Media Manager

A window for the audio files your sessions produce. Open a folder and see every file at a glance — format, duration, dual mono, loudness and metadata — then preview, fix and document them. Files are only changed when you choose to.

What you can do

• See a whole folder at once — duration, sample rate, bit depth, channels and format for every file, sortable and searchable. File list & reports →
• Listen before you change anything — waveform with markers, solo left or right, and live level and loudness meters. Preview & meters →
• Find and fix dual mono — stereo files whose left and right channels are identical are found bit-exact and converted to mono, keeping their metadata. Dual mono →
• Edit metadata — title, artist, comments and Broadcast Wave fields, for one file or a hundred at once. Metadata →
• Measure loudness — integrated LUFS, loudness range and true peak to EBU R128, and store the values in the file. Loudness →
• Export a report — the file list as CSV or TSV for clients, archives or spreadsheets.

Open the Media Manager

1. Click the StudioTools icon in the menu bar.
2. Choose Open Media Manager….

Choose a folder

The start screen asks for a folder. You can:

• click Choose Folder…,
• drag a folder from the Finder onto the window, or
• pick one of your Recent folders.

Check Include subfolders to also list files in folders inside the chosen one — handy for a Pro Tools session, where the audio lives in Audio Files and bounces elsewhere.

StudioTools scans the folder and lists every audio file it finds. To go back to the start screen, click ‹ in the toolbar or press ⌘[.

The window at a glance

1. Toolbar — open folders, rescan, run actions, show or hide panels, export and settings.
2. File list — one row per file. Click column headers to sort; right-click a header to show or hide columns. More →
3. Inspector — details, loudness and metadata of the selected files. Edit and save here. More →
4. Preview panel — play the selected file and see its waveform. More →
5. Meters — live peak and loudness of what you hear.
6. Status bar — file count, progress of long tasks and a Cancel button.

Toolbar

Right-click files in the list for the same actions, plus Show in Finder.

Supported file formats

The Media Manager reads WAV, AIFF and CAF files itself, without converting them. Other common formats are listed and can be previewed and measured, but not changed.

Dual-mono detection and conversion need uncompressed PCM audio — what Logic Pro and Pro Tools record. Lossy formats such as MP3 and AAC are never converted: decoding and re-encoding them would lower their quality.

How your files are protected

• Nothing changes on its own. Scanning, analysis and measuring only read files. Files are written only when you save metadata, convert, tag or store loudness.
• Safe writes. Changes are written to a temporary copy, which replaces the original only when it is complete. A crash or full disk never leaves a half-written file.
• Backups when replacing audio. Converting to mono keeps the original as a .bak file by default — or in a subfolder, or in the Trash. See Settings.
• Metadata travels along. Broadcast Wave timestamps, markers and other chunks the Media Manager doesn't edit are copied as they are.

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