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Pulse

The DAW · Windows and Mac

Available now

Made for making music with other people.

Pulse is a complete studio for writing, recording and mixing, and it's built for working together: open a project with a friend and you're both in it, live. It can also pull any track apart into stems on your own computer, and its audio editor lets you reshape every clip.

Windows 10 and 11macOS 11 or later
Try it freeEvery feature

Real-time collaboration

One Share button, and the project opens live for both of you.

Stem separation

Vocals, drums, bass and other, split on your own computer.

The Audio Editor

Seven time-stretch algorithms, and granular you can see.

Sixteen instruments

And twenty-eight effects in one design, plus VST3 and CLAP.

Night Drive — two people, one projectLive with @alex
Two Pulse windows in one live session: one person edits the piano part while the other arranges the song, each seeing where the other is.

Real-time collaboration

One Share button. Then you're in it together.

Press Share, add a friend or copy an invite link, and the project opens live for both of you. There's no session to set up and nothing to join: when someone else has the project open, your window joins by itself.

A drawing of one Pulse project with three people in it at once: you are editing the keys, Alex is dragging a bass clip and Mia has just added a vocal clip. Their names follow their cursors, the project chat is open beside the song, and playback is running for everyone together.
1See who's here

Everyone in the project shows at the top, and you can see which part of the song each person is working on.

2Watch them work

Every note, clip and fader move lands on your screen as it happens, with a ghost of what they're dragging before they let go.

3Talk it through

A chat in every shared project, and comments pinned to a moment in the song. No switching apps to say "try it louder".

4Press play together

Play and Stop start everyone at the same moment. Each computer plays the song on its own engine, so nothing is streamed.

01

Share

The Share button in the top bar saves the project to the cloud and opens the Share window: add friends with one click, choose edit or listen, or copy an invite link that opens straight into Pulse.

02

Work

Notes, drum steps, tracks, clips, automation and the whole mixer travel as they change. You see who's in, which view they're in, and a ghost of what they're dragging before they let go.

03

Play together

Play and Stop start everyone at the same moment. Each computer plays the song on its own engine, so nothing is streamed and an ordinary connection is enough.

Nobody's work gets lost.

Two people changing the same thing end up with the same result on every screen, every time. Undo takes back only your own changes. A dropped connection resumes where it left off, and work done offline can be shared or discarded when you're back.

  • Up to 20 people per project, as editors or listeners
  • Audio is uploaded once and fetched by everyone; saving saves for everyone
  • Project chat, comments pinned to a moment in the song, and shared mixes for feedback
  • A plug-in compatibility report shows what everyone in the session has installed

Live sessions, sharing and cloud projects are part of Pulse Online, the optional subscription. Everyone taking part needs it.

A live session in Pulse's piano roll: the notes of the part, and the hollow outline of a note a collaborator is dragging, before they let go.

Stem separation

Pull any mix apart.

Drop in a finished track and split it into vocals, drums, bass and other, right on your own computer. Each stem lands on its own track, ready to chop, re-pitch, mute or rebuild around.

SongNight Drive.wav
Vocals
Drums
Bass
Other
Demucs v4 runs on your own computer; nothing is uploaded. The model (84 MB) downloads once, the first time you use it.
Private by design

The separation runs locally with Demucs v4. Your audio never leaves your computer.

In the background

It runs as a background job with a progress bar and a cancel button; keep working while it finishes.

Straight into the song

Stems become audio tracks in the arrangement, in time with the project, with the original kept.

In the trial too

Stem separation works during the 14-day trial, so you can try it on your own music before you buy.

Audio editing

Every clip is a sound to shape.

Double-click a clip and the Audio Editor opens: time and pitch, warping, granular, envelopes, modulation, slicing and clip effects, with A/B compare and presets. Every change is undoable and rendered in the background.

Time and pitch, seven ways.

The Time Engine has seven algorithms — Punch, Vocal, Fluid, Clean, Pulse, Grain and Shatter — from transparent to deliberately broken. Warp markers can be dragged in the editor or right on the arrangement.

