Audition CS5.5 and Macbook pro performance

Question

Hey guys, this is my first post on this forum. I’ll give you a little history as to how I got here.
Started off on CE2.0 then moved onto Audition 1.5 and now I’m on Audition 3.0
I know Audition like the back of my hand, It suits my workflow perfectly(well almost perfectly).
I found that I was reaching some limitations with Audition 3. A normal session for me would consist of 1 Midi track for the EZDrummer VSTi and then up to around 30 audio tracks. My genre is rock/indie/acoustic. Each track will generally have compression and reverb. My vocal track consists of Reverb, 2 compression effects(to compress and de-ess) and sometimes Antares Autotune.
What I found was that I could tell the system was starting to giveway, I was getting pops and clicks during playback, and I would have to start freezing tracks. I found that Antares Autotune was pushing my system, along with the Guitar Suite.
My main problems I found was comping tracks. I would need to create a new track for each vocal take, which ends up pushing the system even more.
I decided I needed to make a change. So I started looking for alternate DAW’s which had a “take” system. I was deciding between Logic or Protools. I’ve been running a PC setup since forever, so Logic would mean I would have to buy a Mac. I choose Logic 9 as I have witnessed my friend comp vocals on it, and it looked very user friendly, So I bought myself a Macbook Pro 15” with the i7 CPU.
So I’ve been using this setup for the last 2 months or so, and to be perfectly honest I miss Adobe Audition. Dont get me wrong, Logic is great, but it feels more like a toy compared to Audition. I feel more at home with Audition. More specifically the workflow, and the Studio Reverb plugin is the best reverb plugin I have EVER used. Not to mention the dynamics processor has great de-esser presets.
ANYWAY.
Its question time.
In Audition and more specifically Audition 5.5 Is there a built in “take” system which I’m not aware about? Or do we all just create a new track for each vocal take and comp that way? I don’t mind this way of Comping vocals, the problem lies when the system starts to pop and click due to having too many tracks. This brings me to my next question.
How is the performance of the Mac version of Audition 5.5 on a 15” i7 Macbook Pro with 4gig of ram? Unfortunately my trial period has run out, and I didn’t get much of a chance to push the system(I couldn’t open my .ses files).
Is there a way to convert .ses to .sesx? I tried converting to .xml and it didn’t carry over the plugins.
Can I extend my trial period of Audition 5.5 in anyway?
I really want to give Audition another shot if I can convert to .sesx with ease and have great performance with my Macbook pro.

Answer 1

Okay, I've spent some time this morning looking at Guitar Rig 5 in CS5.5 and CS6.  Guitar Rig can install a lot of flavors of audio plug-in depending on your need.  Audition only cares about the VST and Audio Unit (on Mac.)
There was an issue we found in Audition CS5.5 where some effects don't properly report their channelization.  While not technically an Audition bug (it's part of the VST spec, I believe) we were not trapping these wayward plug-ins, which is why you saw Guitar Rig listed, but disabled.  We addressed this issue in Audition CS6 by catching plug-ins that do not respond to channel requests as expected and assigning them as appropriate.
Guitar Rig is now enabled in Audition CS6 VST Effects List
More importantly, Audition CS6 opens up some pretty impressive effect channelization options which allow you to route the channels of a file into an effect in any manner you like.  This allows you full control over which channel is assigned to which effect input, and which channel the output should be applied.
Feeding a 5.1 file into a Mono effect now enables precise control over channel routing.
Full control over 5.1 files into 5.1 effects as well.  Any combination of channelizations and effects should work well.
Lastly, here's Guitar Rig 5 running in Audition CS6.  While it definitely works, I do not recommend modifying this particular guitar track.  Much like trying to pitch correct Freddie Mercury, Keith Richards guitar work does not benefit from additional processing