Put a sound in

Before you can do anything, the app needs a sound to work on.

1. Click the Import button at the top right.
2. Find a sound or video on your computer and click it.
3. Click Open.

Listen to it

You need to hear what you are changing.

1. Press the ▶ play button, or just tap Space.
2. Tap Space again to stop.
3. Click anywhere on the ruler above the stripe to jump there.

Move, stretch and cut

Your sound is a block. You can slide it, make it shorter, or chop it in two.

• To move it: drag the middle of the block left or right.
• To make it shorter: drag the very edge of the block inwards.
• To chop it in two: click where you want the cut, then press S.

Copy, paste and delete

The same as moving words around in a story.

• Click a block once to pick it.
• ⌘ C copies. ⌘ V pastes. ⌘ D makes a twin right next to it.
• Delete removes it and leaves a gap.
• Ripple Delete removes it and slides everything after it back, so there is no gap.

Fade in and fade out

So the sound does not start or stop with a bump.

1. Click a block to pick it.
2. Look for the little square in the top corner of the block.
3. Drag it sideways. A slope appears — that is the fade.

Put a pin in it

Markers help you find a spot again later.

1. Click on the ruler where you want the pin.
2. Press M.
3. Double-click the pin to name it — "chorus", or "the loud bit".

Tracks — one row for each thing

Put the singing on one row and the drums on another, so you can change one without touching the other.

• Every sound you import gets its own row.
• M mutes a row — it goes silent.
• S solos a row — you hear only that one.
• One slider makes the row louder or quieter.
• The other moves it left or right in your headphones.

Record your own voice

Sing, talk, or make a silly noise straight into the app.

1. Find the recording bar under the buttons at the top.
2. Pick your microphone from the list.
3. Press the round red button and start making noise.
4. Press it again to stop.

Essential Sound — the easy way

Tell the app what kind of sound it is and it does the work for you. This is the quickest thing in the whole app.

1. Click a row to pick it.
2. Look at the Essential Sound panel on the right.
3. Choose what it is: Dialogue for talking, Music for songs, Sound effects for bangs and crashes, Ambience for background hum.
4. Tick the boxes you want. They are already ticked sensibly.
5. Press Apply.

Effects — the box of tools

Eighteen tools that change how a sound feels: big rooms, wobbles, squashing, and more.

1. Press + Add in the effects panel.
2. Pick one from the list. They are sorted into groups.
3. Click its name to open it and move the sliders.
4. The little power button turns it off without deleting it.
5. The up and down arrows change the order. Order matters.

Automation — changes that happen over time

Make something get louder slowly, or move from one ear to the other while it plays.

1. Click a row to pick it.
2. Under the timeline, press + Lane.
3. Choose what should change — Volume, Pan, or any effect knob.
4. Double-click on the line to add a dot.
5. Drag dots up and down. The line between them is what happens.

Open one sound on its own

Sometimes you want to work on just one sound, up close.

1. Click a block to pick it.
2. Press Edit file at the top.
3. Drag across the wiggly picture to pick a piece.
4. Press a button: Normalize makes it as loud as it safely can go. Fade in, Fade out, Silence and Reverse do what they say.
5. Press Multitrack to go back.

See sound as a picture, and rub bad bits out

This is the cleverest thing the app does. A cough while someone is talking looks like a blob you can point at — and you can rub the blob out without hurting the talking.

1. In Edit file, press Spectral at the top.
2. The picture goes colourful. Blue is quiet. Orange and white are loud.
3. Find the blob you do not want. Drag a box around it.
4. Press Heal — it fills the hole with what should be there.

Clean-up tools

Seven tools for seven kinds of mess.

1. Press Forensics in the menu on the left.
2. Pick your sound.
3. Choose a tool from the drop-down list.
4. Press the button to run it, and have a listen.

Let the app find the problems

You do not have to spot them yourself.

1. In Forensics, press the analyse button.
2. Wait a moment.
3. A list appears of the things it thinks are wrong.

Work with a video

If you are making sound for a film, you need to see the film.

1. Press Import and pick a video instead of a sound.
2. The picture appears above the timeline.
3. The video's sound gets its own row, like any other sound.

Use other people's tools

Other companies make sound tools too. You can use them here.

1. Press + Add in the effects panel.
2. Scroll to the bottom and press Scan VST3.
3. Any tools you have installed show up. Click one to add it.
4. Press the sliders icon to open that tool's own window.

Make something longer, shorter, higher or lower

Change how long a sound lasts without making it sound like a chipmunk, or change the note without changing the length.

1. Click the sound you want to change.
2. Press Stretch & Pitch at the top.
3. Move Speed to make it longer or shorter.
4. Move Pitch to make it higher or lower.
5. Leave Lock pitch ticked to change one without the other. Untick it and they move together, like an old tape playing too fast.

Look at the sound while it plays

Two windows that show you what is happening rather than telling you.

1. Freq Analysis draws which notes are loud right now, low on the left and high on the right. A hum shows as a spike near the left.
2. Phase Scope shows whether your left and right sides agree. The number should sit near +1. Near -1 means they fight each other and the sound thins out on a phone speaker.

Line up a re-recorded voice

If someone re-recorded a line in a studio, this moves it onto the original.

1. Press Speech Align.
2. Pick the original as the reference and the new take as the target.
3. Tightness decides how far it moves: all the way onto the original, or part of the way so the new performance keeps its own timing.
4. Press Align Speech to Reference.

Split a song into pieces

Take a song and pull the singing away from everything else.

1. Click your song to pick it.
2. Press Demix AI in the menu on the left.
3. The first time only, press Download next to the model and wait — it is about 75 MB and the app keeps it afterwards.
4. Press Separate Stems.

Save so you can come back

A project remembers everything — where your blocks are, what effects you used, all of it.

1. Press Save, or ⌘ S.
2. Give it a name you will remember.
3. Next time, open that file and everything is exactly as you left it.

Make a finished sound file

This makes one sound file with everything mixed together — the one you send to people.

1. Press Export.
2. Pick a kind of file. WAV is best quality. MP3 is smallest.
3. Tick Normalize to have it set to a good loudness.
4. If you want the title and artist saved inside the file — the words a music player shows — fill them in under Metadata first. They are written into the file itself, so they travel with it.
5. Press export and choose where to save it.