26
built-in devices
A DAW that
mixes with you.
A full studio for your Mac, with an audio engineer built in. Tell it what you're hearing, in your own words, and it does the work on the same faders you use. Don't like a change? Undo it.
For example: say “the vocal gets lost in the chorus” and it lifts the vocal in the chorus, and only there. Say “duck the bass under the kick” and it adds a Duck to the bass, triggered by the kick.
- For the song you recorded
- For the beat you built
- For the mix that's due tonight
VST3 · AU
your plug-ins, hosted
⌥⌘Z
takes back the engineer's last request, every move of it
0 uploads
your audio never leaves your Mac
A complete studio,
with an engineer in the room.
Everything you expect from a DAW is here: recording, arranging, MIDI, mixing, mastering. What's different is who else is in the session. The engineer works the same faders, devices and clips you do, and anything it changes, you can undo.
Tell it “the vocal gets lost in the chorus” and it lifts the vocal in the chorus, not across the whole song. You hear the difference straight away.
The engineerAsk in plain words. It makes the change and lists every move with the number it moved.
The browserSamples you can preview, the built-in devices, your plug-ins, the project library and 176 grooves.
Tempo and keyDetected from the audio and shown in the transport. The engineer reads the same values.
The Loop DeckA pad for every track. Launch loops in time, then capture the jam into the arrangement.
The arrangementRecord, comp, warp and automate. Loops with a tempo in the file name follow yours as they land.
The device chainThe selected track's devices, each showing what it is doing to the sound right now.
- The engineer. Ask in plain words; every change is listed with the number it moved.
- The browser. Samples, devices, plug-ins, the library and 176 grooves.
- Tempo and key. Detected from the audio and shown in the transport.
- The Loop Deck. A pad for every track, launched in time.
- The arrangement. Record, comp, warp and automate.
- The device chain. Each device shows what it is doing right now.
One set of controlsYou and the engineer share the same session. There is no second copy of your project to keep in sync.
It knows the sessionIt can read every track, clip, device, route and meter, so you can ask about anything by name.
It shows its workEvery change is listed with the number it moved and the reason it moved it.
Yours to undoOne request is one step back, however many moves it took. Changes you made afterwards are kept.
Mix by hand, in plain words,
or both at once.
Some days you want your hands on every knob. Some days you just want the vocal louder in the chorus. Do either, or both in the same minute. Press Auto Mix and you have a balanced starting point in a couple of seconds, with every move listed and every move reversible.
One real Auto Mix pass: four tracks, five moves
auto mix
bass+6.0 dB
drums−6.0 dB
drums · eq @ 2.8 kHz−4.0 dB
other · eq @ 244 Hz−4.0 dB
vocals+1.5 dB
loudness−19.4 → −17.3 LUFS
Amber is what the engineer changed. Everything else is your own work.
- Loudness targets. Streaming at −14 LUFS, Apple and podcasts at −16, club at −8, or a ceiling with no target.
- Presets you can say out loud. Vocal-forward, punchy drums, warm master, wide pop, club loud, podcast clean.
- It checks its own work. If a later pass measures worse, the run goes back to its best one.
How it hears your mix
The engineer never listens to your audio. Your Mac measures it, and the engineer reads the numbers, the same ones you would check yourself.
LoudnessHow loud each track and the whole mix are, and how close the peaks come to the ceiling.
ToneThe spectrum of every track, so it can tell mud from warmth and harshness from air.
DynamicsHow much each part moves, so it knows what needs holding down and what should be left alone.
MaskingWhere two tracks are fighting over the same frequencies. It is usually why something sounds buried.
Key and tempo are read from the audio as well. All of it is worked out on your Mac. Only those measurements and your conversation go to the model, never the audio.
Everything a real DAW does.
All of it open to the engineer.
The engineer isn't a chat window bolted onto the side. From recording a take to bouncing the master, anything you can do in Zammoth, it can do too.
What's included
- Record, comp, warp. Takes and comping, count-in, time-stretch, fades and splits.
- MIDI and instruments. A piano roll, a four-oscillator synth, a sampler, a drum rack and an arpeggiator.
- Automation. Real lanes with touch, latch and write modes, and curves you can bend.
- Routing. Group buses, sends and returns, sidechain ducking and VCA groups.
- Your plug-ins. VST3 and Audio Units. Scanning runs in its own process, and a plug-in that crashes a session is set aside on the next launch.
