How do I delete silence across two tracks?

[Jacob USC]

I'm transitioning to Audition from Audacity. In Audacity, you can select two tracks (e.g. Host and Guest for an interview podcast) and delete silence to get rid of any awkward pauses. However, it does not trim the silence if there's audio on the other track. So if the Host asks a question and the Guest pauses for a long time to think of an answer, it'll shorten that on both tracks, but once the Guest starts talking it won't shorten the Host track even though the Host is silent.

In Audition, the Effects->Diagnostics panel is grayed out in multitrack mode and it seems like I can only edit one track at a time in Waveform mode, and when I delete silence there it deletes all the parts where the Host is letting the Guest speak. Once I get the panel open, I can use it in multitrack, but it doesn't actually delete the silence, it just removes it from the track and leaves the gap in the timeline so it's effectively still just silence. Is there some way to do this the way Audacity does?

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

You have to do your edits in Multitrack. If you align each track correctly, then it's possible to select across tracks, and using ripple delete, remove exactly what you want to -see screen grab: (You can select multiple tracks by clicking on each one with the Ctrl key held down)

You have to bear in mind that this is not deleting the audio from your file, just altering the way that it's being played in Multitrack view, which is essentially non-destructive file player - so if you change your mind, you can undo it or alter it. And it will work across as many tracks as you want it to. This is significantly more powerful than anything that Audacity can do, and no, Audition doesn't do what Audacity does, simply because it has a better alternative. Anyway, when you've got your whole session the way you want it to be, then you can export it, or mix it down, to a new file.

The purpose of Waveform view is to be able to work destructively on a file. If you make temporal changes to a file in Waveform view that's already in use in Multitrack, then it will alter the session, generally in ways that are rather unhelpful (it will generally shift all your edits).

[Jacob USC]

This isn't really a better alternative though because this method requires me to delete each pause manually. I want to be able to use the Delete Silence (Process) option in Multitrack and just have Audition find all pauses and delete them automatically. It would take me hours to identify, select, and ripple delete every small pause by hand.