Adobe has announced a public beta of a new product called SoundBooth. The idea is to take a big helping of Audition, along with a dash of Soundtrack Pro, and end up with an easy to use audio production tool for Video/Flash professionals.

It seems like it has potential. The interface follows Adobe’s new palette design, and much of the rest of the look and feel reminds me of Audition or its ancestor, Cool Edit Pro. I’m not sure it’s even fair to call it beta at this point, as it’s obviously far from feature complete. At this point I can’t see anything that would make it worth a second glance when compared to Soundtrack Pro, but I imagine there’s a lot left to be added.

Interestingly, this product will ship for the Mac and for Windows. Even more interestingly, it’s going to be Intel only on the Mac. Sorry PPC users, but that ship has sailed. Or at least, it will have by the time Soundbooth ships in (late) 2007.

It’s very good to see someone, especially Adobe, choosing to compete directly with Apple on Apple’s playground. Oftentimes if feels like Adobe is ceding the Mac market at the slightest hint of competition. As I believe we’ve seen with the Lightroom versus Aperture competition, both products are stronger because neither developer can get away with selling crap.

It’ll be very interesting to watch where this goes. I’ve heard a faint rumor that Adobe may reemerge in the Mac video editing market down the line as well. Hmm.