How can I easily highlight, test, and delete sections of my timeline?

Question

I am new to both Logic Pro and to Mac having been editing audio and video on a PC using Sony Sound Forge and Vegas Pro. Every Sunday I record the message at my church, burn a CD and bring it home to edit it before creating CDs and then putting the message on the Internet. I would like to use my Mac and either Logic Pro or Soundtrack Pro (I have both) to do my edits.
My basic workflow after ripping the tracks from the original CD is to remove a lot of pauses, repeated words, and sometimes rearranging the words to make the finished product more understandable. I tell the pastor that I improve on his message!
The way I remove silence, redundant words, etc. in Sound Forge is to drag my cursor down the waveform view on the timeline to highlight the area that I think I need to delete. Usually I can just hit the delete key and move on to the next edit since when I delete the highlighted area of the timeline it does a ripple edit for me. However, sometimes I need to hear what the resulting sound will be prior to actually hitting the delete key. With Sound Forge I can type Ctrl-K and it will play a few seconds before the in point and then a few seconds beginning at the out point. If I need to make an adjustment I can do that and click Ctrl-K again until it sounds right. Then I can delete the highlight area.
Is that kind of workflow available in Logic Pro or even Soundtrack Pro? There are, of course, other things that I need to do but I feel that the effects and tools that I need are built in to the Mac software. I use SoundSoap Pro and Ozone 3 for much of what I do and will figure out how best to utilize them with my Mac.
Thank you for your help.
David

Answer 1

Thank you for your reply, Sampleconstruct. While I have not yet tried your approach to my situation it looks like a lot of keystrokes and commands are going to be involved. Since it takes me over an hour to edit a 30 minute sermon I need as fast a process as possible. Currently, as I play through the timeline and find a section that needs deleting I merely highlight the section and hit the delete key. If I need to listen to a portion of the timeline before and after the highlighted section to see if my selection and/or timing is correct, I hit Ctrl-K which plays the before and after audio. If that sounds OK, I then hit the delete key. If I need to change the highlighted selection I can click and drag either or both ends and re-listen to the results using Ctrl-K. I sometimes even restructure sentences to make them more understandable or add an 's' to words to make them plural, etc.
I often use a similar editing approach to songs that the director wants to shorten. I usually do this by eliminating 1st endings or taking out other sections. In order for the timing to be right I have to listen to the proposed edit prior to deleting the selection so that I can tweak it if necessary.
I really want to eliminate PCs and Windows and work entirely in the Mac arena. I am even taking a college course on FCP in order to do all my video editing on the Mac.