What DropWave is
DropWave reads the musical key, the Camelot position, the tempo, the length, the true peak and the loudness of an audio file the moment you drop it in. The same analysis runs as a plugin on any channel in your DAW.
That is the whole product. It does not manage a library, edit audio, separate stems or write to your files. It measures, and it tells you what it measured.
Why it exists
Every producer accumulates the same folder: a few hundred unlabelled files, each useful only if you know two things about it. And every producer has had the same afternoon — the one where a sample sounded fine until the bassline came in, and the key was wrong all along.
The tools for answering that question either send your audio somewhere, or bury the answer three steps into a library manager, or hand you a confident number that turns out to be the key next door.
DropWave exists because that is a solvable problem and nobody had solved it properly.
What we care about
Every number has to be actionable. True peak in dBTP. Loudness in LUFS, to ITU-R BS.1770-4 — the standard streaming platforms normalise against. Real units, defined publicly, comparable against anything else that implements them. Not an "energy" score on a scale somebody made up.
Detuned material is the normal case, not the edge case. Sample packs sit off concert pitch constantly and anything pitch-shifted is off the grid by definition. DropWave measures the tuning instead of assuming it, and tells you what it found. This is the single biggest source of wrong key readings in this category and it is the thing we are proudest of getting right.
When a call was close, you should be told. "A minor, possibly C major" is something you settle by ear in ten seconds. A single answer in a large font, when two were nearly tied, is a coin flip formatted as a fact.
Your audio is yours. DropWave never connects to the internet. No account, no telemetry, no licence check — so material that is not yours to upload never gets uploaded. More →
Speed is a feature. 4.3 MB, about 40 ms a file, nothing to install alongside it. The answer is there before you have let go of the mouse, because a tool you have to wait for is a tool you stop reaching for.
What version 2 changed
DropWave 2 shares no code with version 1. It went from around 200 MB and a pile of dependencies to a few megabytes with none, and from a cold start you could feel to an answer that is simply there.
The more telling change is what came out. Eleven reported values became six: a spectral centroid, a sample rate that Finder already shows, and an "energy" score computed on an invented scale all went. They looked like measurements and were not.
What replaced them was true peak and loudness to a published standard, confidence bands, tuning measured rather than assumed, and the Camelot wheel drawn in the result rather than printed as a code.
Everything it does
- Key, Camelot, tempo, length, true peak and loudness from one drop
- The Camelot wheel drawn with every result — 24 positions, compatible keys lit
- Tuning measured rather than assumed, so detuned and pitch-shifted material still resolves
- A confidence band on key and tempo, with the alternative named when the call was close
- A plugin that reads the channel it is inserted on, inside your DAW
- Click any value to copy it; drag the file straight back out into a session
- Plays the file back in the window, waveform drawn from the audio
- Opens WAV, AIFF, MP3, M4A, FLAC, CAF and the audio track of video files
- Never touches the network. No account, no telemetry, no licence check
- Never modifies the file it analyses
Where it is
DropWave 2.1.1 is in closed beta, and the Discord is the only way in. Builds are posted there, access is handed out there, and false readings are reported there — those are the most valuable thing a tester can send.
It stays closed beta until it is finished. There is no public download, and there will not be one until there is something worth downloading.
Working with us
If you make music, run a label, teach, or write about production tools, get in touch.