Does Audition have a feature comparable to Cubase's "Lanes"?

[Corey21858920wj0p]

Hi folks,

I generally use Cubase for editing audio, but I'm working with some folks who use Audition. I'm trying to identify how to do something in Audition that I do in Cubase.

In Cubase, you can create "lanes" within a track, each one being its own "sub-track" in a sense. When a track has multiple lanes, only the lane on the "top" will play. If you remove a chunk of audio from a lane higher in the stack, the next lane with audio present in that time frame will play during that window. See the attached image for an example of what I mean.

This feature is extremely useful when editing an audiobook, as I can just create a long track of room tone which will be present anytime I remove unwanted noises like excess breaths, pops, clicks, etc.

If anyone could direct me to how to accomplish this in Audition, I'd be much obliged. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.

-Corey

[Rag and Bone]

I'm not familiar with Cubase, but if you wanted to add room tone to gaps, you could add a room tone track, possibly auto-ducking it against the dialogue tracks.

[Corey21858920wj0p]

Hey, thanks for the reply! I actually found this Cubase feature by playing with auto-ducking. However, it was very tetchy and could result in a "pumping" sound at gaps. The Cubase lanes let the room tone just come up instantly with no need to duck or play with levels, and I had assumed Audition did something similar.

I've asked about this in multiple places and it seems like Audition simply doesn't do this at all, sadly.

[Rag and Bone]

Yeah, you can play with the auto ducking settings, but frankly, I never use it—I just duck manually.

That sure sounds like a nice feature. They must be doing something fairly sophisticated to make that sound natural.

[Corey21858920wj0p]

Well, it wouldn't sound very natural if one were to clip audio out in the wrong place. But if I'm removing excess breaths, replacing a bad take, adjusting a section break or tweaking pacing, it works great, because I only clip the voice track at places where it was already room tone.

The main thing this saves me is having to paste in a chunk of room tone to cover any gaps. It's just there. If I didn't have the lanes, there'd be silence, which sounds really unnatural, or I'd have to paste in chunks of room tone and possibly adjust their length.

The lanes are a huge timesaver in that workflow context.

[AVLien]

I know it doesn't answer your question, but if you have the means, get your hands on a license for RX9. It does all of what you are asking for, and does it magnificently.

[AVLien]

TL;DR: No

TL: Audition is more geared toward broadcast audio production (voiceovers for video, multitrack recording, maybe some light foley stuff, etc). It's target audience seems to be podcasters and videographers. It will therefore probably always be lacking in the functionalities of DAWs like Cubase or Logic. I'd be tickled pink if they would just let us group tracks as Acid Pro (and just about any other DAW on the planet) does. Without functions like that Audition will never be a good DAW for serious audio track production imo.

Been working with audio for 30 years, if I need to do anything like what you are doing I will reach for another DAW every time. Audition is an exercise in frustration in those instances. You can manage to do things like this (as Rag and Bone has beautifully illustrated in his answer) but I find myself fighting the software. It's not just Audition btw, Adobe's mandate seems to be "produce software that does everything okay...but nothing well." (Change my mind Adobe. 🤨 Been waiting for decades.) To be fair, Cubase just does that, noithing else. Adobe tries to make everyone happy, often the result is that nobody is. They're market share doesn't seem to be hurting too much from it though...