Adobe’s new audio application, compatible with Intel Macs and Windows PCs, has been formally announced today. CDM was one of the first sites to look in-depth at Soundbooth CS3 back in the fall, and we broke the story that the software would be available as a standalone. Now we have a little bit more in the way of details: Soundbooth will ship in “third quarter” or “summer” (depending on which language you read), and it’ll ship with the CS3 Production Suite. I’m a little disappointed that Adobe chose not to ship it as part of the Design suite, since part of the product’s vision was to help people using tools like Flash get into audio, but then again, I think Adobe retained something to “upsell” to.

The good news is, you’ll be able to buy Soundbooth standalone for US$199. And that sets Adobe apart from Apple’s Soundtrack Pro, which requires you buy Final Cut Studio.

Interestingly, this leaves Audition Pro as exclusively a standalone app. Adobe has promised it isn’t abandoning Audition, though. I think this makes some sense: Audition is really geared at the audio production market. The people who are experts in Photoshop, Flash, After Effects, and so on are more likely to want a streamlined tool like Soundbooth, and hire someone else to do audio production. Well, unless they’re one of the multi-disciplinary creatives who read this site, of course, in which case they may go all-out.

Adobe has put together a product comparison with Audition. It basically breaks down to this:

“I just need to edit some audio. What software should I use?” You hear this question all the time, and there’s rarely a good, simple answer. (Yes, there’s the open source program Audacity, but it’s got major functionality missing, a kludgy interface that’s hard on beginners, and some stability issues. It’s hardly the best open source has to offer.) Adobe is working on a solution for Mac and Windows they’re calling Soundbooth.

Acquisitions are often bad omens for software products, but in the case of Adobe purchasing Cool Edit Pro and transforming it into Audition, good things have been happening. Audition 2.0 is currently my audio editor of choice on any platform: it’s got a great interface, lots of powerful effects, multitrack capabilities that will nonetheless get out of your way when you don’t want them, strong roundtrip workflows with Premiere (something that still doesn’t work quite right in Soundtrack/Final Cut), and fantastic editing tools including a full editable spectrum view.

Audition is a terrific editor, but it’s also overkill for lots of people — just like most audio editors on the market. Enter Soundbooth:

Adobe Soundbooth

This sums up the goals: “While Adobe Audition is designed to give audio professionals in music, film, video, and radio a flexible audio production toolkit that can handle a broad range of audio engineering tasks, Adobe Soundbooth is focused on creative professionals without audio expertise, or those who prefer an application focused on making short work of the most common tasks they handle every day.”

In other words, it’s Audition for graphic artists.

There are clearly some features missing, but for basic work it’s already quite usable. Here’s a look at what it can do currently: