Ambient Loops user manual

Manual contents · Application: /ambient-loops/

Ambient Loops, headed Ambient Loop Generator in the application, creates a four-part ambient composition from a text seed and a mixing board. It synthesizes the music in your browser. You can listen while adjusting the board, download the finished mix, or export individual parts and MIDI for another audio application.

This chapter describes the controls and behavior implemented in the project's current application code. It covers Ambient Loops specifically; Studio and Editor have different capabilities and file workflows.

Contents

• Make your first loop
• Find your way around
• Choose the composition
• Shape the feel
• Mix the four parts
• Adjust tone and stereo width
• Listen and change settings during playback
• Save, compare, and share settings
• Download audio and MIDI
• Practical workflows
• Troubleshooting and current limitations

Make your first loop

1. Open /ambient-loops/. A fresh visit starts with Calm, a random seed, 30s, and seamless loop enabled. The initial tempo is 60 bpm; auto tempo starts unchecked.
2. Choose a Mood and Length. Keep the starting seed or enter a memorable phrase.
3. Click Generate loop. The status line reports progress, then the resolved key, mode, tempo, render time, and WAV size.
4. Click Play live in Your track. Adjust the Feel controls or the instrument levels while listening.
5. Let the latest render finish. For a looping file, click Preview seam to hear the downloaded WAV across its loop point.
6. Click WAV to save the mix. Use Copy link to preserve the settings that generated it.

Changing controls before the first render prepares the board; it does not start generation. Once a track exists, most changes trigger an automatic render. Generate loop remains available for an explicit render of the current board.

Find your way around

On wide screens, the playback and download column stays beside the board as you scroll and can scroll within itself. On narrower screens the sections stack vertically, so playback and downloads may be farther down the page.

The navigation includes Studio, Ambient, Manual, Verify, and License. Theme switches between dark and light appearance and saves the preference locally. The Manual link opens a separate tab.

Choose the composition

Mood

Mood chooses a musical starting point: register, chord size, automatic mode choices, automatic tempo range, and whether shimmer notes are composed. Changing Mood also resets Energy to that mood's default, even if you previously adjusted it. It leaves your other board controls in place.

Automatic choices are repeatable choices from the seed. Setting an explicit Mode or Tempo overrides the relevant automatic choice. Calm, Focus, and Uplift use three-note pad chords; Ambient, Warm, and Deep use four-note chords. Deep uses lower registers; Ambient places its melody higher.

The checked Shimmer box permits that part to sound when notes exist. It does not add shimmer notes to Focus or Warm, or guarantee a shimmer event in a short composition.

Seed and variation

The Seed accepts text. It drives the musical choices; it is not a search box or a descriptive prompt. For example, rainy-window is a repeatable identifier rather than an instruction to add rain sounds.

• Type a new seed and commit the field by leaving it to apply the change.
• Click the dice button to replace it with a random eight-character seed.
• Leading and trailing spaces are ignored when rendering and sharing.
• A blank seed uses my-first-loop internally.

The same seed and complete board settings, running the same engine/content implementation, reproduce the same WAV. A seed alone is insufficient: mood, timing, instruments, mixer settings, tone, structure, and loudness all matter. A share link does not embed the audio or freeze an engine version, so keep the downloaded WAV for an exact long-term archive.

Selecting an explicit key, mode, or tempo can change other seed-driven details even when its value matches a previous automatic result. Treat pinning an automatic choice as a new board configuration and audition it.

Length and seamless loop

Available lengths are 15s, 30s, 60s, 2 min, 5 min, and 10 min. Length is the requested WAV duration in seconds; it is not rounded to a whole number of bars. The composition uses 4/4 time and may end partway through a bar.

With seamless loop enabled, the renderer blends the natural continuation of the ending into the beginning over a two-second region. The output keeps the selected duration. This smooths the audio boundary; it does not guarantee that the selected duration is a complete musical phrase or a whole bar.

With seamless loop disabled, the file receives short fades of about 30 ms at its beginning and end. This is useful for a cut intended to play once. The separate Structure control determines whether the music builds and thins out.

Key, mode, and chords

Open Full console → Musical.

