Aviary launches impressive audio editor, Myna

Aviary is great at making advanced Web-based artists' tools that I haven't a hope of being able to fully use. Case in point, the new audio editor, Myna, that joins the company's suite of graphics tools like the Phoenix image editor and the Raven vector editor.

I have dabbled a bit in GarageBand and I do some of my own podcast production work, so I get the concept in Myna, although I'm far from skilled at editing audio. The app is a multitrack audio editor, and for a Web-based app it's freakishly capable. It's easy and fast to pop clips and loops into tracks, drag them around, apply standard effects and fades, and then mix the whole thing down so you can download it as one file.

Myna comes with a library of riffs from Quantum Tracks that can be used noncommercially, and a few sound effects from other sources. You can upload your clips to the service as well, and record directly from your computer. However, Aviary co-founder Michael Galpert warns that there are limits: You can only lay in 10 tracks, and total playing time has to be under five minutes. Galpert says this is due to limitations in Flash, but that Aviary may find ways around them in the future. The technology comes from Digimix, which Aviary acquired earlier this year.

Just because I can, doesn't mean I should be editing music. But Myna does make it easy.

(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)

Myna is a "hobbyist's tool now," Galpert admits, but he also says there are pro-level features coming in future releases. I found GarageBand more capable, but Myna is more approachable.

I was surprised to see Aviary get into the audio-tool business after creating its first five apps, which are for handling graphics. But Galpert says, "an artist is an artist," and he wants to make tools that let creative people work across media, or to create remixes.

Myna is a free app. It's impressive and it's a ton of fun. It might even be useful.

Aviary won the Webware 100 Technical Achievement award in 2009.

Correction 11:45 a.m. PDT: This story incorrectly described the licensing terms of the content from Quantum Tracks. The riffs are for noncommercial use.

[nickh2]

Their website tells me I have to be running Mac OS X 10.5 or higher to use Myna.
I have 10.5.8 on this machine.

Poor start. Garage Band 1 - Myna 0.

[DigiDood]

Some features in Myna won't work with PowerPC based Macs due to a restriction in one of the Flash player features we are using. The message you saw is being changed to reflect that.

[ctruxaw]

So, at what point do we stop considering flash applications "web applications" when they have such strict requirements on what has to be installed on the client?

At this point, it seems almost misleading to call completely flash based applications "webware" when flash becomes little more than a virtual machine or framework. By that standard JAVA apps and .NET executables practically qualify as webware!

There really needs to be some assessment here (and perhaps public criticism) of "webware" that is entirely based on things like flash and silverlight! HTML, XML, CSS, and JavaScript can be used to web applications. I would contend that Flash (at least to this extent of dependency) can NOT.

There is only one Flash player. There are many browsers.

The point of web applications is to allow access to an application for many users with minimal client side requirements or installation. While "impressive", I'm not sure this fits the bill.

[ctruxaw]

I am of course reminded of a project which I personally am involved in:
http://www.pdfescape.com
which is a PDF editing web application (in what I would call a truer sense of the term - no Flash, no Silverlight, etc).
Many alternatives to the service offered rely heavily on Flash (particularly "Flash paper" on sites like Scribd).

Many hail these as being a much better way to view PDF documents, however I personally struggle with why so many find a dependency on Adobe Flash to be so much more acceptable than a dependency on Adobe Reader. Same company, similar potential security risks (Adobe Reader of course with the worse track record, however Adobe Flash could inflict just as much damage).