Removal of CD Authoring in Adobe Audition
Audio CDs have served creators for decades, but the way our customers deliver and distribute audio has fundamentally shifted. In an upcoming release of Adobe Audition (25.3) , we will be retiring the application's built-in CD authoring features. Going forward, customers who need to create audio CDs can do so by exporting their finished audio from Audition and burning it through their operating system's native disc tools. This change reflects how production workflows have evolved. The vast majority of today's deliverables are streaming masters, broadcast files, podcasts, video soundtracks, and digital downloads. CD delivery now sits well outside the day-to-day output of most Adobe Audition users, and the disc burning tools built into modern operating systems already handle the small remaining set of cases where a physical audio CD is required. What is being removed?The following CD authoring features will no longer be available in Adobe Audition: CD Layout view: The panel used to assemble, sequence, and prepare a collection of tracks for a Red Book audio CD will be removed. This includes the ability to arrange track order, set pre-gaps, and configure CD-specific metadata such as ISRC codes and UPC/EAN identifiers from within Audition. CD Marker type: The dedicated CD Track marker classification will be retired. Standard marker types (Cue, Range, and so on) will continue to function as they do today and will cover the remaining workflows for navigating, splitting, and exporting audio. CD display format: The time display option that showed playhead position in CD frames (75 frames per second) will be removed. Standard time displays such as, samples, and bars and beats will continue to be available. What is staying?Extract Audio from CD. Ripping audio from a physical CD into Adobe Audition for editing, restoration, or archival work will continue to be supported. Customers working with legacy material, archival projects, or transferring older content into modern formats can rely on this workflow without change. How to create an audio CD going forward For customers who still need to deliver audio on physical CDs, the recommended workflow is straightforward: Finish and master your tracks in Adobe Audition as you normally would. Export each track as an individual file. WAV at 16-bit / 44.1 kHz remains the standard for Red Book audio CDs. Use your operating system's built-in disc burning tools to author and burn the audio CD. macOS: The Music app supports creating audio CDs from a playlist. Windows: Audio CDs can be burned using the disc burning tools included with the operating system. What this means for existing projects Project files that contain CD layouts or CD-specific markers will continue to open. CD markers will be converted to standard markers, and any CD layout content will appear as ordered tracks that can be exported individually. No audio data is lost in the transition. We recommend exporting any active CD layouts to individual audio files prior to updating, so your finished tracks are preserved in a format that is ready for any downstream burning tool. Why we are making this change?We do not take feature removal lightly. Decisions like this are guided by usage data and the broader direction of audio delivery. CD delivery now represents a small fraction of how our customers ship their work, and the tools to burn an audio CD from exported files are built into the operating systems our customers already use. Given this, the CD authoring features in Adobe Audition are no longer needed to support the underlying workflow. There is also a longer-term consideration. Every feature in an application adds weight, and that weight compounds over time. Decades of accumulated capability make it harder for any product to keep pace with new operating systems, hardware architectures, and the broader platform shifts that affect every customer. Reducing surface area that no longer serves modern workflows lightens that load, which matters for every customer who depends on Audition running well on the platforms they use today and the ones coming next. Questions and feedback If you have questions about the transition, workflow concerns, or feedback you would like to share with the Audition team, please reach out through the Adobe Audition Community Forum, or submit feedback directly within the application via Help > Submit Feedback. We appreciate the trust our customers place in Adobe Audition, and the depth of work that has shipped through this application over the years. Thank you for being part of the Audition community.