- Hardware and sync. Mackie Control surfaces, MIDI Learn, MIDI clock and MTC out, and OSC remote control.
- Export. WAV, AIFF or FLAC, with stems in the same bounce, read back and checked before it's called done.
All 26 devices, three instruments and an arpeggiator
- Compressor
- De-esser
- Duck
- Gate
- Limiter
- Multiband Compressor
- OTT
- Transient Shaper
- EQ
- Dynamic EQ
- Tilt EQ
- Match EQ
- Clipper
- Overdrive
- Saturation
- Multiband Saturation
- Chorus
- Flanger
- Reverb
- Delay
- IR Reverb
- Band Width
- Stereo Imager
- Stereo Width
- Spectrogram
- Utility
- Drum Kit
- Sampler
- Four-oscillator Synth
- Arpeggiator
The Loop Deck.
Jam first, arrange later.
A pad for every track, right beside the timeline. Drop loops in, launch them in time, and when a combination works, print the whole performance into your arrangement.
LaunchIn time, every timeClick a pad to start it and click again to stop it. While the song plays, a launch waits for the grid you choose, from half a bar to eight, and counts down on the pad.
Tempo and keyLoops that fit the songEvery loop follows the song's tempo. Match Key retunes one to the song's key in a single press, and each pad has its own tune and gain.
ShelfSeveral loops per padDrop a second loop on a pad and it joins the shelf underneath. Click it to swap, on the grid.
SnapshotsSave a combinationStore which loop every channel is playing, then bring the whole combination back with one click.
CaptureTurn the jam into a songArm Capture and play the deck. When you stop, everything you performed is in the arrangement as real clips, as one undo step.
RecordStraight into a padRight-click an empty pad to record a set number of bars from your input. The take starts looping the moment it ends.
Follow actionsPads that move on by themselvesAfter 1, 2, 4 or 8 loops, a pad can go to the next clip, repeat or stop.
TimelineDrag in either directionDrag a pad onto a lane or a clip onto a pad. Play All and Stop All are in the header, and the engineer can load, launch, snapshot and capture for you.
From an idea to a master
in one sitting.
Much of a production is the work between the ideas: setting up the session, balancing tracks, wiring sends, tidying takes, bouncing. Hand those to the engineer and keep writing.
01 · SKETCH
Describe the part.
82 BPM in D minor, an 8-bar jazzy ii-V-i, then drums, keys and bass
It sets the tempo and key, writes the chords onto the timeline, loads a drum rack with a kit and builds the synth patches. Loops you drop in follow your tempo. For feel, pick from 176 grooves or lift one from any clip you like.
- Drum rack, synth, sampler, arpeggiator
- Key, tempo and tuning read from the audio
- It can resample its own patches into new samples
02 · MIX
One button, then a conversation.
auto mix, vocal-forward and club loud
Auto Mix labels every track and builds a starting chain: levels, high-passes, EQ where tracks mask each other, gentle compression and a limiter at your loudness target. From there you steer in plain words: brighter, tighter, less of that. Press and hold to compare before and after.
- Undo run takes the whole pass back in one click
- Sidechain ducking, sends and returns, group buses
- Hard limits the engineer cannot exceed
03 · DELIVER
Match it, master it, bounce it.
master it for lofi, around −14 LUFS, top rolled off, then export a WAV
Load a reference track, or several, weighted for tone, width or loudness and compared section by section. Set a loudness target. Then bounce the master and each track through its own chain. Every file is read back and checked before the export is called done.
- WAV, AIFF or FLAC, up to 32-bit float
- Processed stems in the same bounce
- A master ceiling the engineer cannot raise
“I deliberately skipped an extra warm tilt: sub, bass and low-mid are all within 0.6 dB of each other at the top of the spectrum already, and tilting further would have been mud, not warmth.”
master it for lofi, around −14 LUFS, warm with the top rolled off, ceiling −1 dBTP
master eq @ 8.0 kHz−2.5 dB
master limiterceil −1.0 · tgt −14.0
2.0seconds
for a four-track Auto Mix pass, with all five moves listed
1click
Undo run takes back a whole pass, however many moves it made
The fiddly jobs,
done in one move.
Each of these is one click, one right-click or one sentence to the engineer. The result is the same either way, and so is the undo.
