Soundplant turns your computer keyboard into a versatile, low latency sound trigger and playable instrument.

Via drag & drop, easily assign sound files of any format and length onto 88 keyboard keys, creating custom soundboards that put hours of instantly-playing audio at your fingertips with no extra hardware needed (or use MIDI if you like).

Soundplant is used for live music and sound effects, as a drum pad, as a unique electronic instrument, as an educational aid, and just for fun - in theater, radio, film, podcasting, streaming, presentations, studios, stadiums, classrooms, clubs, museums, and churches - by DJs, musicians, engineers, sound designers, composers, artists, gamers, teachers, magicians, puppeteers, comedians, public speakers, and more.

What is Soundplant?

Soundplant is live performance audio software that turns your computer keyboard (yes, your QWERTY keyboard) into a versatile, low latency, multitrack sample trigger and playable musical instrument. It allows the assignment of sound files of any format and length onto keyboard keys (or MIDI), giving you hours of instantly-playing random access audio at your fingertips with no extra hardware needed. Use Soundplant as a performance, presentation, or installation tool, as a drum pad, as an educational aid, to mix tracks in realtime, trigger sound effects or background tracks during a show, sketch sound designs, make beats and loops, and give new life to old sounds - all via an input device you've been practicing on for as long as you've been typing. Because it's a standalone software sampler that uses your own samples to create custom soundboards, Soundplant is an infinitely flexible electronic instrument limited only by the variety of sounds that you feed it. An easy to use interface provides drag & drop configuration of each key, including options which control the way each sound is triggered along with several realtime effects. Playing sounds are displayed with a progress bar and track time, and you can even trigger sounds with Soundplant hidden while using any other program.

• 88 keyboard keys can be used to trigger sounds with very low latency, or use any MIDI device
• drag & drop sound files onto keyboard keys for quick & easy key assignment; click & drag to move or copy sounds from key to key or *new* between Soundplant windows
• plays virtually all sound file formats in existence, including .wav, .aif, .mp3, .mp4, .flac, .m4a, .aac, .wma, .alac, .wv, .ogg, .snd, .ape, & many many more, even audio from video files like .mp4, .webm, .mkv, .wmv, .avi, .mov, .mpg, .flv, etc.
• background key input allows Soundplant to receive key hits while minimized or hidden — trigger sounds with global hotkeys while using other audio apps, typing a document, playing a game, or doing anything else in any other program, with optional Ctrl/Alt/Option/Win/Command key combos
• *new* v.50 has been rewritten from scratch optimized for modern 64-bit multicore CPUs & GPUs including native Apple Silicon support
• unlimited sound polyphony, allowing for dense soundscapes & complex virtual instruments — mix tons of sounds at once, with full playback progress info displayed for up to 24 tracks onscreen
• 32-bit floating point mixing & up to 384 kHz output for ultra high fidelity
• unlimited sound length — fire off short effects or play huge hours-long tracks with equal ease
• *new* limit 1 play toggle for making a key playable only once per session
• *new* system keep awake built-in capabilities for preventing your computer & audio device from sleeping during a performance even if Soundplant is backgrounded, without having to touch system settings
• record Soundplant's output
• *new* record from from mic or any other input directly onto keys, with optional monitoring through realtime effects & mixing with Soundplant's output, all while continuing to trigger sounds — useful for podcast & mixtape production, live looping, or sampling from your favorite streaming app
• highly customizable sound triggering, allowing for overlapping, restarting, fading, muting, & pausing, controlled by secondary key press or by key release, or use channel priority options to set certain tracks to stop or fade out on the start of other tracks
• playlist queuing for flexibly triggering multiple sounds with a single key, allowing playing in sequence or shuffled, or all starting simultaneously in sync, or stepping through a pause-at-the-end-of-each-track playlist with a single key, or triggering a single random sound from a group of sounds — even play multiple playlists at the same time
• fullscreen waveform zooming for setting sound start & end points at highest resolution, with *new* previous/next zero-crossing and previous/next sample for maximum precision
• output device selection, including ASIO support
• open an unlimited number of Soundplant windows for even more flexibility to output to multiple audio devices, gain more 'banks' of sounds, & record multiple tracks
• unlike most players, sounds play entirely from RAM to avoid disk use during playback, & compressed sounds decompress on loading rather than during playback, for best sound quality & lowest latency
• realtime volume, panning, eq, pitch, speed, lowpass, convolution reverb, highpass, distortion, & ring mod effects for each key, with randomization settings for richly varying sound playback
• activity logging for time-stamped documenting of tracks played
• full n-key rollover keyboard support — unlimited simultaneous key presses/releases can be detected on capable hardware — Soundplant is a great workout for your NKRO mechanical keyboard
• simple view mode for larger keys that you can click or tap to play like a virtual cart machine, perfect for touchscreen devices or less advanced users
• dark & light UI modes
• onscreen keyboard keys are highlighted as they play & can be custom colored & labeled
• pitch adjust allows microtuning to the 100th of a semitone & a 10 octave range, with *new* improved timestretch quality & lock pitch for handy tempo shift
• easily auto-assign a sound to multiple keys at varying pitches to create playable instrument scales using pitch assign multi-key
• easily splice pieces of a sound across multiple keys (for example, to extract individual drum sounds from a breakbeat) using slice multi-key
• works identically on Windows or Mac, & saved keyboard configuration .keymap files are cross-platform compatible & can be easily transferred between different computers using save with sounds
• includes several options for minimizing CPU & RAM usage for performance tuning so that it can run well even on older computers — Soundplant can give new life to that dusty old laptop you thought you'd never use again

Soundplant is not a synthesizer, plugin, editor, or sequencer, but it is way more than a media player. Soundplant was designed to do one thing and do it well: to trigger sounds with maximum speed, efficiency, and ease of use. Users love its rock-solid stability for live event use, its simple one sound per one key metaphor which eliminates the usage complications of many other software samplers, its versatility for handling sounds of all types from short effects to full length songs to hours-long mixes, and its ultra-optimized use of the computer keyboard with lowest-possible latency requiring no extra hardware.

System Requirements

Windows version runs on latest Windows 11 down to minimum Windows 7; 64-bit required, Win 10+ recommended

Mac version runs on latest macOS 14 Sonoma down to minimum 10.13 High Sierra; natively supports Apple Silicon & Intel

• For best performance, a computer from 2016 or later with a 4+ thread CPU, 8+GB RAM, & a dedicated GPU is recommended
• For basic use, Soundplant can run on most computers made in the last 10+ years, but on older/slower machines you may have to turn down some settings as recommended in this FAQ
• Your built-in cheapo soundcard will work fine, and so will any professional quality audio interface
• For optimal display, minimum 1280×720 screen resolution is recommended