Is it Possible to Trim an Audio File?

When in Waveform view the way to "trim" is to highlight the audio you want to keep, then go to EDIT > CROP (CTRL + T)

agreed. this is the most cubrsome app ive ever used

Audition isn't cumbersome. If it was, then every radio station in the world (really) wouldn't have been using it sucessfully for the last 20-something years. Most of the problems that ab inito users run into are based simply on not understanding how it works, or how powerful this can be. To make it work effectively you need to be in what we might call the 'Audition mind-set' and once you've got the basics sorted, it's incredibly quick and easy to use. Several million users are unlikely to be wrong...

Audition has two modes of working (views); Waveform, which is destructive, and Multitrack, which isn't. Trim to selection only works in Multitrack view, and there it's very easy to use; make a selection on a track and use Alt+T - done. If you don't want to use the keystrokes, then right-clicking on your selection will bring it up there too.

But what is actually appropriate for any individual user rather depends upon what they want to do, and Audition is pretty deep; there's generally at least two ways of doing almost anything. But fundamentally, Multitrack view is a very posh file player that won't mess up your original files, and Waveform view is a rather more restricted editor that can wreck them completely if you want to.

There is sort-of a basic intention when it comes to editing, and it goes like this: Make a copy of your original file in Waveform view, and do anything basic to it that needs doing - NR, EQ, getting the levels approximately right, stuff like that. Now you can go through it marking the parts you want to use. If you make a selection, then hit F8 you will create a marker range, which shows up in the marker list, and you can give it a name. But the clever bit is that if you right-click on your selection in the list, you'll get an option to import that range - ready trimmed - directly into your multitrack session that you are going to assemble your finished result in. The important thing though is that it's only some numbers you are putting in, not the actual track. The numbers represent the start and stop points of your original file, but in Multitrack they are represented visually like a waveform. This bit often confuses people; that display isn't really your file, just the bits that are going to be played at that point. And yes, by dragging the ends of what has been inserted, you can extend or shrink them still - because they are only numbers. And obviously you can do this as many times as you want or need to - no limit on the number of times you can reuse something. And then you mix down the final result when you're happy with it.

There are other ways of working too. There's nothing to stop you just dumping a file into multitrack view and hacking it up (except that you won't be, obviously). You can place bits of it on other tracks, and you can even make unique copies of it if you want, that are stored as exactly that.

But no, it's not cumbersome - it just requires you to be a bit organised, and understand how it works.