Soundwright Documentation

1. Soundwright overview

Two views, one editable project

Quick Create asks about purpose, mood, energy, location, weather, duration, and loop behavior in ordinary language. Studio opens the same result as tracks, clips, notes, layers, mixer settings, automation, markers, and loop regions. Moving between them never flattens the project.

• Music arrangements and ambience schedules are generated deterministically from local rules and seeds.
• Imported recordings remain non-destructive source media unless you explicitly package a portable copy.
• Playback, analysis, generation, and export stay on the computer.
• Verification activates the installation; account sessions remain separate and are used for renewal or explicit Aethera publication actions.

2. Installation

Install the verified Windows x64 release

1. Open the Soundwright card on Aethera Tools.
2. Wait for the card to check the trusted release metadata.
3. If Download is enabled, save the Windows x64 installer and review the publisher details before running it.
4. Sign in with and verify an Aethera account to activate this installation.
5. Confirm the displayed offline-access dates, then choose a user-writable project folder outside the application installation directory.

The card remains disabled when no manifest-verified public installer exists. An unsigned development package is never offered through the public download action.

3. Quick Create

Choose the result before the technical settings

Start with Background Music, Living Ambience, Edit a Recording, Record Foley or Voice, Adaptive Soundscape, or a template. You can hear a result before choosing a key, compressor ratio, sample rate, or equalizer curve.

Plain-language changes

Actions such as Make It Calmer, Make It Darker, Add Movement, Reduce Repetition, Add More Space, Use Fewer Instruments, and Create Another Variation change the editable arrangement or soundscape. Use the preview comparison before accepting a variation; acceptance remains undoable.

4. Studio timeline, tracks, and clips

Arrange and refine without changing source files

Studio contains the asset browser, timeline, track headers, inspector, transport, mixer, note editor, and soundscape event editor. The timeline stores exact sample-frame positions and presents seconds or bars and beats as display formats.

• Move, trim, split, duplicate, delete, slip, reverse, normalize, mute, solo, and lock clips. Select clips together to move, nudge, duplicate, or delete them as one undoable action; persistent clip groups are not part of this release.
• Shape clip gain, fade-in, fade-out, and crossfades without modifying the imported source.
• Use markers, a loop region, time or beat snapping, and viewport waveform detail.
• Track volume and pan feed the local Web Audio mixer and master output.

Quantize moves notes toward the rhythmic grid. Humanize adds small timing and velocity differences. Both are editable operations, not permanent changes to a recording.

5. Recording

The microphone stays off until you choose Record

1. Open Record Foley or Voice, or arm an audio track.
2. Choose an input device and explicitly approve microphone access.
3. Check the input meter; lower the source if the clipping indicator appears.
4. Record, stop, then trim and fade the new clip before using it as a one-shot, loop, or timeline layer.

If permission is denied or a device disappears, Soundwright keeps the project open and explains how to select or grant another input. Opening Soundwright alone never activates the microphone.

6. Instruments and patterns

Edit the notes behind a generated track

Instrument tracks use data-only note patterns and built-in, commercially safe presets. The focused piano roll supports adding, moving, resizing, duplicating, quantizing, humanizing, transposing, and changing note velocity. The Project inspector exposes the current key and scale; note-by-note scale and chord highlighting is not part of this release.

Use the step sequencer for drums and repeating patterns. Lock a track, section, melody, chord progression, or rhythm before regenerating so approved material stays unchanged for a deterministic seed.

7. Living ambience

Combine beds, loops, events, and procedural texture

A soundscape can blend continuous beds such as room tone or rain, repeating loops such as fire or machinery, random one-shot pools such as birds or thunder, and local procedural sources such as filtered wind, rumble, crackle, or a simple magical drone.

Each layer has its own gain, pan, density, and active states. Track and master effects remain available in the mixer. Use a static flattened export when another application expects an ordinary file, or preserve the rules in an adaptive Aethera package.

8. Random events

Reduce repetition without losing control

Event pools support minimum and maximum delay, probability, density, cooldown, weighted sample choice, no-immediate-repeat behavior, volume and pan ranges, restrained pitch variation, start-offset variation, distance character, and optional state or time-of-day conditions.

A deterministic preview seed reproduces the same schedule while editing. Runtime variation may choose a fresh seed only when you explicitly select varying playback or export behavior.

9. Adaptive soundscape states

Move smoothly from calm to danger

States such as calm, active, crowded, dangerous, storm, tension, combat, and aftermath can change active layers, volume, event density, effects, and music intensity. Define a transition duration to crossfade rather than abruptly replacing the sound.

The adaptive package contains data and audio only. It never contains scripts, plugins, worklet code, native libraries, or commands, and the receiving VTT does not require Soundwright to play a supported package.

10. Seamless loops

Audition the boundary before export

1. Set the loop region and zoom into both edges.
2. Use zero-crossing and seam suggestions as starting points, not guarantees.
3. Choose an equal-power crossfade where overlapping material benefits from it.
4. Enable loop audition and listen through the boundary several times.
5. Export embedded loop points when the format supports them, or include sidecar metadata.

An arbitrary recording is not always perfectly loopable automatically. Correct the region or crossfade manually when the repeated boundary remains audible.

