Syntrillium Software was founded in the early 1990s by Robert Ellison and David Johnston, both former Microsoft employees. Originally developed by Syntrillium as Cool Edit, the program was distributed as crippleware for Windows computers. The full version was useful and flexible, particularly for its time. Syntrillium later released Cool Edit Pro, which added the capability to work with multiple tracks, as well as other features. Audio processing, however, was done in a destructive manner. Cool Edit Pro v2 added support for real-time nondestructive processing, and v2.1 added support for surround sound mixing and unlimited simultaneous tracks. Cool Edit also included plugins such as noise reduction and FFTequalization. Ever since the earliest versions, Cool Edit 2000 and Cool Edit Pro supported a large range of import/export codecs for various audio file formats. When MP3 became popular, Cool Edit licensed and integrated the original Fraunhofer MP3 encoder. The software had an SDK and supported codec plugins, and a wide range of import/export format plugins were written by the developer community to open and save in a number of audio compression formats. The popular audio formats and containers supported by Cool Edit with built-in codecs or plugins were Fraunhofer MP3, LAME MP3, Dolby AC3, DTS, ACMWaveform, PCM waveform, AIFF, AU, CDA, MPEG-1 Audio, MPEG-2 Audio, AAC, HE-AAC, OggVorbis, FLAC, True Audio, WavPack, QuickTime MOV and MP4, ADPCM, RealMedia, WMA Standard, WMA Professional, WMA Lossless and WMA Multichannel. Adobe purchased Cool Edit Pro from Syntrillium Software in May 2003 for $16.5 million, as well as a large loop library called "Loopology". Adobe then renamed Cool Edit Pro to "Adobe Audition".
Version
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 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, select "record", "solo", and "mute", and access the effects rack. New features included ASIO support, VST support, new mastering tools, 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 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.
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, a history panel, faster and fully supported realtime FFT analysis, and a new audio engine for non-ASIO devices. According to Adobe, 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. Many other features from previous Windows versions of Adobe Audition, such as, FLT filters, DirectX effects, clip grouping, many effects were removed as the product was rewritten to have identical cross-platform features for Windows and macOS. Some of the features were later restored in Audition CS6 but the wide range of audio codec compression/decoding filters for import/export of various audio file formats were discontinued.
Version 5 (CS6)
Adobe showed a sneak preview of Audition CS6 in March 2012 highlighting clip grouping and automatic speech alignment. 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 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.
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 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. 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.
Version 12 (CC 2019)
Adobe Audition 12 was released on October 17, 2018 with the main new features being DeNoise and DeReverb effects. Other new features include: Multitrack Clip improvements, Mulitrack UI improvements, Zoom to time, Add or delete empty tracks, Playback and recording improvements. Third-party effect migration.
