- Download
13.5 MB (Beta) - Download 39
21.2 MB (Stable) - OS X 10.4.11 -
Visit Developer's Site
Marcel Blum
Soundplant is a digital audio performance program that turns your computer keyboard (yes, your QWERTY keyboard) into a versatile, low latency, multitrack sample-triggering device and playable musical instrument. It can assign sound files of unlimited size and any format onto virtually all keyboard keys, giving you hours of instantly-playing audio at your fingertips with no extra hardware needed.
Use Soundplant as a performance, presentation, or installation tool, as a drum pad, to mix together tracks in realtime, as an educational aid, to trigger sound effects or
Use Soundplant as a performance, presentation, or installation tool, as a drum pad, to mix together tracks in realtime, as an educational aid, to trigger sound effects or
What's New
Version 41i:
- improved memory management for loading large sound files. Eliminated crashes and out of memory messages (but please let me know if you're still seeing any of these issues). For very large sounds (usually > 30 minutes in length), if system RAM is low then sounds are loaded in a special mode with some functionality disabled (realtime pitch shift and offsets), kind of like the "play from disk" mode in older versions of Soundplant, although in this case sounds are still being loaded to RAM but just in a non-contiguous manner.
- added a "locate file..." button to the warning that appears when loading a keymap and the sound file can't be found in its original location. Soundplant will also automatically look for other files it can't find in the newly selected location. This is really convenient and I should have added it a while ago!
- custom key labels: click on the currently selected key's large filename in the key configuration part of the screen and a prompt will open allowing renaming the label for the key. Soundplant will ignore sound triggers while typing into this prompt and all other interface elements are disabled until the prompt is closed. This sort of goes against a golden rule of Soundplant interaction design that I've always followed, which is that keyboard input should never be used in Soundplant for anything but triggering sounds in order to avoid keyboard focus interface confusion and unintentional sound triggering, but I don't think this exception will kill anyone ;-). As always, the default key label is the sound file name without the extension, but now you can change that to whatever you like.
- onscreen keyboard keys are bigger with more room for text labels to occupy, and even bigger in simple view mode where a whole extra line of text is now visible.
- added a large channels meter display mode with fatter meters and bigger text but less channels visible. This has the added bonus of lower cpu usage with fewer sounds being tracked onscreen and is now the default setting on the Mac version for optimal performance on that platform. Another bonus is that it frees up some screen real estate to allow for longer, more precise sliders for the master volume and reverb controls. Also, while in this mode, if more than the visible 6 channels are in use an indicator appears specifying the total number of channels playing. This large channel meters mode is configurable in the preferences under the "sound channel meters display" setting with 2 options, 6 large meters or 12 small meters.
- added an option to set the default recordings save folder.
- added an option to set the startup state of the background key input setting. It's off by default.
- added a "reload sound from disk" button on the key config toolbar ��" previously this function was only accessible by shift+clicking the "reset key" button. This preserves the key's configuration while reloading and is handy if you're frequently editing a sound file in an audio editor and needing to reload the changes into Soundplant.
- copy key, pitch assign, and offset assign have been reenabled.
- enlarged hotspots around slider bars to make it easier to instantly jump a slider to another point on the bar.
- Mac: reduced cpu usage while preserving performance and eliminating a bug in the old "low power mode" that caused keys to double trigger in certain situations. CPU usage mode preference settings on Mac are now "normal" (default) and "overdrive" (higher cpu usage for slightly better latency on fast machines) and it requires a restart of the app to take effect. The "overdrive" mode should not really be necessary unless extreme lowest possible latency is needed, for example for microsecond-accurate drum pad use (and I think even then only latency freaks will notice the difference). If there is demand for it I can also add a setting to bring cpu usage even lower at further expense of latency, but for now I think "normal" mode gives a pretty good balance.
- bug fix: holddown mode wasn't working properly in combination with the kill keymode. Also, in some situations if holddown was on, clicking/double-clicking the key to play the sound did not work as expected.
- bug fix: modifying the lowpass filter resonance setting while the lowpass filter itself was off resulted only in lowering of the volume of the sound; now the resonance setting has no audible effect unless the lowpass filter is on.
- bug fix: in a certain situation a key's color would turn black after loading a file
- bug fix: in some situations trimmed sounds played slightly past their configured end offset
- bug fix: when saving a recording the wav file suffix wasn't always automatically added
- bug fix: while playing a very short looping sound, the playback head was moving past the endpoint of the waveform in some situations
- bug fix: when running at the lower screen refresh rate, in some situations sound channel playback progress bar would flash when it first appeared
- Windows bug fix: on Win 8 when the program first started up, cursor rollovers didn't work properly
- Mac bug fix: eliminated crashes caused by loading sounds in certain situations
- Mac bug fix: files with slashes in their name were not loading properly in some situations
- Mac bug fix: keymap loading was unnecessarily slow and causing cpu spikes in certain situations
- Mac bug fix: drag and drop of sound files stopped working in OS 10.9 Mavericks (thanks for changing something for no reason Apple!)