11. Mixing and effects

Start with an outcome, then open the numbers if needed

Track strips provide volume, pan, mute, solo, meters, routing, effects, and ambience-send level. The master shows peak level and clipping and can use a safety limiter. Effects include filters, equalization, compression, limiting, gate, reverb, delay, saturation, modulation, stereo width, and gain utility where supported by the current engine.

Presets such as Remove Low Rumble, Distant and Muffled, Large Stone Chamber, Small Wooden Room, and Dreamlike Echo explain their purpose. Clean Recording suggests restrained DC removal, rumble filtering, gating, compression, normalization, and fade boundaries; preview the chain before accepting it.

12. Export formats

Render a file that fits its destination

Use High-Quality Master for lossless archival output, Campaign Music or Seamless BGM Loop for background playback, Ambience Loop for environmental beds, One-Shot Sound for events, Voice or Foley for recordings, VideoMaker Audio for a video handoff, Adaptive Aethera Soundscape for rules and states, or Individual Stems for continued mixing.

Export settings expose format, sample rate, bit depth or compressed quality, channel layout, loudness target, peak protection, metadata, loop points, attribution sidecar, and stems when relevant. Rendering runs in a cancellable background queue and writes through a temporary file so failure does not replace a prior export.

13. Send to Campaign and VideoMaker integration

Local render first; upload only what you select

Local work never requires sign-in. When the optional campaign publishing service is available, connect an Aethera account, choose a campaign destination and output type, render locally, review the selection, then start the upload. Progress, cancel, retry, create, and update behavior must report the actual remote result; Soundwright stores a returned resource ID and revision only after confirmation.

VideoMaker handoff uses rendered audio plus a small declarative manifest rather than direct database coupling. If the receiving application cannot be opened automatically, save the handoff beside the render and import it from VideoMaker. Atlas is not presented as an audio destination unless its deployed linked-resource contract explicitly supports that relationship.

14. Optional media library and portable projects

Linked by default, self-contained on request

The optional Aethera Media Library stores immutable assets by stable ID and content hash when enabled. Soundwright projects work without it, never upload automatically, and never edit a shared source in place. Missing items are called out with Relink actions.

Make Project Portable copies the project’s required media into a validated package and records hashes and licenses. Removing a library entry later does not destroy a portable project. Peak caches, proxies, and temporary renders stay rebuildable and are not treated as project truth.

15. Content packs, licenses, and attribution

Data and media, never executable plugins

A content pack may contain declared samples, presets, patterns, templates, previews, hashes, dependencies, and license metadata. Installation validates paths, sizes, hashes, dependency depth, and supported data types. Packs containing scripts, Node modules, worklets, native libraries, plugins, or commands are rejected.

Credits and Licenses shows source, author, license, attribution requirements, modification status, redistribution rights, and raw-extraction rules. When attribution is required, include the generated attribution or cue-sheet file with the export. Package for Aethera Marketplace creates a local validated package only; it does not upload to a Marketplace.

16. Performance settings and keyboard shortcuts

Keep playback responsive while background work continues

Waveform analysis runs in a worker, creates multiresolution peak caches, and lets the timeline draw only visible detail. Local export reports progress and can be cancelled without changing the editable project. Open Audio Settings to choose the system default or another available output, play a quiet test tone, select Low latency, Balanced, or Stable behavior, and enable low-power mode. The same window reports privacy-safe engine state, sample rates, available latency figures, measured dropouts, device fallbacks, and project load without exposing device IDs, filenames, account details, or audio.

Output selection depends on Chromium device support. If a chosen output disappears or is unsupported, Soundwright keeps the project open and falls back to the system default. Recording input remains an explicit choice in the Recording window and listing outputs does not activate the microphone.

The command palette and bundled offline help show the authoritative shortcut list for this release.

17. Project recovery and troubleshooting

Autosave supplements explicit Save

Soundwright writes throttled recovery snapshots separately from the chosen project file. After an interrupted session, compare the recovery timestamp with the last explicit save before restoring. Save and Save As use atomic replacement so an interrupted write does not leave a partial project as the only copy.

Common checks

• No sound: check the selected output, master meter, mute/solo state, and device access.
• Media missing: use Relink, then make the project portable if it will move computers.
• Playback drops out: close other demanding applications, bypass optional effects, or reduce the number of simultaneously active layers.
• Export unavailable: resolve missing media and clipping warnings, then verify free temporary space.
• Campaign send unavailable: keep the local render. Publication is online-only, while a valid signed offline grant keeps local authoring available for its disclosed access period.

18. Privacy and offline behavior

Creation stays local unless you choose a destination

• A verified Aethera account activates each installation. A signed grant then provides 30 days of offline creation plus a seven-day safety grace if renewal is temporarily unavailable.
• When the computer is online, Soundwright begins trying to renew around day 21. It does not require a live account request on every launch.
• After the safety grace, reverification may pause new authoring. Existing projects remain discoverable, recoverable, playable, portable, and exportable so your work is not held hostage.
• No remote music generator, cloud renderer, paid API, telemetry requirement, or local language model is used.
• The microphone is requested only after an explicit recording action and has a persistent visible state.
• Projects, recordings, source paths, and renders do not upload automatically.
• Account session tokens and offline grants stay in protected desktop storage, never renderer local storage or project files.
• Ordinary WAV, FLAC, OGG/Opus, or other supported exports remain usable without Aethera.