The progression menu contains:

1. I–vi–IV–V
2. I–IV–V–I
3. vi–IV–I–V
4. I–V–vi–IV
5. I–iii–IV–V
6. vi–iii–IV–I
7. I–IV–I–V
8. IV–V–I–vi

These labels identify scale-degree patterns. The selected mode supplies the actual pitches, so the menu's Roman-numeral capitalization should not be read as a complete chord-quality spelling for every mode.

Structure and tempo

Loop (uniform) maintains an overall uniform arrangement, while Motion can still create slow variation. Intro–body–outro makes the opening build toward the full texture and the ending thin out: melody becomes sparser and softer, pad level is shaped, bass enters or leaves around the edges, and shimmer is omitted from intro/outro sections. The intro and outro lengths depend on the number of bars, with up to four bars each.

Structure and seamless looping are independent. Selecting Intro–body–outro does not uncheck seamless loop. For an intentional beginning and ending, set both controls accordingly.

The Tempo slider ranges from 40 to 120 bpm, in 1 bpm steps. Check auto tempo to let the seed choose within the Mood's range; the slider becomes disabled and its readout says auto. Uncheck it to use the slider again. The rendered status line reports the actual tempo.

Shape the feel

The numeric readouts are control values, not percentages or loudness measurements.

Motion is easier to judge on a longer loop because its variation spans multiple bars. Energy is most obvious when Melody is enabled and audible.

Voice-over bed

Click Voice-over bed to apply this group of settings and open Full console:

It does not listen to speech or automatically duck against a voice track. It sets these six controls once; you can continue adjusting them afterward. Existing strip enable/mute choices remain in effect. Use Set A or save a preset before applying it if you want to compare with the previous board.

Mix the four parts

Each channel strip has an enable checkbox, an instrument menu, and a Level slider from 0 to 1, in 0.01 steps. All four strips start enabled at level 1.

All voices are synthesized. The instrument names describe their modeled timbre; selecting Choir does not add words or a recorded singer.

Unchecking a part preserves its slider value but sets its effective audio level to zero. Recheck it to restore that level. Setting Level to 0 also silences the part. These choices affect the live mix, full WAV, theme cuts, and that part's stem. MIDI retains the composed notes, as explained under Export MIDI.

Instrument selection changes the sound assigned to a part. It does not turn Bass into a second melody or change which musical role the strip plays. During live playback, an instrument change waits for a bar boundary and crossfades into the new voice.

The Melody part is called motif in stem filenames and some serialized settings. motif.wav is the Melody stem.

Adjust tone and stereo width

Stereo width

Stereo width ranges from 0 to 1.5: in 0.01 steps; the initial value is 1.

• 0 produces mono by collapsing the stereo difference.
• 1 preserves the normal stereo spread.
• Values above 1 widen the stereo image.

Width affects exported audio as well as the live mix. It is separate from listening volume.

Low cut and high cut

Both sliders span 20 Hz to 20 kHz on a logarithmic scale. The displayed frequency is rounded to whole Hz before use. The underlying slider moves in 0.001 steps, so each step covers a different number of Hz depending on position.

Low cut starts at off at the low end; raise it to reduce low-frequency content. High cut starts at off at the high end; lower it to reduce high-frequency content. The controls cannot cross, although they can meet.

The cuts act on the frequencies used to synthesize each voice, with a gradual transition outside the chosen boundaries. They are not an abrupt removal of every frequency outside the displayed limits. A very narrow range can make some or all parts nearly silent.

Equalizer and spectrum

The equalizer has five fixed bands. Each slider runs from approximately −12 dB to +12 dB, in roughly 0.24 dB steps, with its center at 0 dB. All start centered.

A shelf adjusts a wider region below or above its frequency. The middle bands boost or cut around their center. Use the displayed dB value to judge the amount.

The five bars above the sliders show live output levels in the corresponding regions. They are listening aids, not an editable EQ curve or a complete spectrum analyzer. They respond to the post-EQ mix, before the listening Volume/Mute controls. They therefore keep moving when playback is muted. They are idle when playback is stopped or when the rendered-file playback path is being used.

