SoundOn has announced Audio Design Desk 1.7, an AI-assisted application for macOS designed to foster fast and efficient real-time creation of audio for video.
Audio Design Desk’s Sonic Intelligence curates a database of more than 30,000 royalty-free music beds, cues, drones, hits, transitions, rises, FX, Foley and more. An natural-language search yields a list of options focused on what the production needs, with users able to add them to the timeline instantly, identifying and retaining sync points to picture with accuracy.
Version 1.7 introduces Spot Mode, a feature that enables subscribers to use these 30,000 royalty free sounds and music cues in their favorite Mac DAW or Video Editor, providing drag-and-drop simplicity of every music cue, design element, drum loop, and sound effect. V1.7 also introduces transient detection for creating elements out of stems and advances on its DAWSync capabilities for controlling a DAW from Audio Design Desk and vice versa. Further, a new real-time Trigger Pad window allows users to “play in” sounds like footsteps, doors, explosions, and car noises.
The DAWSync feature syncs Audio Design Desk with DAWs, including Pro Tools, Nuendo, Logic Pro and Studio One. LoopDNA is designed to automatically recognize content from providers like Splice and LoopCloud for time-stretching, pitch-shifting, replacement and other operations while eliminating the need to “jockey” between two windows.
Audio may be recorded directly into Audio Design Desk without the need for other software, then edited using all the tools of a DAW: snap, quantize, trim, fade, crossfade, nudge, metronome, and more functions are at the ready. Audio mixing hotkeys are designed to make shorter work of levels and panning, and Audio Design Desk’s integration with Elgato Stream Deck controllers is designed to foster quick editing tasks.
Workflows between Audio Design Desk and NLEs such as Premiere and Final Cut Pro have AAF and XML support. Users can import their cut, create sound in Audio Design Desk, export back to the NLE and keep working with all audio regions synced, or bounce and export a full mix. Bundled with in-app Frame.io integration, Audio Design Desk enables editors and sound designers to collaborate with one another.
With Intelligent Import, Audio Design Desk will even extrapolate metadata for files that lack it, letting users optionally edit it afterwards. Sounds then become searchable by Audio Design Desk’s advanced AI right alongside its native offerings.
“People need sound for their projects, whether they’re feature films, TV shows, YouTube videos, TikToks, or podcasts,” notes SoundOn founder Gabriel Cowan. “The rise of social audio has generated dozens of royalty-free audio companies, but you need to learn their platforms, download their stuff, import it, place it, sync it, nudge it, and do it all over again if it’s not a good fit. SoundOn’s Audio Design Desk puts everything under one roof in an interface that is quicker and more fun to use than anything else. It is truly sound at the speed of thought.”
Audio Design Desk is available now at three product tiers: Produce at $15 per month, Professional at $30 per month, and Perpetual for a one-time purchase price of $399. Go here to learn more about each tier and download a free 30-day trial.