One press
Sidechain without the wiring
Drop Duck on the bass and press SC Auto. The engineer finds the track it is fighting with, sets that as the trigger and tunes the depth and timing. If you would rather choose, pick the trigger from the menu and it is ducking straight away.
duck the bass under the kick
One right-click
Split a mix into stems
Right-click any audio track and choose Split into stems. Vocals, drums, bass and everything else come back as four new tracks. It runs entirely on your Mac, so nothing is uploaded. A song takes a few minutes in the background, and the first run downloads the model (about 166 MB).
split this into stems, then clean them up
auto mix this
A balanced starting mix in seconds: levels, clean-up EQ, gentle compression and a limiter at the loudness you choose.
Auto Mix · one button
tune the vocal
Finds the off-pitch notes in a take and corrects each one by its own error, with the joins faded. If a take can't be fixed cleanly, it tells you.
Tune Notes · one undo step
warp this loop to my tempo
Locks a clip to the grid and keeps it there when the tempo changes. Loops with a BPM in the file name do it by themselves on import.
Warp to Tempo
match this loop to the song's key
One press retunes a clip or a Loop Deck pad to the key the song is in.
Match Key · one press
put the whole song in A minor
Changes the key of the entire song from the transport. The master ceiling still holds afterwards.
Transpose · key picker
give the vocal a reverb send
Adds a return track with a reverb and sets the send level. You hear it immediately, and you can rename it, adjust it or remove it.
Sends and returns
group the drums
Select the tracks and press ⌘G. They get a bus with its own fader and its own device chain.
Group to bus · ⌘G
keep what I just played
Forgot to press record? ⌥⌘R turns the last 30 seconds of your input into clips on the track.
Capture Last Take · ⌥⌘R
comp the best take and tidy up
Flattens your comp into a single clip and clears out the takes you didn't use.
Takes and comping
write a drum part at 92
Loads a drum rack with a 14-piece kit and writes a MIDI clip you can edit note by note.
Drum rack · piano roll
swing it a little
Apply one of 176 groove templates, or lift the groove from a clip you like, at any strength from 25 to 100 percent.
Grooves
bounce the master and the stems
WAV, AIFF or FLAC, with every track rendered through its own chain. Each file is read back and checked.
Export
Questions,
answered.
What people ask first. For everything else, read the manual.
What do I need to run it?
A Mac with Apple silicon. Zammoth is a native macOS app, and there is no Intel, Windows or Linux version. To use the engineer you will also need an Anthropic API key.
Why do I need my own Anthropic API key?
So that you pay only for what you use, directly to Anthropic, with nobody in between. You can watch the cost as it works, and a run stops at a spend limit that you set.
Create a key at console.anthropic.com and paste it once in Preferences ▸ Agent. It is stored in your Mac's keychain. New Anthropic accounts start with low rate limits, which rise as you use them.
Does my audio leave my Mac?
No. Recording, playback, rendering, analysis and stem separation all run on your Mac, and your project files stay where you keep them. The engineer sends out the conversation, a compact description of the session (track names, settings, the arrangement) and measurements. It never sends audio.
Can the engineer wreck my mix?
Not without you noticing. In a mix run it can move a level by at most 6 dB per pass and boost an EQ by at most 6 dB. The master ceiling cannot go above −1 dBTP, and if a later pass measures worse the run goes back to its best one. It can never switch off the safety limiter.
For anything undo could not put back, such as deleting an edit, switching projects or trusting a plug-in, it has to ask you first. Everything else is one ⌥⌘Z away.
Do I have to talk to it?
No. Every feature works by hand, as in any DAW. When you do ask, Agent mode (the default) applies the change straight away. Ask mode plans it and touches nothing until you say “do it”.
Will my plug-ins work?
Yes: VST3 and Audio Units, both effects and instruments. Scanning runs in its own process, so a plug-in that crashes during the scan is set aside instead of taking the app down. If one crashes a session, it is quarantined on the next launch until you trust it again, and your unsaved work is offered back.
Does it work offline?
Everything except the engineer works offline, because the audio never depends on the network.
Built by you, with an engineer.
Download Zammoth and work with the engineer free for 14 days.
Leave your address and we will write once, when the beta opens.
Download for macOS
“fix the low end, keep my vocal”
A first thing to ask the engineer.
- For Apple silicon Macs
- One email, when the beta opens
- Your audio never leaves your Mac