CS6 Production Premium revealed. Audition CS6 Details.

Question

Good news, everyone!
I'm very excited to share the news that Production Premium CS6 will be revealed at NAB next week, but even better, I get to share details about Audition CS6 with everyone right away.  More detailed information about some of the new features will be released on the Audition Inside Sound blog this week, but I'l be happy to discuss specifics about the new features on this message thread.
Here's a quick list of the new features and functionality:
Audition CS6 Highlights:
Real-time and rendered clip stretching in multi-track - including new “varispeed” mode
Clip Grouping – Including suspend, trimming, & stretching of groups
VST3 support (Mac and Win) and more effects
New pitch correction/manipulation tools
Automatic speech alignment tool
Red Book Audio CD burning
Hardware controllers support - Including native Avid EUCON and Mackie MCU support
Write/Touch/Latch automation modes
Media browser with file preview
Session Templates and Enhancements
Expanded file format support (Native, libsndfile, DLMS)
Audition CS6 Complete List of New Features:
Multitrack
Session templates
Automatic speech alignment
Clip grouping
Suspend mode
Focus clip actions
Trim/fade grouped clips
Time aligned stretching of groups
Clip spotting – Manual entry of clip start or end time
Clip stretching - Real-time and rendered mode using iZotope Radius
Vari-speed clip stretching
Metronome Track
Skip selection play mode
Save all open files with session preference
Select all clips from playhead to end of track
Sum to mono per track
Bounce selected track
Reveal clip in files panel
Trim to selection
Send clip to back
Preference to play/hide overlapped clips
Mixer enhancements
Snap volume and pan envelopes at 0dB
Drag and drop file marker range to multitrack (as clip)
Waveform (Editor)
Multiple clipboards
Skip selection play mode
Open append
Subclip marker support (Premiere and Prelude)
Improvements to spectral spot Healing (Limit selection to x- or y- axis)
Pitch display
Effects
VST3
Side Chain support
Improved plug-in scanning engine
New channel map per effect – Control over effect input and output channel routing
Save and apply Effect Racks as a favorite
New/Added effects:
Automatic Pitch Correction
Manual Pitch Correction with new spectral pitch view mode
Generate Tones
Doppler Shifter
Notch Filter
Graphic Phase Shifter
Gain / Fade Envelopes
General
Media Browser
Preview in Media Browser and files panel
Search/filter in Media Browser and files panel
Display markers for all files in markers panel
Access and open order fields in files panel (sorting)
Keyboard shortcuts (shortcut editor enhancements, copy to clipboard)
Adobe Graphics Manager Implementation to improve UI drawing
DLMS Integration to support additional video and audio file format import/open
OpenGL display for video including improved video display for improved performance
New spectral display preferences
Support for additional framerates (23.976, 59.94 ndf/df)
Machine-specific device preferences (optional common audio hardware settings for all users)
Import most preferences from CS5.5
Pinch-to-zoom, rotate to scrub Mac touchpad support (Mac only)
Improved properties panel UI layout
Broadcast Specific
ITU Loudness – Normalize files (batch) to ITU-BS.1770-2 (R128), view loudness level diagnostics
Native MPEG1-Layer 2 audio (MP2) import and export
Enhanced CART timer and metadata support
Control Surface/Automation
Mackie MCU, native Avid EUCON, other controller support
Recordable track automation (Full Write, Touch, Latch support with undo)
Format support
MPEG4, HD Video, and additional audio import (via DLMS)
Native MPEG1-Layer2 (MP2) audio import and export
Native APE, FLAC, OGG export and import
libsndfile export – export most formats supported by libsndfile
CD Import metadata support (via FreeDB)
Enhanced RAW format support
Output
Red Book CD Burning (via CD layout)
Quick burn single-file, CD-TEXT)
Advanced mixdown – Mixdown tracks, busses and/or master as seperate files
Save All Audio As batch process
Save Copies of Associated Files – Collect/archive all files in a session
Save open file references in session (“remember” all open files with the session)
Advanced session export – Including ability to convert sample rate of session and associated files
Preferred asset importer saved with session files
edited to include additional features.

Answer 1

MIDI Sequencing and VSTi support is not available in Audition CS6.  There was a lot of primary feature development this cycle, and I would not have wanted to make the compromises to a MIDI environment that would have been necessary to squeeze it in this cycle.
MIDI composition support remains in our feature backlog and is considered for each release, but there are several reasons it doesn't typically bubble up higher in priority.  Audition and Cool Edit always shined as audio editing tools, and this has always been the focus of the team with MIDI support sort of an afterthought, but never our core competency.  With Audition 3, we built a basic MIDI Sequencer with VSTi support, but ran into some implementation speed bumps when plugging it into the existing playback engine that resulted in a less-than-great experience in my opinion.  It functioned, but I've never felt it held up to the other areas of Audition in terms of usability and simplicity.
I know there are those on the team - myself included - that would love to develop a full MIDI environment, and while it's never been a highly-demanded feature, I know plenty of users would like a basic composition workflow in Audition as well.  If we tackle this, I would hope we can take the time and resources to design a very competent interface that you enjoy using, and not just build something as a check mark on a feature list.  We can start a separate thread on this, perhaps in the Feature Request forum, and discuss in detail what sort of functionality and tools you would like to see in Audition to support MIDI and virtual instruments.