As part of its Creative Suite 5.5 announcements today, Adobe released Audition, its professional audio application.

[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]Part of the Production Premium suite, Audition is a native Mac app that allows users to manipulate, mix and restore audio files. Adobe says Audition is a good tool for video editors, audio engineers, and interactive designers.

With a completely rebuilt audio engine, Audition can run multiple multitrack sessions and single file edits simultaneously. You can even open and import files in the background — even files that need sample rate conversion — while you continue to work on open projects, according to Adobe.

It’s Audition’s clean-up tools that hold the power of the application, and those tools are available to the other Creative Suite applications. With its roundtrip editing, edits made to an Adobe Premiere project audio track in Adobe Audition are instantly applied within the original project.

Audition also offers OMF and XML Interchange compatibility, which means it can import and export files with DAWs like Pro Tools, Logic and other professional audio applications.

In addition to support for 5.1 surround, Audition also includes many DSP effects including a few new ones like DeHummer, DeEsser, Speech Volume Leveler, and Surround Reverb. Third-party VST and Audio Unit effects are supported as well.

Audition can be purchased as a standalone product or part of the Production Premium and Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Master Collection, which costs $1699 and $2599, respectively.