  • Warp to Grid: every attack found to the millisecond and quantised with strength and swing
  • Pitch correction that keeps formants; transpose with formant control
  • Samples analysed as they land: tempo, downbeat, length and type, fitted to the song
Pulse's Audio Editor in Midnight: a clip's waveform, the Time Engine's seven algorithms and the Pulse hybrid's settings.

Granular you can see.

The Grain Cloud draws the granular engine as it plays. Paint, erase, freeze, scatter, attract and repulse grains, drag position and pitch, and watch every grain fly.

  • Views: Grain Cloud, Spectral, Frequency and Stereo Field
  • Modulation from LFOs, envelopes, random, step and MIDI
  • Editable grain envelopes and grain effects
The Grain Cloud in Pulse's Audio Editor: grains drawn as they play over the waveform.

Played it loose? Fix it in place.

Warp to Grid finds every attack in a recording and moves it onto the grid — all the way, or by a strength that keeps some of the feel, with the project's swing. The clip stays where it was and as long as it was, in one undo step.

  • Loop takes and comping, with crossfades at every seam
  • Clip processing as takes: noise reduction, declick, normalise, spectral blur, reverse reverb
  • Audio to MIDI for melodies, drum parts and slices
A played drum part in Pulse's Audio Editor, its transients marked and the Warp to grid panel open.

Pulse's own sounds

Sixteen instruments. Twenty-eight effects. One design.

Every Pulse instrument and effect opens in the same kind of window: nothing to scroll, one preset browser, A/B, undo, meters and a live picture of what the sound is doing. Learn one and you know them all.

Pulse Moss, an organic polysynth: two oscillators, pluck, breath and body, filter and amp, with the modulation matrix and macros below.

Instruments

  • Pulse AnalogSubtractive, with a ladder filter
  • Pulse DigitalWavetables, including your own
  • Pulse TextureGranular, from any sample
  • Pulse AtmosAdditive pads, shimmer and freeze
  • Pulse MorphWavetable and spectral, from any audio
  • Pulse MossOrganic leads, keys and chords
  • Pulse AcidAcid bass with a vintage circuit
  • Pulse WaveWavetables with deep unison
  • Pulse KeysGrand, electric pianos and organ
  • Pulse ShakeAnalogue bass with a clean low end
  • Kick, Snare, Hi-Hat, ClapFour drum designers
  • Drum KitSixteen pads, four factory kits
  • SamplerMulti-sampling, slicing, stretch

Effects

  • DynamicsCompressor, Limiter, Gate, Clipper, Sidechain
  • ToneEQ, Filter, Resonance, Rift
  • SpaceReverb, Delay, Stereo Image
  • MovementChorus, Flanger, Phaser, Auto Pan, Shaper LFO, Motion
  • ColourDistortion, Saturator, Bit Crusher, Lo-Fi
  • Voice and spectrumVocoder, Shifter, Spectral
  • Time and textureGrain, Fracture, Displace

Every Pulse instrument and effect lives in the project itself, so its settings travel live in a session like any other edit, and every knob can be automated, MIDI-learned or put on a macro.

And the rest

All the tools you need to bring your ideas to life — and more.

The workspace

One bottom panel follows what you select — the clip, or the track's devices — and Tab flips between the arrangement and the mixer. Editors open inline or float, as you prefer.

Plug-ins

VST3 and CLAP, scanned safely out of process, automated and delay-compensated. A plug-in that isn't installed plays silently and keeps its settings.

Writing

Step sequencer, piano roll, an arrangement with an adaptive grid, a clip launcher, markers, automation, and tempo and time-signature changes.

Recording and mixing

WASAPI and CoreAudio, MIDI keyboards and MIDI learn; buses, groups, sends and sidechains, FX Racks with macros, parallel rendering across your cores.

Export

Bounce and freeze. The mix or stems as WAV, AIFF, FLAC, Ogg or MP3, normalised to peak or loudness. Send to Pocket when it arrives.

Safety

Autosave every minute, crash recovery, a version history you can name and restore, and themes including Pulse Midnight.

The complete list of features

Try Pulse free for 14 days.

Everything above, with a few limits until you buy. No card needed.

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