Your pocket
musician’s ear.
Record a song or drop any audio file. Understand the harmony that’s there, shape the sound you want it to be.
Chord, key and BPM detection for any recording, plus voice-over, ducking and mastering that run on your iPhone.
One recording.
Six layers of analysis.
Tonality Detection
Identifies the key and scale of any piece. Major, minor, modal, the harmonic center everything else revolves around.
Chord Recognition
A neural network trained on 301 chord classes. Major, minor, diminished, augmented, extended, altered, it catches them all.
BPM & Time Signature
BeatNet-powered tempo and beat tracking. Detects time signatures too: 4/4, 3/4, 6/8, odd meters.
Genre Classification
PANNs CNN14 identifies the genre landscape of your track. Not just one label, a weighted breakdown across styles.
Instrument Detection
Pinpoints which instruments are in the mix: piano, guitar, bass, drums, strings, synth, and more.
Song Recognition
Don’t know the track? Shazam-style recognition powered by AudD API finds the title, artist, and album.
Same chords, four different conversations.
Harmonic Analysis
Roman numeral analysis, tonal center mapping, color-coded chord functions. Diatonic vs. borrowed vs. secondary dominant, all visible at a glance.
Tonal center: C minor · Borrowed chord from A♭ major
Improvisation Map
For each chord, get scale suggestions and note choices for soloing. Pentatonic shortcuts, approach notes, avoid notes, practical improv advice.
Over G7 → G Mixolydian ♭9 ♭13
Target: E♭ on the Cm, B natural on the G7
Creative Alternatives
Tritone substitutions, modal interchange, chord extensions. AI suggests reharmonization ideas to transform the same progression into something new.
Cm → Cmmaj7 (add color)
Creates chromatic bass movement: C → D♭ → E♭
Plain Language
No jargon. This mode explains what’s happening in the music as if you’re hearing it for the first time. Built for beginners and curious listeners.
One tap, one printable lead sheet.
Any session becomes a formatted PDF: measure grid, chord notation, tonal center, AI insights, and reharmonized alternatives. Share with a bandmate or put it on the music stand.
A hand while you record.
PremiumBuilt-in metronome and tuner so you don’t switch apps mid-take.
Metronome
Custom BPM and time signature. Click sound that doesn’t bleed into your take.
Tuner
Chromatic pitch detection for guitars, basses, keys. Tune up without leaving the app.
Polish your sound.
Everything runs here.
A full audio processing chain running entirely on your device. Analyze, EQ, de-noise, compress, de-ess, duck, limit, and master before you export. Your audio never leaves the phone. No upload. No account.
EQ & DYNAMICS
01 / 04AI Audio Analysis
01 · MEASURELUFS, True Peak, LRA, dynamic range, frequency balance. Measured before you touch anything.
6-Band Parametric EQ
02Low Cut through High Cut. Shape precisely or pick a preset.
Noise Reduction
03Two denoisers, not one. Speech runs through RNNoise; music runs through a spectral cleaner that thins hiss and hum without mistaking instruments for noise. You pick which, and how hard. Pushed far enough, any denoiser leaves traces.
Compressor
04Simple if you want it to work. Surgical if you want the knobs.
VOICE-OVER
05 / 08De-Esser
Tames harsh sibilance (s, z, sh) on vocals and narration.
Breath Control
Pulls down audible inhales between phrases without killing presence.
Clarity
Adaptive high-frequency lift for intelligibility on small speakers.
Room Tone
Softens room reflections so a kitchen recording stops sounding like a kitchen.
SMART HELPERS
09 / 10Automatic Ducking
09Drop in a background track. The app auto-lowers it while you speak. No keyframes, no manual automation. Adjust duck depth 0 to 24 dB, preview the curve, done.
Platform Presets
10Pick where your audio is going. SoundBud hits the loudness target automatically.
Preview before you commit.
Every voice-over, ducking, EQ, and compression change applies to a live 10-second loop. Hear your edits against the original. Nothing processes the full file until you tap export.
Your mic takes never leave
the phone for post-production.
The full Polish chain runs locally. Voice-over, ducking, EQ, de-noise, compressor, limiter, and platform mastering, all on your device. No upload, no account, airplane-mode friendly.
A tool.
Not a ghostwriter.
SoundBud is a listening aid, not a generator. The musician, the engineer, the storyteller, is still you. We just hand you a better pair of ears.
AI hints, you create
Every suggestion, chord label, scale idea, reharmonization, is a prompt for your ear. The decision is always yours.
Your signature, your sound
SoundBud never writes, performs, or generates music for you. It listens, analyzes, and explains. The recording that leaves your phone is yours.
No AI residue in exports
No generative audio, no synthesized fills, no algorithmic voices, no watermarks. What you record is what you export.
Built for the curious,
not the certified.
Hobbyist Musician
Decode · Pillar 01SoundBud names every chord in a recording, marks the borrowed chords and secondary dominants, and explains the harmony in plain language. No theory background required.
Content Creator
Polish · Pillar 02SoundBud polishes a phone recording on the device itself: noise reduction, voice-over ducking, EQ, compression and a mastering preset for the platform the audio is headed to.
The app is perfect to find chords, genre and all the details about music! It is the updated Shazam!!For me, there exists no better tool for decoding music on the go. A true Swiss army knife for musicians.Hear more
in every recording.
Free to download on iOS. Record, analyze, polish, all on your phone.
The free tier covers 4 analyses a week, 1 AI insight a day and 5 polishes a week. SoundBud Premium lifts those limits and unlocks song recognition, all four AI modes, the practice suite, PDF, MIDI and video export, and files longer than 10 minutes. New subscribers get a 3-day free trial.
Download on App Store