"Calculating Playback" taking 15-20 seconds Before Playback Begins

[Stanley Arthur]

After researching this issue, it appears that the problem with Audition is that it was never improved to the point of taking advantage of multi-threading processors. Projects with more than 5-6 tracks start to bog down horribly with hangs of 10-20 seconds after perfectly normal editing actions, combined with pressing play, getting the "Calculating Playback" notification, then waiting 10-20 seconds for playback to begin. Additionally, it's necessary to limit processor-intensive effects like reverbs to only 1-2 instances per project to avoid extremely choppy, bogged-down playback. I have a 9th gen 24 core proc that is hardly working, but Audition was never adapted to take advantage of it's power. I pay a fairly hefty annual fee to use the Adobe suite. I worked for 25 years as a video producer for an institution that paid for everything. Now that I'm retired, it's on me. Is it too much to ask to have an audio production application that is on par with Adobe's other industry-leading apps? When it comes to choosing a DAW, there are a lot of options out there, but I'm paying for Audition. I would like to see a statement from Adobe about the fututre of Audition before I make a commitment to a different company's full-blown DAW. I don't need midi. I just want to mix my sessions without constant grief.

[Rag and Bone]

I don't think your experience is typical. My projects aren't huge, but I often have 12 tracks in a session, with reverb and eq on many of them, along with a compressor  or limiter on the mix bus, and seldom encounter bothersome lag.

My system is Mac M2 Max (32G, 12 core), so it seems your results should be better.  

Has the app always behaved this way? The "Calculating Playback" message might be expected if you're using some resource intensive process. Can you identify one process that seems to be an issue? Does pre-rendering that process help?

I assume you've done the usual steps of clearing caches, resetting prefs and re-installing?

[Stanley Arthur]

Up until I retired in 2023, I used Audition sparringly and never for major multitrack projects. I can't speak for Mac performance. I have a Dell XPS workstation I paid $4,500 for in 2023. The "usual" steps did nothing to solve the issues. Most of the advice I get outside of this community is along the lines of start using Ableton Live or Reaper. Audition isn't a 'real' DAW. Despite that, I've always liked the look of it. I'm very comfortable with it and I'm old. I'm not willing to pay more money for a new app and learn it. I have heard others have better luck using ASIO (I use the default MME) but I haven't had any success with that. I installed ASIOforall but it didn't help.

[Stanley Arthur]

I have found the solution to all my problems with Audition.... and it's Reaper. It just works. Everything works. It even has quantize audio tracks to a tempo grid, which is a huge thing fort me. It also allows me to run ASIO using my TASCAM Model 24 mixer/recorder. I can record up to 22 tracks of audio into Reaper simultaneously from the TASCAM. Best of all, I've got the interface configured to look almost exactly like what I was doing with Audition. Oh, and it's only $60 up until at least the end of 2026.