince myself that the Adobe Production Premium suit was the better choice than Final Cut Studio (because of the overall program integration). I think this may have changed my mind. Professionals can't afford these sorts of problems... neither can you.

So, until Adobe decides to get serious about every program in their Production Premium Suite and ensure the same professional standards that their rock-solid web and print-based suites, I would NOT encourage a Mac user to go the Adobe Production Premium Suite route.

Although I have not clicked the "Buy" button for Final Cut Studio yet, I feel it must happen soon. For now, I'll be editing in Audacity or Soundtrack for a few days.

Okay, I feel a little better now. Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium Final Cut Studio

I bought Soundbooth because I was making a podcast and Audacity would crash every few minutes. I haven't had the problems experienced by the other reviewers. Adobe Soundbooth CS4 was easy to learn and produced wonderful multilayer tracks without a glitch.