Triumph — Audio Editing, Mastering and Podcasting App Reviews

I downloaded the 15 day trial version from their website to complete a CD Master I was working on. I purchased the product after that even though I did not have an immediate need. I had been a long-time Waveburner user for CD mastering, but they stopped supporting the app and needed to find another product. Triumph was perfect for me needs. It took an hour or so to get comfortable whit the program to get it to do what I needed but I was able to successfully create a DDP and upload to the CD Duplication company. I highly recommend you watch the Screencasts on how to use the program. It is a different paradigm from say a tradition DAW. It is a true mastering program. The price was right and I wanted to support the company. That made a great application. UPDATE: 12/19/2016 - So I used Triumph to master a CD last year and had not had a reason to use it since then. It certainly met my immediate need and the price was very attractive. It is a great product for what it is. I do want to share that I just purchased Studio One 3 Professional and it has its own Mastering App that is much simpler and flexible to use. The layout is similar to Wave Burner in how the tracks appear on the timeline but it is so much better in that, if you used Studio One 3 Pro to Mix your project, you have access to the original mix immediately from the mastering tool. VERY COOL. I know there is a $120 price premium for Studio One 3 Pro but I have switched from Pro Tools 12 to Studio One Pro and I am extremely happy. It is way more modern that Pro Tools and though Pro Tools is still a fabulous product, the new subscription plan it too expansive for my needs in. I woudl encourage you to at least check it out even if you only do mastering. The Workflow and features are amazing.

I had a DDP from a recording studio that was not quite right in a couple of places. Didn’t know what to do — could have spent lots of money to go back to the studio. Instead I used this app to correct the couple of small spots that were wrong, and exported a new DDP. Perfect.

I’ve been struggling with Sound Forge until I discovered Triumph—it took me all of a couple of minutes before I was mastering a track using some of my favourite plugins. Great app and I highly recommend it.

So, I’ve tried Waveburner, Soundblade, Wavelab, to name a few, and discovered Triumph. First off, I could not get a good sound out of Waveburner (perhaps something to do with the available Dither options), at least not easily, and the bugs left me totally frustrated, so much so that I was unable to complete a mastering job. Perhaps since its support stopped in 2009, new issues where introduced when running on newer OSs. Soundblade was too difficult to get working for me, and it didn’t have sufficient support for file formats and plug-ins. Wavelab I’ve used in the past, but didn’t want to put out the $$$ for it. Other alternatives didn’t support Audio Units, etc. Triumph, was fairly easy to use at first then I had to read and watch some videos to move further on; I highly recommend using their Vimeo tutorials to get going properly and quickly! Although this is a bit difficult to get going properly at first, and there are some stability issues, this will be my go to app for CD Mastering moving forward. Don’t be fooled by the price, this app is fully pro! And most importantly, it “sounds” great! The Izotope processing really sounds smooth, but it also includes Apple encoders in addition. My first project was for our Shiny Plastic People - Space Case’ album, that had a few songs mixed out to various file types (wave, AIF, CAF), Sample and Bitrates, Triumph had no issues importing and playing back any of our final mixes. This app also exports to a slew of file types, as well as sample/bitrates. Tech support at Audio-File is top notch, they’ve helped me quickly via email, from my first bug submission to the next. Their site has the app download that allows for installations onto OS X 10.8.4, the Apple Store version (albeit identical in version number) is forced to 10.9 or newer. I had many issues running under OS 10.8, when I upgraded to 10.9.0, I have only had a couple of crashes but was able to work for hours without incident. Thanfully the app Autosaves. I highly recommend their player, Fidelia. I’ve needed a player that accepts Audio Unit plugins for analysis of other commericial material, just a side note.

Wave Editor, the predecessor to what is now Triumph, was my favorite/most-used audio editor/post-production app. Triumph itself is proving itself to be even more valuable and I suspect I’ll be performing many more of my production tasks with this fine piece of software. The single-window/multiple-workspace functionality is much more streamlined than Wave Editor. And, all of my favorite bits of non-destructive/layered editing are more efficient than ever. Don’t be fooled by the price - it seems Audiofile Engineering have realized the huge, untapped market: making truly high-level, professional grade software affordable to the average home producer. What was previously a $300 application is now $80. I’m absolutely stunned - but won’t complain for a single moment. Instead, I’ll write this review to recommend that you, dear reader, hesitate no longer - make the purchase. (As a little aside - I had the please of meeting and speaking with the Audiofile Engineering fellows at the Decibel Festival in 2007. They were incredibly kind, humble and intelligent - very much interested in making software that people really need/enjoy using. At the time, I could only afford to buy a t-shirt to show my support. Now, I’m glad to be able to own many of their products and have absolutely no reservations about recommending their products to everyone else.)

I downloaded the 15 day trial version from their website to complete a CD Master I was working on. I purchased the product after that even though I did not have an immediate need. I had been a long-time Waveburner user for CD mastering, but they stopped supporting the app and needed to find another product. Triumph was perfect for me needs. It took an hour or so to get comfortable whit the program to get it to do what I needed but I was able to successfully create a DDP and upload to the CD Duplication company. I highly recommend you watch the Screencasts on how to use the program. It is a different paradigm from say a tradition DAW. It is a true mastering program. The price was right and I wanted to support the company. That made a great application.