I am an audio "nut" and that goes way back. When I was in grade school my classmates "rolled their eyes" over my ability to recite from memory every radio station in listening distance, including dial location, and t some extent program schedule.
Adobe brings us some really great product and I am currently playing with a trial version of Audition CS6. BUT, Adobe tends to provide us with help files that really.... well, they... O.K. go ahead and say it: Help Files that really suck!!!!
I have finally accepted the fact that whatever I pay for a computer program these days, plan on immediately spending at least 150% of that price tag in purchasing books to substitute for what we got a generation ago from the help files.
Adobe produces a lot of software that will never sell in the quantities of say a WORD or EXCEL so they need some revenue from books and traveling seminars to keep their revenue sources balanced... I assume.
Here is the problem as I see it. Audio is a niche market. I go into Barnes and Noble and I find rows of books on cameras. Rows of books on computer programming. Magazines on all-of-the-above! But audio? The available on-the-shelf books on how to do audio is somewhere down in the noise level between slim and none. And I am very reluctant to mail-order technical books because too many times I have found that I just paid 59.95 to get a bound copy of the useless help files of a program.
//*****RANT MODE OFF *****//
I don't do this for a living, and don't have an employer who is going to foot the bill: I can't plan on traveling to Orlando or Las Vegas to take a $595 3-day seminar on "how to".
What do the rest of you turn to in order to conquer and discover all the features in a program like Audition. Do you talk to each other on the phone?
There must be something I am overlooking. Surely there are some affordable resources that are low hanging fruit in the tree of knowledge. I have worked with this concept since the days of Cool Edit 96 and I can clean up lectures, seminars and sermons with the best of them. But the CS5.5 and CS6 version have me treading water and gasping for air!
Point me to some of your favorite "learning holes" before I am driven to drink at some favorite "watering holes". ;D
Adobe brings us some really great product and I am currently playing with a trial version of Audition CS6. BUT, Adobe tends to provide us with help files that really.... well, they... O.K. go ahead and say it: Help Files that really suck!!!!
I have finally accepted the fact that whatever I pay for a computer program these days, plan on immediately spending at least 150% of that price tag in purchasing books to substitute for what we got a generation ago from the help files.
Adobe produces a lot of software that will never sell in the quantities of say a WORD or EXCEL so they need some revenue from books and traveling seminars to keep their revenue sources balanced... I assume.
Here is the problem as I see it. Audio is a niche market. I go into Barnes and Noble and I find rows of books on cameras. Rows of books on computer programming. Magazines on all-of-the-above! But audio? The available on-the-shelf books on how to do audio is somewhere down in the noise level between slim and none. And I am very reluctant to mail-order technical books because too many times I have found that I just paid 59.95 to get a bound copy of the useless help files of a program.
//*****RANT MODE OFF *****//
I don't do this for a living, and don't have an employer who is going to foot the bill: I can't plan on traveling to Orlando or Las Vegas to take a $595 3-day seminar on "how to".
What do the rest of you turn to in order to conquer and discover all the features in a program like Audition. Do you talk to each other on the phone?
There must be something I am overlooking. Surely there are some affordable resources that are low hanging fruit in the tree of knowledge. I have worked with this concept since the days of Cool Edit 96 and I can clean up lectures, seminars and sermons with the best of them. But the CS5.5 and CS6 version have me treading water and gasping for air!
Point me to some of your favorite "learning holes" before I am driven to drink at some favorite "watering holes". ;D