- Mac bug fix: file open and save dialogs were not opening in the expected folder in OS 10.9 (thanks again Apple!)
- Mac bug fix: disabled command+q quit application key combo ��" no keyboard action should ever quit Soundplant
- many other minor bug fixes
Version 41i:
- improved memory management for loading large sound files. Eliminated crashes and out of memory messages (but please let me know if you're still seeing any of these issues). For very large sounds (usually > 30 minutes in length), if system RAM is low then sounds are loaded in a special mode with some functionality disabled (realtime pitch shift and offsets), kind of like the "play more...
Requirements
Intel, OS X 10.6 or later
Intel, OS X 10.6 or later
| Downloads:1,429 |
| Version Downloads:76 |
| Type:Multimedia Design : Audio |
| License:Shareware |
| Date:28 Nov 2013 |
| Platform:Intel 32 / OS X |
| Price: $35.00 |
Overall (Version .x): |
| Features: |
| Ease of Use: |
| Value: |
| Stability: |
-
-
-
Soundplant is a digital audio performance program that turns your computer keyboard (yes, your QWERTY keyboard) into a versatile, low latency, multitrack sample-triggering device and playable musical instrument. It can assign sound files of unlimited size and any format onto virtually all keyboard keys, giving you hours of instantly-playing audio at your fingertips with no extra hardware needed.
Use Soundplant as a performance, presentation, or installation tool, as a drum pad, to mix together tracks in realtime, as an educational aid, to trigger sound effects or background tracks during a show, to create music or loops, to quickly sketch sound designs, or to give new life to old sounds. Because it is a standalone 'software sampler' that uses your own digital samples, Soundplant is an infinitely flexible electronic instrument limited only by the variety of sounds that you feed it. A simple graphic interface provides for drag-and-drop configuration of each key, including several options which control the way each sound is triggered, along with non-destructive pitch, offsets, looping, volume, fading, and panning. Every sound that plays is visually displayed with a progress bar and track time, and you can even turn on 'background key detection' to trigger sounds while using any other software with Soundplant hidden. Here is a list of features:
Use Soundplant as a performance, presentation, or installation tool, as a drum pad, to mix together tracks in realtime, as an educational aid, to trigger sound effects or background tracks during a show, to create music or loops, to quickly sketch sound designs, or to give new life to old sounds. Because it is a standalone 'software sampler' that uses your own digital samples, Soundplant is an infinitely flexible electronic instrument limited only by the variety of sounds that you feed it. A simple graphic interface provides for drag-and-drop configuration of each key, including several options which control the way each sound is triggered, along with non-destructive pitch, offsets, looping, volume, fading, and panning. Every sound that plays is visually displayed with a progress bar and track time, and you can even turn on 'background key detection' to trigger sounds while using any other software with Soundplant hidden. Here is a list of features:
- 72 keyboard keys can be used to trigger sounds, all with very low latency
- drag and drop sound files on to keyboard keys for quick and easy key assignment
- plays virtually all sound file formats in existence including .wav, .aif, .mp3, .mp4, .m4a, .flac, .wma, .alac, .wv, .ogg, even audio from video files like .wmv, .mov, .avi, .divx, .mpg, .flv, and .3gp, and many many more; free version is limited after 25 launches to loading only uncompressed 16- and 8-bit .wav and .aif files
- 'background key detection' mode allows Soundplant to continue receiving key input while minimized or hidden; trigger sounds while using other audio software, typing a document, or doing anything else in any other program
- intuitive visual interface displays full configuration and playback progress info for all sounds
- waveform display
- samples can be loaded to RAM for virtually instant cueing, or played from disk, allowing for minimal RAM usage and unlimited sound length
- in addition to keyboard key triggering, Soundplant can also play sounds via mouse click, like a 'virtual cart machine'
- capable of playing 8 stereo or mono samples simultaneously (i.e. 16 channel polyphony)
- pitch adjust allows micro-tuning to the 100th of a semitone and a 10 octave range; easily auto-assign the same sound to multiple keys at varying pitches to create playable instruments
- precise sound start and end offset control to the 100,000th of a second, more than most editors; easily auto-'splice' pieces of a sound across multiple keys (for example, to extract individual drum sounds from a breakbeat loop)
- support for wav file cue points; easily set playback offsets to cue points defined in any audio editor
- realtime volume, panning, and pitch control for each key, all non-destructive
- randomization settings for varying the playback of sounds
- customizable sound triggering, allowing for looping, overlapping, restarting, muting, pausing, and fading
- onscreen keyboard keys are highlighted and animated as they play and can be color-coded
- a true performance program that allows playback and triggering to continue even while configuring keys and loading and unloading sounds on the fly; multiple instances of the program can be open simultaneously for even more flexibility
- saves and loads keyboard configurations as .keymap files; keymaps are fully cross-platform compatible and can be easily transferred between different computers with the handy 'save w/ sounds' feature
- lightweight, runs well even on older computers and includes several options for minimizing CPU and RAM usage for performance tuning; Soundplant can give new life to that dusty old slow laptop you thought you'd never use again
+16