DropWave Editor

What it does

DropWave Editor sits on the track a song is on. It hears the song once, reads its key, tempo and tuning, and splits it into vocals, drums, bass and other on your Mac. From then on the track plays as your mix of those four stems, in time with your DAW, and everything you change is heard live: the mix, the key, the tuning and the master.

Nothing is exported, and there are no files to drag back in. Every control can be automated.

Install it

1. Get a Dev Beta build of DropWave. Enter your Dev Beta code in DropWave's Settings → Updates; the newest Dev Beta build downloads by itself. Codes come from the team, in the Discord.
2. In DropWave, choose DropWave → Install DropWave Editor… It puts the plugin in your plug-in folders as AU, VST3 and CLAP, together with the stem model it needs to split.
3. Quit and reopen your DAW, then insert DropWave Editor on the track with the song. In Logic Pro: Audio FX → Audio Units → DropWave → DropWave Editor.

It runs on a Mac with Apple silicon. Splitting into stems needs macOS 15 or later; on an older macOS the key, tempo and tuning are still read.

Capture the song

1. Press Capture.
2. Play the song in your DAW, start to end, in real time. It records only while sound plays, at the project's sample rate.
3. Stop the DAW. The capture finishes by itself.

Or drop an audio file anywhere on the window. It replaces what was captured and plays from the start of the project.

A capture holds up to 12 minutes. You can also stop it yourself with Stop, or automate the Capture parameter.

What happens next needs no click: the key, tempo and tuning are read, the way the DropWave app reads them, and the song is split into stems on your Mac, about 15 seconds per minute of song. The track keeps playing as it comes in while that runs, and then the stem mix fades in.

Stems

The song's arrangement, with time across and the stems as lanes.

• Key, Tempo and Sections run along the top. Half · 1× · Double counts the tempo in half time, as read or double time, and sets the bar grid with it.
• Each stem has mute, solo, its level and a meter. Click a stem's name to open its channel in Mix.
• Click a stem inside a section to mute it there only. Option-click mutes the whole section, or click the section itself. Unmute Sections brings everything back.
• Stem mix is the switch for all of it. On, the track plays as your mix of the four stems. Off, it plays as it comes in, and Pitch and Master still apply.

The More menu has Capture Again (adds to what's there and splits again), Load an Audio File…, Split Again and Clear Everything.

Mix

A small console: each stem has a strip with EQ and CMP switches, pan, mute, solo and a fader with its meter. The Out strip shows the short-term loudness and true peak of what leaves the plugin.

Click a stem's name and its channel opens in full beside the console:

Reset Channel puts every control on that stem back.

Pitch

The Camelot wheel, made to choose with. The key DropWave heard is filled, the key you move to is ringed, and the keys that mix with the result are tinted.

• Move key. Click a key on the wheel, or pick one from the menu, and the song moves there, live. Click it again to switch the move off. A move keeps the mode: from a minor key, a major target lands on its relative minor.
• Keep formants (for vocals). Keeps a voice sounding like itself when it moves, rather than chipmunked or dark.
• Fix tuning. Brings the song to a reference A: 440, 442, 444 or 432 Hz. It shows how many cents it moves.

Pitch moves add latency, which your DAW compensates for.

Master

A chain on everything the plugin plays: EQ → glue → width → limiter. The Master chain switch turns all of it off; the sound then passes untouched.

Set the drive for a loudness sets the limiter's drive so the integrated loudness lands near −16, −14, −11 or −9 LUFS, from what has played so far. Play the track for a while first.

The loudness panel shows integrated, momentary and short-term loudness, the true peak max and the loudness range, to ITU‑R BS.1770‑4 and EBU R 128, the way the DropWave app measures. It starts over each time the DAW plays, or when you press Reset. Beside it, streaming normalisation shows what each service would do to the level. What the numbers mean →

Compare and the status line

Compare, top right, switches everything off (stems, pitch and master) and plays the track as it comes in, in time and crossfaded. It reads Bypassed while it's on. Click it again to come back.

The status line along the bottom always says what the plugin is doing, what you hear (the stem mix or the input), the sample rate and the latency.

Working with it

• Knobs: drag, with Shift for fine moves. Double-click or Option-click resets one.
• Views: ⌘1 to ⌘4 switch between Stems, Mix, Pitch and Master.
• The window is resizable from 880 × 560 and reopens at its size and view.
• Your project keeps the settings, the reading and the muted sections. The captured audio and the stems stay on your Mac, in ~/Library/Application Support/DropWave Editor, and the project finds them there when it reopens. On another Mac, capture the song again.
• Change the project's sample rate and the stems pause, because they were split at the old one. Switch back, or capture again.
• The tempo stays the DAW's. A plugin can't change your project's tempo, so the Editor works at the tempo the song is in.

On Windows

DropWave Editor is in the Dev Beta of DropWave for Windows too, as a VST3, with a layout of its own: open it from DropWave's Settings → DropWave Editor. This page describes the Mac version.

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