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Do you have an interest in purchasing Adobe SoundBooth when it is released?

  • Yes

    Votes: 36 17.9%
  • No, but I would if they offered a PowerPC/Universal version

    Votes: 49 24.4%
  • No, I am happy with my current audio editing applicaton

    Votes: 31 15.4%
  • No, I don't have a need for SoundBooth (doesn't apply)

    Votes: 85 42.3%

  • Total voters
    201
GekkePrutser said:
now a 2-month old PowerMac is already becoming obsolete.

I certainly hope you didn't buy a Power Mac two months ago, especially since Apple announced the intel switch over a year ago.

~Shard~ said:
Classic was supported until what, last year essentially? And the G3 machines up until Leopard? ;) :cool:

The original G3's were only suppored through 10.2.

While I wish I could run this on my quad, it makes total sense. They're not "abandoning" anyone since this is a new app, and probably won't have a final version shipping for months. If they're expecting slow adoption of this anyway, why bother doing a version that people will be abandoning as fast as they are adopting?

While the intel only thing is a negative, I'm very happy to see any new audio apps appear that are alternatives to STP. Soundtrack Pro is a turd and has been since its release what, a year and a half ago? Apple needs to realize that shipping an app that is complete garbage is not acceptable.

I'd much rather run Sound Forge under parallels than use STP.
 
I can see why they'd do it with a "new" program, but SE16 was my audio editing prog of choice even having to open OS9 to use it. Finally, soundstudio came around and went multi track, and although I like it, the bit view in SE16 was priceless for what I do, and that thing saved and opened files in a snap.

Even though it's new, I still had hoped that UBs would be the norm for new stuff for longer, especially from someone like Adobe. I got my G5 in mid 04 and had hoped to have it for 8 years. Looks like it'll be more like the 4 years I had ye olde G3 for. Maybe I can squeeze more out of it, but we'll see.

Whatever,

J
 
codo said:
I use Audition for the same purpose. I preferred the application when it was Cool Edit, I feel Adobe have bloated it out ever so slightly. But beggars can't be choosers - It's an important tool for me.

I've had a go with "SoundBooth", its literally the most basic editing pulled from the original Cool Edit code with a few effects pallets. Defiantly not enough for me. It runs well though, nice-ish interface, not sluggish. I personally wouldn't pay more than £30 - £40 for it, its just too basic.


Audition has definitely suffered from the "Adobe Bloat" syndrome and I would happily move on from it, but every audio app out there is either focused on recording musicians in multitrack or simple single track editing. Soundtrack has a lovely user interface and excellent integration for video work, but can't handle the simple things radio users need.

FWIW, I discovered today that HairerSoft is working on a pro version of Amadeus. It is only available as a beta at this point, but I have downloaded it for experimentation. Apparently, they have added multitrack support. You can learn more here: http://www.hairersoft.com/AmadeusPro/AmadeusPro.html

I haven't had a chance to install it yet, but I am hoping it works...
 
Universal Question...

Given that universal versions of Adobe's software are not universal yet (Or at least most) does anyone know exactly how much slower any particular Adobe program (photoshop, illustrator, etc.) runs on an Intel Mac compared to a PPC Mac? I've heard it runs slower, but HOW much slower?
 
Rosetta for the PowerPC Machines!

Guess another company will have to produce a reverse of Rosetta if this trend keeps up!

(because Apple would never do it, they don't want people using their PPC machines anymore)
 
platypus63 said:
Wow, I expected PPC support to drop in a few years, not a few months. Sucks for anyone with the Quad G5s. Sucks for me with my dual G5. :(

I hope this won't be a common trend.

Well, I think what happened here is that Adobe was developing this application for Windows only. Then, they saw Intel Macs and said, hey, for a little extra dev work, we can support Macs too!

The likely problem here is that their underlying sound processing libraries (probably still left over from Cool Edit et al) are heavily reliant on Intel technologies.

I seriously doubt they started from scratch and decided that they'd do it Intel only just to tick us all off. It's seriously significantly easier to just use Apple's Intel/PPC libraries OR isolate your bottleneck code and #ifdef away the two hand-tweaked assembly bits, than to even support older versions of Mac OS. I mean, seriously: developing an app which is backwards compatible with Jaguar is SIGNIFICANTLY harder than developing (from scratch) an app which supports Tiger/PPC and Tiger/Intel!

In any case: will this be an emerging trend? Probably. I can imagine a lot of Windows developers will look at their legacy codebase, the newly-changed calculus of Mac compatibility, and decide that it will be easy to slap a Mac-friendly interface on their Windows/Intel code base where that was just plain impossible before. And, yes, there will also be those who otherwise might have taken the plunge into a true Mac version of their software who look at the same calculus and decide it would save them a whole lot of money and cost them only half of their new market to just slap a Mac-happy interface on their old Windows workhorse instead.

So, for better or ill, that's what we're likely to see. The good part is that it's an increase in software available for the Mac. The bad part is that it's a decrease in software written ground-up to work perfectly on the Mac.
 
