Soundplant is a digital audio performance program that turns your computer keyboard (yes, your QWERTY keyboard) into a versatile, low latency, multitrack sample-triggering device and playable musical instrument. It can assign sound files of unlimited size and any format onto virtually all keyboard keys, giving you hours of instantly-playing audio at your fingertips with no extra hardware needed.

Use Soundplant as a performance, presentation, or installation tool, as a drum pad, to mix together tracks in realtime, as an educational aid, to trigger sound effects or background tracks during a show, to create music or loops, to quickly sketch sound designs, or to give new life to old sounds. Because it is a standalone 'software sampler' that uses your own digital samples, Soundplant is an infinitely flexible electronic instrument limited only by the variety of sounds that you feed it. A simple graphic interface provides for drag-and-drop configuration of each key, including several options which control the way each sound is triggered, along with non-destructive pitch, offsets, looping, volume, fading, and panning. Every sound that plays is visually displayed with a progress bar and track time, and you can even turn on 'background key detection' to trigger sounds while using any other software with Soundplant hidden.

Features:

• 72 keyboard keys can be used to trigger sounds, all with very low latency
• Drag and drop sound files on to keyboard keys for quick and easy key assignment
• Plays virtually all sound file formats in existence including .wav, .aif, .mp3, .mp4, .m4a, .flac, .wma, .alac, .wv, .ogg, even audio from video files like .wmv, .mov, .avi, .divx, .mpg, .flv, and .3gp, and many many more; free version is limited after 25 launches to loading only uncompressed 16- and 8-bit .wav and .aif files
• 'Background key detection' mode allows Soundplant to continue receiving key input while minimized or hidden; trigger sounds while using other audio software, typing a document, or doing anything else in any other program
• Intuitive visual interface displays full configuration and playback progress info for all sounds
• Waveform display
• Samples can be loaded to RAM for virtually instant cueing, or played from disk, allowing for minimal RAM usage and unlimited sound length
• In addition to keyboard key triggering, Soundplant can also play sounds via mouse click, like a 'virtual cart machine'
• Capable of playing 8 stereo or mono samples simultaneously (i.e. 16 channel polyphony)
• Pitch adjust allows micro-tuning to the 100th of a semitone and a 10 octave range; easily auto-assign the same sound to multiple keys at varying pitches to create playable instruments
• Precise sound start and end offset control to the 100,000th of a second, more than most editors; easily auto-'splice' pieces of a sound across multiple keys (for example, to extract individual drum sounds from a breakbeat loop)
• Support for wav file cue points; easily set playback offsets to cue points defined in any audio editor
• Realtime volume, panning, and pitch control for each key, all non-destructive
• Randomization settings for varying the playback of sounds
• Customizable sound triggering, allowing for looping, overlapping, restarting, muting, pausing, and fading
• Onscreen keyboard keys are highlighted and animated as they play and can be color-coded
• A true performance program that allows playback and triggering to continue even while configuring keys and loading and unloading sounds on the fly; multiple instances of the program can be open simultaneously for even more flexibility
• Saves and loads keyboard configurations as .keymap files; keymaps are fully cross-platform compatible and can be easily transferred between different computers with the handy 'save w/ sounds' feature
• Lightweight, runs well even on older computers and includes several options for minimizing CPU and RAM usage for performance tuning; Soundplant can give new life to that dusty old slow laptop you thought you'd never use again