Frequently asked questions
Straight answers about what the app does, what it costs you nothing to try, and what happens to your audio.
What does SoundBud do?
Record or upload a song and get its key, chords, BPM, genre, instruments and time signature. Then AI breaks down the harmony and gives you practical tips for playing, improvising or reharmonizing. The second half of the app, Polish, cleans up and masters your own audio: podcasts, voice-overs, video sound and recordings.
What are the AI modes?
After the chords are detected you pick one of four modes. Theory: color-coded harmonic analysis with Roman numerals. Solo Guide: scales and improvisation advice for each chord. Reharmonize: substitutions, tritone subs and creative alternatives. Explain Simply: the same analysis in plain language for beginners.
Can it recognize my song?
If you feed it a well-known track, SoundBud can identify the title and artist through the AudD music recognition service. That also sharpens the AI analysis, since it knows what piece it is looking at. Song recognition is a Premium feature.
How accurate is it?
Chord detection uses a 301-class neural network and is reliable across a wide chord vocabulary. BPM works well on most music. The key is worked out from the detected chords using a classic music theory method, right on your device. A clean recording always gives the best result, and every value stays editable: tap it and correct it.
What does Polish do?
It processes any audio for loudness, dynamics and frequency balance, in four tabs. Voice-Over: tame popping S sounds (de-esser), loud breaths, muffled voice and echoey rooms. Ducking: put music under your voice so it dips when you speak and comes back when you pause. EQ and Dynamics: a 6-band EQ plus compressor, with AI tips based on measurements of your own audio. Output: pick your platform and get the right loudness, then export WAV or MP3. Hold the A/B button at any point to hear the before and after.
Can it fix the audio in my video?
Yes. Send a video to SoundBud and it polishes the sound only. The picture is copied back untouched, not re-encoded. You can also run a video through Decode to get the chords out of it.
What are the Metronome and Tuner?
Two tools at the bottom of the Record tab, free for everyone. The metronome takes your time signature and BPM and keeps you in tempo, and its click goes silent the moment you start recording so it never bleeds into your audio. The tuner shows the nearest note and how many cents you are off. Tune first, record second.
I don’t know what a de-esser or LUFS is. Can I still use Polish?
Yes. Every module carries a plain-language description inside the app. A de-esser, for instance, is described as “if your s, sh and ch sounds pop harshly, this tames them”. Try a module, hold A/B to hear the difference, and let AI Tips tell you what to adjust. No audio engineering background needed.
What is free and what needs Premium?
Free covers 4 analyses a week, 1 AI Theory insight a day, 5 saves a month, 5 Polish exports a week, one video polish a month and one video export a month with a watermark. A quota is only spent when a job finishes: a failed or cancelled analysis costs you nothing. The tuner, metronome, chord grid and the basic EQ are free too. Premium removes the limits and unlocks the Solo, Reharmonize and Explain modes, song recognition, genre and instrument detection, slow-down, looping, transpose, synth chords, PDF and MIDI export, watermark-free video with all visual styles, the voice-over and output suites, files longer than 10 minutes, and it removes ads.
Is my audio stored anywhere?
Music analysis sends your audio to our servers, where it is deleted right after processing. Polish never uploads anything: it runs entirely on your device. Song recognition happens through the AudD music recognition service. For the AI modes, only extracted metadata is sent (BPM, detected chords, genre, instruments, and title and artist if identified), never the raw audio. Nothing is kept or sold. Full details are in the privacy policy.
Does it work offline?
Polish works fully offline, including video sound. Music analysis needs a connection, because the chord, tempo and instrument models run in the cloud. The tuner and metronome work offline.
Found a bug, or want to suggest something?
Tap Contact Support in Settings or Send Suggestion on your Profile page inside the app, or write to info@alpaconaudio.com. Every message is read.