Liar-liar, Pants on Fire: Adobe Sundbooth Won't Be Free

Remember Adobe Soundbooth? As it was in the beta stage when Adobe was rather bragging that they'll pull off one free application, the streamlined version of the Audition, meant for flash producers and other creative people who need to edit some audio but don't really need a $1,000 software DAW.

Well, once with the CS3-tag the Soundbooth finally came into being a properly-developed, grown up piece of code and Adobe gave second thoughts to its release just to end up with asking $199 for it. All those who hoped they'll finally get their hands on a neat software won't necessarily be disappointed as it's likely enough they'll go for other free similar programs, whatsoever. But for those who have relied somehow on its capabilities... sorry guys, maybe Adobe considered they're offering too much for free!

I really don't get it why does Soundbooth cost roughly 200 USD while Audition 2.0 is almost $350 and is infinitely more capable and more powerful that anything Soundbooth may ever dream of becoming... It looks to me personally like a bit of a trick here, as Adobe insists quite a lot on the streamlined operation of Soundbooth: they speak a lot of visual creatives who might need a little sound processing power at a certain given time.

This smells a bit like "you don't know sound, we'll give you an application which supplies for your lack of expertise in the field; but you need to pay the $200." Funny how Soundbooth offers less than a quarter of what Audition comes in with yet costs just 30% off the DAW's price. Apart from integrating some Flash-related embedding and streamlining optimized especially for Adobe Flash, Soundbooth offers about the same as Audacity or so many similar sound editors offer for free; and this is quite confusing.

Of course Adobe will insist that Soundbooth is a unique, one-of-a-kind, exceptional software and they ask 200 USD from you just to cover part of the expenses as this price is the bargain of the year. I can't believe such a thing, especially as I have tested the program and published results here. For a free program, it's quite cool; for 200 bucks it's not cool at all!