Professional Editor Reviews - Audio Related Features

Adobe Premiere Pro

Apple Final Cut Pro Studio

AVID Xpress DV Pro

Pinnacle Liquid Edition Pro

Sony Vegas 6

Mixer is functional but probably more complex than it needs to be, with four different types of adjustments that all work slightly differently, like latch, read, write and touch. Simple might be better here.

Audio mixer operates in real time, inserting rubber band key frames you can later edit.

Audio mixer operates in real time, which obviously is helpful.

Liquid has a very functional audio mixer that's a touch more complicated than it needs to be. To start it working, you have to Mark-in and click the Record audio mix button, rather than simply clicking play and adjusting the dials, like simple sibling Studio. This will send most new users directly to the manual, but once you know, you know. 

Vegas has a real time audio mixer you can use with bus tracks

Adobe Premiere Pro

Apple Final Cut Pro Studio

AVID Xpress DV Pro

Pinnacle Liquid Edition Pro

Sony Vegas 6

Rubber band controls are capable but not inspiring. They don't operate in real time and setting a control point is overly complex.

Specifically, with other editors, you simply touch the volume line in the audio track where you want to set a control point. With Premiere Pro, you move the edit line to the target spot for adjusting audio, click the Add/Remove Keyframe button at the track header on the left, and then adjust away.

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You have to enable waveforms and rubber band controls via an Avid-like quick menu on the bottom left of the timeline. Once open, you can add key frames using the pen tool, and edit any existing key frames at any time.

Rubber band controls are functional but a bit complicated. In the timeline Fast menu (bottom left hand corner of the timeline) you have to enable Audio Auto Gain (to insert key frames) and Sample Plot (to see the waveforms). On the Command Palette (tools > command palette >FX Tab) you'll find the Add Keyframe button which you'll use to add keyframes (and can map to another menu if you'd like).

Once you've gotten all that setup, just add keyframes where necessary and adjust the volume by dragging the rubber band controls to the desired level.

Rubber band controls only show up when the audio mixer is open, which is kind of silly (IMHO, of course).  Once you know that factoid, operation is pretty standard.

You have to insert an "envelope" to create the rubber band controls. Once you understand this, operation is straightforward.

Adobe Premiere Pro

Apple Final Cut Pro Studio

AVID Xpress DV Pro

Pinnacle Liquid Edition Pro

Sony Vegas 6

Getting to Audition is awkward; seems like it will only take the entire file, and then if Audition is the standard player for AVI files, which is kind of ridiculous. It's easier to simply export the audio file then reimport.

you can easily send the audio track to SoundTrack, but it's the entire file, not just the selected clip (Apple has promised to change this to allow just a clip t be sent).

 Making it a touch easier is the fact that markers in the file separate clips, so it's much easier to see the region you'd like to apply the effect to than with other programs. In the end, we exported the audio files we wanted to adjust and worked with the program that way.

The noise removal feature is pretty standard - select a region in the audio file that contains only the noise to remove (usually, background hum or whine), designate that as the noise print, and tell SoundTrack Pro to remove it. One unusual feature is the ability to preview "Noise Only" which essentially plays the sound that Soundtrack will remove. Like the matte view when chromakeying, this helps you fine tune the settings, because if you can here some audio that you want to leave in, you simply reduce the adjustment.

None

Liquid has an XSend feature that can send an audio file to any specified program. In our tests, however, it always sent the entire selected audio track, not just the audio track from the selected clip.  Definitely would have liked being able to apply a noise reduction effect to the clip on the timeline. 

You can send the entire audio file to Sound Forge or other audio editor, or a copy of the file to Sound Forge, which sends only the selected audio clip (which is much easier -- try both and you'll see). Then you can use Sony's Noise Reduction filter which is one of the best out there.

Note that you can apply the Noise Reduction filter to the audio track on the timeline, but I found operation easier in Sound Forge. Once finished there, you reimport the file into Vegas, and replace the original audio file.

Quality good with just a slight echoing.

Quality was very good.  Heard a slight pulsing, but overall very good.

Slightly muffled, but very clear of noise.

Adobe Audition