Edit window lag: Mac OSX

Question

Hello all:
I'm currently having some issues while running Audition 5.5 on an iMac OSX 10.6 (2.7 GHz Quad core i5 / 4GB). Talked to adobe support [which was comical] and they had no clue what it was. Here's a sample of what is going on:
Zoom is extremely laggy both during playback and while stopped. Scroll in on the waveform and it takes a solid 3 seconds to realize that I want to zoom in. What's worse is if I try to toggle playback while zooming, it's game over. It'll take honestly 4 seconds for it to finally stop playing and glitchily zoom out. I even setup a hardware monitor to log what was going on while doing this and everything was practially idling; CPU, GPU, memory, everything. But Audition was off silently having a heart attack. I tried to adjust some latency settings to see if maybe that was it, but no dice. Walked through some admin steps, deleted prefs, everything except reinstallation with the tech dude but nothing. I'd reinstall, but honestly I don't think that's the issue. There isn't even any lag in the multitrack view. So I'm at a loss.
I guess what I'm looking for is if anyone else has experienced this problem. We've been using 3.0 on our awful PC's with zero issues. It's kind of irritating to have your boss buy this [expensive] software, explaining that it'll be the exact same thing if not better than CS3, only to have it be almost unusable. Any help would be appreciated!
Reid

Answer 1

Hi Durin!
Thanks for the reply. Here's what I got:
- Do you see this problem at ALL zoom levels?  For example, if you open a 10 minute file and are fully zoomed out, are you able to zoom in a few steps without a problem, but once you are zoomed in very tightly, it becomes less manageable?
     -Yes. This happens at all zoom levels.
- Are the files stored on a local drive, or are they being streamed over a network?
     -The files are on the local drive. I've tried doing it off the network drive also with almost the exact same result.
- If you zoom in while stopped and then press play, does the screen scroll/paging update at a normal speed or does it also lag?
     -It depends. Sometimes it will wait until it's finished zooming and then start playing, but some of the time it will start, in the middle, right on one of the choppy zooms. Regardless of playback or starting playback in the middle of zooming, it will zoom in at the same "choppy rate" (if that makes any sense)
- If you attempt to zoom using the Zoom buttons in the interface, do you see the same performance problems?
     -In a word, yes. It's generally about a click behind me.
- This probably goes without saying, but Spectral Frequency view is NOT visible while seeing this behavior, correct?
     -Correct. Spectral Frequency view is not visible during the issue.
Essentially, what I was expecting upon installing this on the Mac was relatively the same experience we have on our PC's running AA 3.0. Each click of the scroll wheel is instantaneously zoomed. It's almost like typing on a lagging machine where the letters don't come up immediately; sure it works, but it throws you off and you tend to make a crapload of mistakes. I really hope this makes sense.
Also, as a side note, is there any way to get added as a beta tester for 6? I was reading a few threads here and saw that you guys were really open to suggestions (which is awesome). We work in Audition regularly and would love to help make the next release even better!
Thanks again,
Reid