Listen and change settings during playback

Play live and Stop

Play live starts a synthesized stream. While it plays, the button becomes Stop. Stop ends playback; it is not a pause with a resumable playhead. Starting again begins a new playback pass.

The live stream continuously repeats the selected duration. It also repeats when seamless loop is unchecked, in which case you can hear the nonseamless file's edge fade/dip on each pass. To use the result as a single cut, download it and play it once in your destination application.

When live playback cannot start, Ambient falls back to playing the rendered WAV. In that mode, changes require re-rendering and interrupt playback. The Play button's tooltip identifies this fallback. A nonseamless WAV plays once in fallback mode.

When changes become audible

Energy and Motion changes are committed when you release the slider. Several other continuous controls can be heard during the drag itself. The LIVE label shows the resolved musical plan or announces a pending change. In this implementation, a pending “moving to … at the next bar” message can remain on screen after the audible transition has completed.

Applying an A/B slot or preset uses the same timing rules. Mixer settings can move immediately while musical changes wait for a bar; a whole-board comparison is not necessarily instantaneous.

Background rendering and downloads

After the first render, changing a stopped board schedules another render after roughly 0.6 seconds without another change. During live playback, the live sound updates by the rules above and the WAV is scheduled to refresh after roughly 1.2 seconds without another committed change.

The WAV control can show updating… while it is behind a live change. Clicking a marked WAV waits for a render before saving. For a final export, finish your changes and wait for the render status to complete before saving or generating additional exports. The status/readout and auxiliary exports can lag during rapid or overlapping changes.

Clicking Generate loop explicitly stops playback and renders the current settings. Cancel appears for a main render and stops that render; existing live playback can continue if the canceled job was a background refresh. Canceling does not undo your board changes.

Preview seam

When the last rendered file is seamless, Preview seam is available. It stops live playback, plays the actual rendered WAV starting 2.5 seconds before the end, crosses the loop boundary, and stops automatically after about 6 seconds.

Use it after the latest render completes. Seam preview plays the last completed file; it does not automatically wait for pending board changes. It is a focused check of the exported loop point, including the beginning's blend with the ending.

Volume and Mute

Volume ranges from 0 to 1: in 0.01 steps. Mute silences monitoring while playback continues. Neither changes WAVs, stems, MIDI, loudness settings, presets, A/B state, or share links.

The listening volume and mute state are saved locally and shared with other Sonodrift boards that use the same controls. If a fresh loop appears to be silent, check for a retained Muted state or a low Volume before changing the mix.

Keyboard and mouse wheel

Use Tab to move among controls, native arrow-key behavior to adjust sliders, and normal button activation to operate buttons. There is no application-wide Spacebar play/pause, undo/redo, or dedicated transport shortcut implemented on this page.

When a range slider has focus, scrolling the mouse wheel changes that slider one step at a time: wheel up increases, wheel down decreases. This applies even when the pointer has moved away from the slider. The page stops wheel-scrolling until focus moves elsewhere; press Tab or click another control to resume page scrolling. Collapsed select menus do not use this custom wheel behavior.

Save, compare, and share settings

Copy link

Click Copy link to copy a URL containing the current board. If clipboard access fails, a browser prompt displays the URL for manual copying. The button briefly reads Copied! after successful clipboard copying.

The link includes the seed, mood, length, loop choice, Feel controls, mixer, musical settings, and nondefault instruments/tone/loudness settings. It excludes listening Volume/Mute, theme, named presets, A/B slots, and rendered audio.

Open the link to restore its settings, then click Generate loop. Opening a shared link does not automatically render or play. Copying does not replace the URL already in your address bar, so bookmark the copied URL itself if you want that exact configuration.

Named presets

1. Enter a name in Preset name.
2. Click Save preset.
3. Click the saved name to apply it later.
4. Click its ✕ button to delete it.

A blank name becomes Preset 1, Preset 2, and so on based on the saved list. Saving with an existing name replaces that named entry. Deletion is immediate. Presets are stored in local browser storage, with no account synchronization or downloadable preset-file control. Clearing site data or changing browser/device removes access to them; preserve important setups as copied links as well.

