From the smart folks who brought us the audio-editing and mastering application Triumph, comes a complete redesign of their powerful batch-processing tool for macOS — Myriad arrived not a moment too late for this sloppy two-fingered typist.
If you're anything like me, your file structures and naming conventions on your computer are a mess. My adoption of any number of, ahem, best practices over the years has, in turn, only compounded the issue. One project file nomenclature doesn't always match up to the next. Ingesting mix files or projects from other engineers' sessions only seems to further exacerbate the situation, until I can no longer easily scan a Spotlight search, because file names like "11.3.9 lo pass take1B.wav" bump up against others like "audio76537_110bpm.aif." Don't even get me started on my folder names!
So, Myriad to the rescue — right? Well, yes — but let's first define what Myriad is, and isn't. An evolution of Audiofile's earlier Sample Manager application, Myriad is an elegantly designed, intuitive tool for batch processing and organizing your audio files. While it won't tell you which comprehensive file-naming convention you should use (do a little Googling if you want to see countless ways of naming your files "correctly"), it will help you implement whichever meaningful system you choose. Perhaps more important than the ability to clean up your messes is Myriad's skill at building repeatable actions and workflows. Say you have to export groups of files in a variety of sample-rates, bit-depths, and file-types — and repeat this precise behavior for your client for every stem-mix session. It's here where Myriad really shines, because it's super easy to configure and customize file outputs, using incredibly powerful workflows, and build deliverables in just about any conceivable file format with the least possible sonic impact. Myriad is not, however, meant to be a full-featured sample editor, with crossfades, etc. It does offer some basic waveform editing, but splice-and-dice isn't its bag.
Myriad uses the Goodhertz Sample Rate Converter and Goodhertz Good Dither algorithms, each with selectable advanced filtering and noise-shaping options that allow for (in my testing, at least) pristine and error-free file conversion. I converted a number of file types, including WAV, AIFF, and MP3, to FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, and many other types. Bit-for-bit, I heard no difference in comparable conversions, meaning every print or copy made with Myriad remained "clean" and retained its original character and quality, as expected. Obviously, when converting to alternate bit-depths or sample-rates, your mileage may vary, but I found Myriad to be a far more reliable and better user experience than, say, any DAW's default file export feature.
Moreover, the insights Myriad offers are huge. For any given file, Myriad provides a detailed analysis at a glance, going way beyond codec and file-size. Myriad shows left and right peak, positive and negative maximums, peak-to-peak, RMS, averages, root pitch, mid/side peaks, loudness (configurable in either LU or LUFS values), and a lot more. All industry-standard metadata types are viewable as well, and these can be edited during processing. Myriad's waveform viewer is dead-simple by design, and while sample-accurate, it doesn't offer a ton of functions beyond your basic crop-and-snip. But again, Myriad isn't meant to be an audio editor; rather, it's a comprehensive sample manager and batch processor. I found myself using Myriad far more often than tools like Adobe Audition, if for no other reason than Myriad's UI is waaaay easier on my eyes and brain. There are a few gaps — notably a lack of VST support, although most AU plug-ins are supported during processing (but I abandoned AU years ago). But overall, Myriad is a beast. I'd highly recommend checking out the free 7-day trial!
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