Random yet related question:

What do people recommend using to record basic voiceovers in iMovie and FCExpress? My high school students currently use ProTools and Mbox and it's just way too complicated to record a simple voiceover.
 
Westside guy said:
Of course I can see the other side of this. Writing universal apps is not just a matter of "checking a box" in XCode; despite what I've heard some non-coders say on the subject.

Umm, I'm far from a non-coder. Writing a new app is very much an issue of "checking a box" in XCode. The problems come in when dealing with a years-old code base, much of which has embedded processor assumptions (ranging from hand-tweaked assembly to direct vector calls to assumptions on byte order).

New code, though, you know that you have to support multiple CPU architectures and so you call htons for your byte ordering and use vector libraries rather than direct calls; the sole remaining issue is hand-tweaked assembly, which should be significantly less than 1% of your overall application code especially if you are putting out a new product (you typically don't have enough knowledge to find the bottlenecks where going straight down to the metal is required until your app has been out in users' hands for a while). With all that absorbed in "the process", the only thing left is, yes, checking the box in XCode to generate the UB version of your app.

There's a bit more involved at the compile stage if you want to support both UB and older OS versions (Panther, Jaguar), but it's a lot easier to tell your customers that they have to upgrade to Tiger on their old G4s and G5s than to tell them they have to buy a whole new machine!
 
i'm pretty sure that adobe has said that CS3 will be universal, so you guys need to calm down. i highly doubt it will be intel only. as for the performance on intel macs of cs2, its kinda sluggish. it takes forever to launch. its pretty rough.
 
Instead of coming out with new applications, I would prefer that Adobe put more of an effort into developing an Intel-Mac version of PhotoShop just a bit sooner than Spring of 2007. I've been delaying buying a new Mac until the new CS3 is available. :confused: Doesn't make much sense to buy a new computer, when the application that you use the most runs better on the old one!
 
This demonstrates that Adobe is a bunch of morons. If they listened to Apple and used xCode they could click one button and produce a universal binary.

Perhaps Adobe writes ****** software that isn't engineered to be platform independant.
 
Surely the safest way for software to ensure 100% compliance with OS X is to use Xcode - which automatically produces universal binaries. I would be quite wary of buying software that doesn't follow Apples recommendations. Any changes to OS X could potentially cause problems.

Also seems odd that Adobe are using a mixture of software development methods. They've obviously been using some dodgy compiler if it's taking them this long to move to Xcode. Yet lightroom is being developed from ground up as Universal binary - yet this other software isn't. Very strange.
 
Why such a negative response? The software out there sucks... more competition means more quality. Sound design needs some major upgrades. It needs to more innovate.
 
darwen said:
Why such a negative response? The software out there sucks... more competition means more quality. Sound design needs some major upgrades. It needs to more innovate.
I had a quick play with SoundBooth and this appeared to suck too. I can't see it being a decent replacement just yet.
 
Come on, people! This isn't Photoshop. This is a beta. If it is an entirely new application, why should they develop it for PPC? I don't understand all the fuss. Anyone in need of audio software has plenty of options out there. Remember, this isn't even 1.0 yet. It won't be for a while.
 
darwen said:
Why such a negative response? The software out there sucks... more competition means more quality. Sound design needs some major upgrades. It needs to more innovate.

There is absolutely nothing new or innovative about this software. Adobe have pulled a small portion out of a superior program, Audition, and slapped a bit of marketing chat on top to produce a half arsed application that's market is already saturated with adequate basic audio editors - Particularly on the Windows side, which lets remember, will probably make the most profit for Adobe anyway.

I'm complaining because I don't just want this small portion, I want Audition in full for OS X, as many others clearly do. If they can port the original code base for SoundBooth, then certainly can for Audition.

tk421 said:
If it is an entirely new application.

It's not. Read above.

volk said:
FWIW, I discovered today that HairerSoft is working on a pro version of Amadeus. It is only available as a beta at this point, but I have downloaded it for experimentation. Apparently, they have added multitrack support. You can learn more here: http://www.hairersoft.com/AmadeusPro/AmadeusPro.html

I haven't had a chance to install it yet, but I am hoping it works...

Awesome, ill check that out. Thanks.
 
Westside guy said:
Of course I can see the other side of this. Writing universal apps is not just a matter of "checking a box" in XCode; despite what I've heard some non-coders say on the subject.

I call bull -- I have a lot of code that I compile as universal at home and work. Sure it's a little more than checking a box, but for a lot of code, it's not much more.

And for an app that started as Intel, making the reverse transition is probably much easier. There is no CodeWarrior legacy crap, MPW, etc, etc. It already compiles in GCC 4 and will continue to do so under PPC. The only remaining issues are endian issues and maybe the possible use of assembly code.
 
I think it's a little early to start worrying about PPC support being dropped entirely. I see this more as an exception than an oncoming norm.

If not and suddenly all PPC support is dropped...it's upgrade time! :eek: :D
 
BenRoethig said:
I'm sorry for everyone with a PowerPC Mac, but the sooner the PowerPC is a distant memory, the better for the platform.

I'll agree with that if you're willing to cover the bill on a new Intel Mac of my choosing for me. ;)
 
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