A/B comparison

Click Set A to capture the current settings in A. Change the board and click Set B to capture B. Apply A and Apply B restore the corresponding capture; each button stays disabled until its slot has a value.

Although the Session heading calls A/B “ephemeral,” the current code saves both slots in local storage and restores them after a reload. Treat A/B as two replaceable snapshots, not an undo history.

Restore limitation to check

When applying a saved preset or A/B slot in an already modified session, some settings omitted from the serialized board because they were at default can retain their current values. The affected controls include neutral EQ, open frequency cuts, default instruments, and automatic key/mode choices.

After applying a snapshot, check these controls if the result differs from the original. For a reliable clean restore of a copied share link, open that saved link as a fresh page load and generate there. There is no board-wide Reset button, general undo, WAV import, MIDI import, or project/certificate import in Ambient Loops.

Download audio and MIDI

WAV mix

The main WAV download is stereo, 44.1 kHz, 24-bit PCM WAV. Those format choices are fixed in this interface. The filename follows seed-mood-duration.wav, for example rainy-window-calm-30s.wav; characters unsuitable for the generated filename are replaced with underscores.

The file includes your current instruments, enabled parts, levels, tone, stereo width, Space, loop treatment, and selected loudness processing. Listening Volume and Mute have no effect on it.

Uncompressed stereo WAVs use about 16 MB per minute at these settings, or about 159 MB for 10 minutes. The page also needs working memory while rendering and playing, so longer exports can place much greater demands on a device than their final file size suggests.

Loudness

LUFS is a measure of perceived integrated loudness. The platform names are labels in the interface; the menu does not configure or inspect your publishing destination. Upward normalization is limited by the renderer's peak ceiling, so a quiet or highly dynamic result may remain below the requested target. Selecting a target changes exported audio and refreshes the preview gain after rendering.

Export stems

Click Export stems (4 WAVs) to render the four parts in sequence. When complete, four individual download links appear: pad.wav, bass.wav, motif.wav, and shimmer.wav.

Each stem uses the selected duration and audio format. Import them into a DAW at exactly the same start time; they are sample-aligned. They include that layer's current level, enabled state, instrument, applicable reverb, and the board's tone/width/loop processing. A disabled or absent part produces a silent stem.

The stems have their own final safety processing, so summing them is not guaranteed to reproduce the mix bit for bit. When Loudness is set to a target, each solo stem is normalized independently, which can substantially change the relative balance when they are summed. Use Natural before exporting stems if you want the closest starting balance to the board.

These are four separate download links, not a ZIP archive. Save them before changing the board again: a completed main render clears the extra download links.

Theme pack

Click Theme pack (intro + stinger) to create two companion files:

• intro-15s.wav: a 15-second cut.
• stinger-6s.wav: a 6-second cut.

Together with the main WAV, these give you three lengths. The two extra cuts use the current seed and board, with the key, mode, and tempo pinned to the last completed main render. Both extra cuts have seamless looping disabled.

Wait for the main render to finish before creating a theme pack, especially after changing Mood, Key, Mode, Tempo, or Seed. The cuts are new renders with their own duration; they are not simply trimmed samples from the main WAV. Their name does not force Intro–body–outro structure: they retain the Structure setting selected on the board.

Save each link individually. As with stems, a later completed main render clears the extra links.

Export MIDI

Click Export MIDI to save a .mid file from the current composition. It contains a tempo/time-signature track and four musical tracks for Pad, Bass, Melody, and Shimmer, in Standard MIDI format 1 at 480 ticks per quarter note. Track names identify the chosen voices.

MIDI contains notes, their timing, and note velocities. It does not contain the synthesized sounds, reverb, EQ, frequency cuts, stereo width, audio loop blend, or loudness normalization. The export does not apply strip enable checkboxes or fader levels: notes remain present for a muted part if the composer generated them. Choose instruments and recreate the desired mix in your DAW.

Pad notes can overlap, and some notes can extend beyond the selected WAV duration. Set the intended length or loop region in your destination application. A Shimmer track with no composed notes remains empty.

Provenance and moving into other tools

Ambient's renderer computes generation metadata internally, but the current Ambient interface does not expose a downloadable provenance certificate, project file, or Open in Editor action. Its available deliverables are the WAV mix, stems, theme cuts, and MIDI described above.

Keep a copied settings link alongside the audio as a record of the board. The navigation's Verify link does not create a certificate for an Ambient download. Use the separate Studio and Editor chapters for their supported session and certificate workflows; a share link is not an Editor project file.

Practical workflows

A restrained background bed

1. Choose Calm or Focus and generate a 30- or 60-second version.
2. Start Play live, capture Set A, then click Voice-over bed.
3. Listen alongside the actual speech in your playback environment. Adjust Melody level and Brightness first if the music competes with it.
4. Capture Set B and compare. Remember that Volume changes listening level only; lower channel levels or choose export Loudness to change the file.
5. Copy the final link, wait for rendering to settle, and save the WAV.

A repeatable ambient background

1. Enable seamless loop and select Loop (uniform).
2. Choose a suitable duration and tempo. If a whole-bar loop matters to your edit, each 4/4 bar lasts 240 ÷ bpm seconds; choose a combination whose duration is an exact multiple of that value.
3. Lower Motion for a steadier texture, or raise it and use a longer duration for more gradual movement.
4. Preview the seam after the render finishes, then audition repeated playback in the application that will use the WAV.

Related intro, background, and stinger

1. Finalize the main board and complete its render.
2. Save the main WAV and Copy link.
3. Create the Theme pack and save both extra files.
4. If you want an arrangement that builds and resolves, select Intro–body–outro, allow the main render to finish again, then generate another set of cuts to compare.

Continue in a DAW

Use stems when you want the existing synthesized audio separated into parts. Choose Natural first if preserving their relative balance matters. Use MIDI when you want editable notes and your own instruments. In either case, preserve the main WAV as your audible reference.

Troubleshooting and current limitations

There is no note editor, audio upload, microphone recording, arbitrary custom duration, custom instrument import, MP3 export, certificate download, or project import on this board. The controls offered here create and mix generated ambient compositions.

Sonodrift user manual

Ambient Loops · Sonodrift Studio · Sonodrift Editor

Use your browser's Print command to print this manual or save it as a PDF.

This manual explains the features implemented in the project's code as of October 8, 2026, including Studio engine 2.50.0. It covers creating music, mixing, editing, listening, saving your work, downloading files, cloud synchronization, and managing a license. Button names in bold match the applications. A deployed site running another build may have different controls or cloud providers.

Contents

1. Choose an application
2. Getting started and browser controls
3. Ambient Loops: complete guide
4. Sonodrift Studio: complete guide
5. Sonodrift Editor: complete guide
6. Saving, sharing, and moving your work
7. Audio files and certificates
8. Free features and licenses
9. Activating and recovering a license
10. Troubleshooting
11. Glossary

Choose an application

Ambient Loops and Studio compose and synthesize music on your device. A seed is a repeatable starting value, such as a word or phrase. It is not a prompt interpreted for meaning: writing “gentle piano in the rain” does not instruct either generator to add piano or rain. Choose the appropriate controls and instruments yourself.

A repeatable result depends on the seed, complete settings, and engine version, not just the seed. Studio's Editor adds another layer of information: your edits. A generator link does not include those edits.

Three short workflows

Background loop: open Ambient Loops → choose a mood → Generate loop → Play live → adjust the board → wait for the updated render → Preview seam → download WAV. See the Ambient guide.

Instrumental track: open Studio → choose a style → Play live ▶ → adjust the board → Generate track → wait for rendering → Download → WAV. Studio offers more export formats with a Studio license. See the Studio guide.

Edited track: prepare a board in Studio → Edit track → select a stretch in the whole-track map → move or stretch notes → WAV in the Editor's download row → wait for rendering. Without a license the Editor keeps one edited track, so keep the file before opening a different track. See the Editor guide.

Getting started and browser controls

Open the applications through the running Sonodrift website. JavaScript must be enabled. Live playback uses browser audio processing and background workers; the Editor also needs site storage to keep your edits between visits. A desktop or laptop with a pointer and keyboard gives the most room for detailed note editing.

Start sound with an explicit Play or Play live action. Loading a page or generating a file does not itself grant permission for browser audio playback. If live sound cannot start, follow the application's status message; see troubleshooting.

Volume, mute, and theme

• Volume changes how loudly you hear playback. It is shared across the apps and remembered in this browser.
• The main Mute button silences listening while playback continues. The clock and meters can continue moving. Click Muted to hear the track again.
• Playback volume and main mute do not alter WAV exports, stems, MIDI, certificates, or board links. Use board mix controls or musical edits when the downloaded audio needs to change.
• Theme switches between dark and light appearances and remembers the choice locally.

An instrument's mute is a separate control. Ambient and Studio board mutes change the mix; Editor instrument mute and solo are for auditioning. The individual guides explain their export behavior.

Keyboard and mouse wheel

Use Tab and Shift+Tab to move among standard controls. On the two generator boards, a focused slider accepts the mouse wheel: up increases its value by one step; down decreases it. This remains true when the pointer moves away from the slider. Click elsewhere or press Tab to return the wheel to page scrolling. Collapsed dropdowns do not use this custom wheel behavior.

The Editor has its own note, selection, envelope, and lane shortcuts. Read its keyboard reference before assuming that a familiar desktop music-editor shortcut is implemented.

Saving, sharing, and moving your work

You do not need a Sonodrift account. Presets, playlists, Editor work, licenses, and preferences start in the storage of the browser and site where you used them. Another browser, device, profile, or site address has a separate store. Studio's Library → Export and Import move playlists and presets as files. With a Studio license and a configured provider, Your cloud storage synchronizes library items, including tracks kept by the Editor, with your own Google Drive. The current configuration enables Google Drive; it does not enable OneDrive. Your license and listening preferences stay on each device.

Use Copy link rather than manually copying an arbitrary browser address. Save the copied link in your own notes if you need to return on another device. The link exposes the seed and settings to anyone who has it, so use a seed you are comfortable sharing. A recipient's free/Pro limits still apply.

Ambient and Studio links describe different engines and controls. Use the destination app for the link. Ambient does not hand its four-layer loop into the Studio Editor.

Preserve a finished piece

1. Stop changing controls and wait for the current render to finish.
2. Download the WAV and any related outputs you need. Check the filenames and that each download completed.
3. For an unedited Studio export, keep the matching certificate if your license enables it. Consider verifying the pair before archiving.
4. Save a board link separately from the files. A link is useful for reopening controls; the downloaded audio is your preserved result.
5. For an edited Studio piece, download the edited WAV from the Editor's own download row before starting another track in the Editor. With a Studio license, Save also keeps the edited track as a .sonodrift file that Load opens again.

Clearing site data removes locally saved work and activation. Private browsing, unavailable storage, and browser cleanup can also prevent it from surviving. Confirm a cloud save or keep exported files before clearing data; pending changes that never reached the provider have no cloud copy. The app sometimes asks the browser to retain site storage after saving valuable work or activating a license; this is not an external backup.

Do not clear site data as a first troubleshooting step while the Editor contains work you need. Download the edited audio first. Keep your license code outside the browser so that you can activate again if local storage is lost.

Audio files and certificates

Choose the right output

WAV is the finished sound. The generator exports use stereo, 44.1 kHz, 24-bit PCM WAV. There is no MP3 or AAC export selector. Import WAV into your video, game, podcast, or music software; convert it there if another format is required.

Stems are separate audio files for the available layers or roles. Their treatment differs between the apps; read the relevant export section before expecting their sum to equal the master WAV. The boards provide individual download links, not a ZIP archive.

MIDI carries notes and role assignments for another music application to play. Its instruments and effects will sound different unless you recreate an equivalent setup. Neither generator has an audio-recording or MIDI-file import workflow.

A certificate is a JSON record for an unedited generated Studio render. It records how the audio was made and the hashes used to check it. It is separate from a purchased license and contains the seed/settings rather than your payment information. Ambient's current board does not expose a certificate download.

Edited Studio audio cannot use the original generation certificate, because generating from the seed and settings alone cannot reproduce your note edits. The Editor's downloads therefore come without one. Studio's own WAV and certificate always describe the generated board and are unaffected by the Editor.

Verify an unedited Studio export

1. Open Verify from the site navigation (/verify/).
2. Choose or drop the certificate .json into the certificate area.
3. Optionally choose or drop its original .wav into the WAV area. Supply it when you want to check a particular file, rather than the certificate alone.
4. Press Verify and allow the browser to regenerate the audio. Longer tracks need more processing and memory.
5. Read the individual checks as well as the overall result.

Use the original WAV. Transcoding, trimming, adding tags, or processing it in another app can change the exact file hash, even when it still sounds similar. Retain both the original export and any later production version.

Verification reads the selected files and renders locally. It documents generation facts. As the certificate itself states, it does not establish copyright ownership, exclusivity, public-domain status, or a guarantee against third-party claims.

Free features and licenses

This table describes the implemented feature gates. The product's License page separately states the terms for using outputs.

The source configuration labels Ambience at $19 one-time and Studio at $49 one-time. An Ambience license grants commercial-use coverage for the Ambient board; all of that board's features are already free. A Studio license enables Studio's Pro features and also covers Ambience. An Ambience code does not unlock Studio Pro.

The project's License page permits free outputs in personal, non-commercial projects without attribution. Its commercial licenses describe perpetual, worldwide use in commercial projects without a per-use royalty. It restricts redistribution or resale of the raw outputs as an audio catalog/sample library and enrollment of the nonexclusive source audio in automated exclusive-claiming systems. Read that page for the full terms rather than treating a successful download or certificate verification as a rights grant.

Refund information

The project's refund policy describes a full refund within 14 calendar days while a code remains unredeemed/unvalidated. Activating a purchased code ends that automatic eligibility. It separately describes technical exceptions for an unresolvable defect reported within the 14-day window.

Read License → Refund policy for the displayed policy and request form. The form asks for the purchase email and license code. The support address configured in this snapshot is support@sonodrift.com.

Activating and recovering a license

After checkout

When checkout and the license service are configured, the purchase flow opens Stripe and returns to a Sonodrift activation screen. The application fetches the purchased code for you to copy and offers Activate on this device or Not now.

• Activate on this device validates the purchase and stores the signed license in this browser. The screen explains the effect on automatic refund eligibility before activation.
• Not now leaves activation deferred and, when the code was retrieved, keeps it visible with a Copy button until you choose Done. Save the code or keep the purchase email.
• Viewing the refund policy from this screen opens it over the dialog so you can read it without leaving checkout.

If a checkout return link has expired, use the purchase code instead; return links are short-lived. The app's message directs you to Already have a code?. Never share a checkout return URL as a board link.

Enter a code or activate another browser

1. Open the relevant License or Pro panel, or the site's License page and the appropriate product button.
2. Expand Already have a code?.
3. Paste your code and press Unlock. Purchased codes require a connection to the license service for this initial validation.
4. Check that the app reports the license as active. Allow the startup check to finish if a returning browser briefly displays free controls.

Stored signed licenses are verified locally on later page loads. They have no expiry field in this implementation. If browser storage is lost or a stored license cannot be verified, enter the saved purchase code again. Using another browser does not transfer presets, playlists, or Editor work with the license.

Recover a lost code

Inside Already have a code?, enter the original checkout email under Lost your code? and press Send it. The recovery area is available when the license service is configured. Its neutral confirmation does not disclose whether an address has a purchase and can also appear after a connection failure; it is not proof of email delivery. Check the purchase inbox and spam folder, then retry when connected or contact support if the code does not arrive. The recovery email goes to the address on the purchase record.

A connectivity error is different from a wrong-product code. Retry a temporary connection problem; use a Studio code to unlock Studio. If the message says the site cannot verify the license its server issued, contact support with the exact message and purchase details rather than buying again.

Troubleshooting

For a reproducible problem, note the app, build number shown on the page, browser/device, exact control sequence, and status message. Include the board link when it is relevant and safe to share. The Feedback page uses the configured contact route; in this snapshot it provides an email fallback. Keep license codes out of public bug reports.

Glossary