Audio Design Desk has introduced a new kind of DAW that uses AI-assisted content creation tools to enable filmmakers, editors, sound designers and creators to produce cinema-quality sound in seconds.
Add.app said its Audio Design Desk app, conceived by Gabriel Cowan, a recording artist and filmmaker, comes with more than 20,000 sounds. The software transforms the process of adding music and sound effects to picture, cutting down what can typically be a full day project to just a few minutes. It works with most major brands of DAWs.
Using Sonic Intelligence, every sound in the add.app library is assigned identifying characteristics and carries an embedded sync point, which means that as sounds are previewed and chosen, they automatically land on the timeline in the exact position relative to the video.
The user imports a video file into the app and presses keys on their keyboard – H for hits, R for rises, D for drones, and so on – making it a Smart Sampler. The user can then strike the keys to position sound elements in real-time while watching the video playback – in effect, using the QWERTY keyboard to play add.app like an instrument.
For users who would rather select audio manually, add.app can search, audition and place sounds right from the timeline, eliminating the need to parse through libraries, import sounds and then find where they sync.
Once a composition is set, add.app understands where sound connects to video and, by adjusting replacement criteria such as intensity, complexity, genre or feel, Audio Design Desk can use its Sonic Intelligence to instantly turn a single composition into infinite alternates without losing sync.
Audio Design Desk uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and has built the foundation for Machine Learning (ML) to understand which sounds a user likes, and which sounds they reject so, over time, the DAW will learn and adjust to its user’s taste.
In designing Audio Design Desk, Gabriel Cowan teamed up with other sound designers to create an application that would transform the art of sound for film and allow anyone to create a cinema quality soundscapes in seconds.
“This application is to audio software what Pro Tools was to the tape machine. It shows what AI-assisted content creation can do. Television, advertisements, podcasts, and Instagram stories are filled with sound, yet there hasn’t been a single piece of software built from the ground up dedicated to connecting sound to picture, which is why the process is so frustrating,” said Cowan.