[MW Forums]

Adobe is going head-to-head with Apple's SoundTrack Pro by releasing a public beta of Soundbooth. more

[adobephile]

I think it's interesting that Adobe is indeed continuing to take the Mac platform seriously, and even moreso than before, as evidenced by Lightroom coming out initially as Mac-first and then Universal; a public beta of a Mac version of Flex; and now this Soundbooth app in MacIntel, which is also targeted at creative professionals.
To me, this spells smoother convergence of traditional print media, Adobe's traditional and yet current stronghold, with existing and emerging electronic media. It not only better assures their continuing dominance in the new media--especially by leveraging Flash and other Macromedia assets--but they are looking for broad adoption through expanding developer activity and through support of open standards such as Java and XML, as the new media is largely interactive, thus requiring "documents" to be interactive and more akin to applications.
It's like they're sowing new seeds in a hugely expanded garden. Lots of work yet to do to cultivate all the "plantings." But it's very exciting to me to contemplate the eventual tasting of the fruits of the upcoming harvest.

[moose_n_squirrel]

I say yay, anything either company does to keep the other one innovating is a good thing for us all.
Wasn't expecting an Intel-only release, though. I thought it would be a few more years before "Universal Binary" turned into "Intel Only, PPC SOL."

[jeffcarlson]

The URL given at the end of this article is slightly off: it should be
http://labs.adobe.co...ies/soundbooth/

[TxTom]

I think your evaluation of the PPC-SOL situation is quite misguided. While this new application is indeed leaving the PPC crowd in the past, there are actually very few totally new MAJOR applications coming out lately. Of the major apps out there, those which are not universal as of yet, will be soon and will support the PPC architecture for a good time to come. Adobe simply decided that building this brand new (presumably 'major' app) for both processors wouldn't be economically feasible. I don't blame them. Apple has the PPC crowd covered for the time being and those who are serious about audio will 'keep up with the joneses' before too long and be candidates for the new Adobe offering.

[MacTel]

The battle rages on! Believe it more than ever baby! Apple and Adobe are locking horns. Adobe will make Apple go/stay cross platform on all their pro applications. You just watch, I would not be surprised one bit if FCP or Aperture were released for Windows XP and Vista.

[Jason Snell]

Quote:

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The URL given at the end of this article is slightly off: it should be
http://labs.adobe.co...ies/soundbooth/

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quite right; it's now been corrected. thanks, Jeff.

[Graeme_Smith]

From the MacWorld RSS feed:
"Adobe is going head-to-head with Apple's SountTrack Pro by releasing a public beta of Soundbooth."
Heh, couldn't resist posting this.

[veggiedude]

I went to the download page and I see that the Mac download link is above the Windows link, the way it ought to be. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
I tried it out a bit, but it seems too simple, you are probably better off using Amadeus (shareware). I'll stick with Soundtrack Pro.

[Nobody]

Could Apple's bank cash buy Adobe?

[Uncle_Deercamp]

I just hope this program is better than Bias Peak. So far, it seems like it...

[markbvt]

this spells smoother convergence of traditional print media, Adobe's traditional and yet current stronghold, with existing and emerging electronic media
How does an audio app have anything whatsoever to do with Adobe's traditional print media stronghold?
As a specialist in digital print production, I've got to say that Adobe's emphasis on web technologies is strongly detrimental to their traditional print stronghold. My company is still primarily using Illustrator 10 because CS and CS2 are too buggy and problematic. We'd be even happier if we could get away with using Illustrator 8, which was the last really good version of Illustrator that Adobe made. It's a shame, because Photoshop CS2 is great, and InDesign CS2 is tolerable (I'm no great fan, but it's not bad). Don't bother calling me a Luddite, because I'm usually an early adopter of new technologies -- but if they prove to be detrimental to a smooth workflow, like Illustrator CS/CS2 have been, they don't get adopted full-time. This problem began when Adobe started trying to position Illustrator as a web design application, and got much worse when they decided to adopt InDesign's text engine, which has been an unmitigated disaster in trying to work with legacy files. Maybe they should have divided Illustrator into a print version and a web version and not bothered trying to approximate the typographic tools of a page-layout application.
If we can expect further useless features from Adobe in the future (how about if we incorporate some audio editing into Illustrator? yeah, that would be cool!), then they might face a problem in their traditional print stronghold very similar to the one Quark has been facing. At this point I'd almost rather use QuarkXPress 4.1 (which actually works and produces reliable output, even if it's pretty primitive) than face Adobe's idea of what print and web convergence should be -- I get the impression from them sometimes that they think print should just die already so they can stop supporting it.
Sorry for the rant. Adobe used to make great software. I wish they'd get back to it instead of trying to shoehorn in everything but the kitchen sink. At least Soundbooth is its own app and not a feature in something else... for now.
--mark

[robertRoss]

It also compete's against Sony's Acid, Vegas, and Cinescore on Windows, which are very popular with professionals and which are very similar to SoundTrack Pro (some of the same programmers.)

[kennethfcooper]

Quote:

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Soundbooth is designed to be a spoke in the visual workflow, while [high-end audio applications like] Audition are designed to be the hub.

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This is a nicely turned phrase and it rings true. I do not do video production, I build test systems, but I know what it is like to put together a system with a half dozen devices that each want to be the hub. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif