It hears the notes, not the noise
Every note carries overtones, and overtones point a fifth up. A key finder that judges the overall colour of a sound gets pulled there, and hands you a confident answer one position over on the wheel.
DropWave listens for the notes actually being played, bass line included, and weighs them the way your ear does. So it's much less likely to land a fifth away. And there's no AI model guessing: the same file gives the same answer, every time. How it reads a key →
When the song moves, so does the reading
A last chorus that lifts. A bridge in another key. A track that drops into half time for the breakdown. One average would be wrong everywhere, so DropWave doesn't give you one.
Key changes show the key of every section and where it starts. Tempo changes give every stretch its own BPM and its own beat grid.
It tells you how sure it is
Every key and tempo comes with a confidence, counted from how many sections of the song agreed. When the call was close, the runner-up is named. "F minor, or A♭ major" is something you settle by ear in ten seconds. An answer that's always certain is guessing some of the time, and not telling you when.
Check it by ear, in two seconds
- Click on beats plays a metronome locked to the grid DropWave found. Glued to the drums? The tempo's right.
- Hear key plays the key's chord, tuned to the track's own tuning. Sits sweetly over the music? The key's right.
No second app, no keyboard, no guessing. You know before you build anything on it.
Tuning, measured. Never assumed
Sample packs sit off A = 440 far more often than people expect, and anything pitch-shifted is off by definition. DropWave measures the offset in cents, so a detuned loop still reads as its real key, and you find out it's flat. That's often the more useful half.
Tempo to two decimals, with the grid drawn
127.5 is not 128. Round it and you're a beat out every four bars. DropWave gives you two decimal places, draws every beat on the waveform with the bars marked, and switches Half / As detected / Double in one click when a track could be counted either way. The grid holds through a breakdown, because DropWave reads the pulse across the whole mix, not just the kick.
The Camelot wheel, drawn with every result
Every reading carries its Camelot code, and the wheel is drawn with your key filled and the three that mix with it lit. Harmonic mixing without a chart taped to the monitor. All 24 codes →
A whole crate in one drop
Drop a folder, up to 500 files at a time, and every one lands in a single table. Sort any column. Search by name, key, Camelot code or tempo with ⌘F (type "128"). Export it all as CSV in one click.
Then Tag Filenames writes the key and tempo into every name, like vocal_chop_loop [11A 88].wav, after showing you each change. It never overwrites a file, never touches the audio, and ⌘Z undoes it. From then on the key and tempo travel with the file, into any software you open it in.
And DropWave remembers your list. Open it tomorrow and everything's there, with no waiting for files it has already read. Moved a file? It follows it.
Mastering-grade loudness
Integrated loudness in LUFS and true peak in dBTP, both to ITU‑R BS.1770‑4, the standard streaming services normalise against. Not an "energy" score on an invented scale.
Then everything else a mastering engineer checks: loudness range (LRA), short-term and momentary max, PLR, sample peak, stereo correlation and loudness over time, on a ruler marked with the −14 LUFS streaming level and the −1 dBTP ceiling.
Know what streaming will do to your track
Before you upload, see what Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Amazon Music, Tidal and Deezer will do to your level, and by how many dB each one turns it down. The surprise happens on your desk, not on release day.
A delivery check on every file
Every file is checked against a spec. Streaming master by default: 44.1 kHz or more, lossless 16 or 24-bit, true peak at or under −1 dBTP, no clipping, no long silence at either end. Set your own in Settings → Delivery.
Then export a PDF report of one file or the whole list, ready to send to a label, an artist or a client.
Studio playback
Play through your own audio interface. Match loudness puts every file at the same level, so you compare the music, not the volume. ⌥⌘← and ⌥⌘→ jump a bar, and one key takes you back to the start.
Your audio never leaves your computer
Everything is analysed on your machine. Nothing is uploaded: not the audio, not the file names, not the readings. No DropWave account. No analytics. The app goes online only to check for updates and your beta key, and keeps working offline for 30 days after the last check.
Client stems, unreleased records, anything under NDA: none of it has to go anywhere to get a key. Privacy in the app →
Fast, and out of your way
- Well under a second for a full song on Apple silicon. No upload, no queue.
- One download, plugins included: about 120 MB on a Mac, with both plugins and the stem model DropWave Editor splits with; about 29 MB on Windows.
- Opens almost anything: WAV, AIFF, MP3, M4A / AAC / ALAC, FLAC, CAF, and the audio track of video files.
- Right-click to analyse in Finder or Explorer, or drop files on DropWave in the Dock.
- Notarised by Apple, so it opens straight away on a Mac.
- Updates itself in the background, and installs when you click Restart.
Two plugins for your DAW
DropWave Editor hears a song once, splits it into vocals, drums, bass and other on your Mac, then lets you mix it, move its key and master it, live and in time with your DAW. DropWave Tune is real-time pitch correction for one vocal, from a natural touch to the hard-tuned sound.
Both are AU, VST3 and CLAP, and both come with DropWave for Mac: install them from the DropWave menu. The plugins →
On your Mac, and on Windows
DropWave runs on macOS 14 Sonoma or later on a Mac with Apple silicon, and on Windows 11. The Windows app reads key, tempo, tuning, loudness and true peak; the studio tools that came in 3.3 (the mastering readings, streaming, the delivery check, PDF reports and studio playback) are on the Mac for now.
Free while it is in beta
The beta is free. Download DropWave, get your personal key in the Discord, and you're in. Every new build lands there first, and the people using it shape what comes next.
Made for how you work
Questions
What makes DropWave different from other key finders?
It listens for the notes actually being played, bass line included, so it is much less likely to land a fifth away. It shows key and tempo changes section by section, gives a confidence on every key and tempo with the runner-up named when the call was close, lets you check both by ear, and does all of it on your own computer.
Is DropWave free?
The beta is free. Pricing has not been announced.
Does DropWave upload my music?
No. Every file is analysed on your computer and nothing is uploaded: not the audio, not the file names, not the readings. The app only goes online to check for updates and your beta key.
Does DropWave use AI?
No AI model is involved in the readings. The same file always gives the same answer. The one place a trained model is used is DropWave Editor’s split into stems, and that runs on your Mac too.
Does DropWave run on Windows?
Yes, on Windows 11. The Windows app reads key, tempo, tuning, loudness and true peak. The studio tools that came in 3.3 are on the Mac for now.