Sound Grinder 3

Instant audio file conversion through Droplets, powerful metadata editing for export, enhanced Quicktime support, and much more.

My Thoughts

I found Sound Grinder easy to set up and easy to use. A couple of months ago I wouldn’t have thought that I would have had any need for an application like this, but as I am currently undergoing a mammoth exercise in rationalizing, converting, and organizing all of my audio and video I have found it a very useful, powerful and quick application to use.

The fact that everything focuses around the one main window, and that you can have multiple sessions open at the same time is impressive and makes for a very pleasant user experience.

I have move movies than audio that I wanted tidying up, so the movie preview was used a lot to view the Quicktime compatible movies, and there wasn’t a codec that I couldn’t find when I needed them e.g. when using Flip4Mac with Windows Media Files.

By far the ‘best’ feature though for me is the concept of Droplets: “Sound Grinder now includes a new workflow option called Droplets, which provides an even simpler, yet more powerful way of converting audio. Setup your conversion settings, choose “Create Droplet…” from the Preset Action menu and save the Droplet to any location. Now when you drag any file(s)/folder(s) to the saved droplet icon, Sound Grinder will process those files instantly using your specified settings.” As with Automator on the Mac this was a total time saver for repeat tasks.

Preferences

Sound Grinder now provides support for even more types of metadata for more types of files, including reading and writing the full suite of ID3 tags in AIFF, WAVE and MP3. Metadata can now be displayed not only in the “File Info” pane, but also in the main “File List”. Every metadata item can be edited for single or multiple assets by simply OPTION+clicking the edit field. Specific metadata items can be generically set for export in the new Metadata Tab in the conversion settings.

Rapid Convert provides instant access to Sound Grinder’s conversion options, including the new normalize process. This feature is easily accessed through the Finder Contextual Menus, Apple Services or by dragging to the Dock.

What’s New?

Universal Binary Support
Sound Grinder is now a Universal Binary running 100% native on both Intel and PowerPC microprocessors.

Enhanced Metadata Handling
Sound Grinder now provides support for even more types of metadata for more types of files, including reading and writing the full suite of ID3 tags in AIFF, WAVE and MP3 files. Metadata can now be displayed not only in the “File Info” pane, but also in the main “File List”. Every metadata item can be edited for single or multiple assets by simply OPTION+clicking the edit field. Specific metadata items can be pre-filled for export in the new Metadata Tab in the conversion settings.

Enhanced Quicktime Format Support
Sound Grinder has been updated to take full advantage of all audio formats supported by the Apple® Quicktime™ architecture. This includes the ability to read files through Quicktime components such as the Flip4Mac® Windows Media® component, and others.

Support for Droplets
Sound Grinder now includes a new workflow option called Droplets, which provides an even simpler, yet more powerful way of converting audio. Set up your conversion settings, choose “Create Droplet…” from the Preset Action menu and save the Droplet to any location. Now when you drag any file(s)/folder(s) to the saved droplet icon, Sound Grinder will process those files instantly using your specified settings.

Under-the-Hood Enhancements and Bug Fixes
Sound Grinder has been significantly upgraded to support the latest OS X technologies with a corresponding enhanced visual look.

Fast, Efficient and Rock-Solid

Any conversion process is frustrating if it is slow, cumbersome and unstable. Therefore Sound Grinder is built with solid engineering, providing a substantial level of efficiency and stability, saving you valuable time and resources. It is built around a “one-window” concept which provides the ability to perform multiple conversions simultaneously. Sound Grinder also offers excellent features and support for many of the most popular file formats.

Sound Grinder provides many other time saving features including; Rapid Convert providing the ability to quickly process files directly from within the Mac OS X Finder; the retention of the folder structure of the source files; saved presets to recall your favorite settings; previewing of movie files and more.

About

“Monkey Toolsâ„¢ is a company made up of industry professionals that desire production tools that are fast, efficient and rock solid.

We created Monkey Tools to bring enhancements to the process that sound designers struggle through every day. For many years, we could not find tools that could meet the rigors of everyday processing tasks. and so we decided to build our own products that not only met our own needs, but met the needs of the production community.”