One area where Premiere Pro is significantly superior to most other editing applications is audio.  Sony Vegas is arguable as good, but falls short on some of editing features - Avid Liquid comes close for audio editing, although will not edit down to the sample level.

• Surround Sound support - one of the few programs to support proper 5.1 surround sound - you can even position your audio in “surround sound”.   Once you have made the mix you will need to export it as a 5.1 Dolby digital file.  Premiere cannot do this without adding an extra plug-in.  We do not sell this plug-in at DVC and you need to visit the Surcode website for more information. At the time of writing this the price for the plug-in is $295.  If you just want to have stereo on you DVD or Blu-ray disc then you can do so without buying any extra software.   Alternatively, if you buy the Quadro CX card you also get a plug-in that can create 5.1 Dolby digital for both Blu-ray and DVD.
• Highly accurate sound mixing - you can adjust sound right down to the sample level, not just per frame as with most other programs.  This also means you can place sound very accurately on the timeline.
• Support for industry standard VST plug-ins - giving a huge range of filters, on top of those supplied with the program, to use.
• Submix tracks allow you to route several tracks into one and then apply effects to this submix track.
• Audio is displayed as left and right channels on the timeline - like Avid Liquid, and you can choose to break these out to mono clips, or just use the left or right channel.
• You have control over the clip level and the track volume, which can be raised or lowered as desired.  Plus you can write your audio levels as you listen to the audio.
• Premiere has a “voice over tool - select an area and then play the video and record a voice over whilst it plays.  The resulting sound file is then placed on a track in the timeline for you to edit.
• Premiere Pro draws “Pek” files of the audio when loaded.  These give you an instant redraw of the on-screen wave form as you zoom in and out of the timeline - not more waiting for the screen to redraw like non-pro versions.  It does this in the background while you work.
• Support for ASIO sound cards means better and more responsive editing.  The audio scrub is particularly nice.  For surround sound mixing you will need to get the right kind of sound card.  Even though most sound cards these days are surround sound a lot do not have ASIO drivers and you need ASIO drivers to be able to hear your surround sound mix as you edit.  A typical ASIO sound card that will support this is about £100. We do not include such a sound card in the system as standard since most people will not edit surround sound so a cheaper card is good enough.  If you want to edit surround sound then please mention this when you are buying a system

Adobe Soundbooth & Audition

Adobe have two dedicated audio editing programs - Soundbooth and Audition.  If you want to take a clip from the Premiere timeline to either of these programs you just select the clip and choose "edit in Soundbooth (or Audition)".  Premiere then makes a copy of the audio and opens the sound program.  There you tweak the clip as needed and when you save the clip it is automatically updated in Premiere.

What can these programs do?

They have similar facilities - Soundbooth was designed to let people unfamiliar with audio editing do some very sophisticated effects, where as Audition is an audio tool to rival M-Audio's ProTools.  They can do the following:

• Single clip and multi-track audio editing - down to the sample level in both cases.
• Noise reduction - sample a noise, like a microphone buzz, for example, and then extract that noise from the entire clip.
• Spectral frequency display - show the sound as a range of frequencies (rather than the standard waveform).  Then you can pick out certain noises, lasso them and either reduce or remove them.  A good example would be a shot we filmed with a Seagull in the background.  The high pitched shriek of the seagull appeared as a bright spike which we lassoed and removed, leaving the rest of the sound intact.
• Mixing audio with video - you can bring in a piece of video and complete the audio mix in either program.  Soundbooth has the advantage that it can bring in a Premiere timeline, unrendered, and you can add an audio mix to that.  Any changes made in premiere are reflected in Soundbooth immediately.  This is called a dynamic link and is just one of several you get if you buy the Adobe Production Studio Premium.
• Music creation.  Audition is a traditional looping program.  You can create loops from anything and the layout the loops on a timeline to make a score.  Soundbooth does not do this - it creates musical scores itself from a range of pre-made styles.  You add a score to the timeline and can change the intensity, the length and where the start middle and end are and Soundbooth re-organises the music to fit.