Audiofile Engineering Myriad review

Aimed at sample producers, sound designers and anyone working with multichannel recordings (drum kits, orchestras, etc), Myriad is a Mac application that claims to make light work of batch processing audio files.

Using Myriad couldn't be easier. With the main area set to the Process tab, drag your audio files into the File List on the left, build a Workflow by dragging Actions from the Actions List into the Workflow area, set your Output options, and hit the Run Workflow button to do the business. If it's a Workflow you're likely to need again, save it for future usage.

Clearly, the Actions themselves are key, and on that front Myriad doesn't disappoint. From normalising, sample rate conversion (algorithm provided by Goodhertz) and file compression to more esoteric stuff like transient slicing, M/S decoding and encoding, labelling, trimming, pitchshifting, timestretching, and uploading to SoundCloud and Dropbox, there are over 100 of them, covering every process and operation you're ever likely to need. You can even apply Audio Units plugins.

Most Actions have one or more adjustable parameters, and your edits to them can be saved into the List as User Actions.

Output options include destination folder, whether or not to delete the original files, and a very powerful file naming dialog.

Away from the centre of the action, the Details and Activity tabs give comprehensive information on the selected sample, including peak and RMS maximums, Mid/Side peaks, etc, and a log of all your Myriad movements, while the separate Waveform window enables cropping and snipping of samples.

Myriad is a literally and figuratively beautiful thing that anyone regularly processing audio files in any numbers on their Mac absolutely needs to experience.

Aside from the objectively functional side of it - at which it's a resounding success - there's real creative mileage to have building Workflows using Myriad's more 'audio editor' style Actions and throwing folders of samples at them to hear what comes out the other end.