EC: The past two years have given many of us an opportunity to reexamine our daily routines. For me, this manifested most profoundly in my work environment. I was already doing a fair amount of unattended mixing before March of 2020, but when that suddenly became the only way I could continue to work, I stepped up the attempt to create the most ergonomic, efficient studio setup possible.
I had already incorporated the Avid S3 control surface [Tape Op #130] into my workflow a year prior to lockdown, which has continued to be a great way to spend less time with my hand on the trackball. My good friend Philip Weinrobe, co-creator of Figure 8 Recording, picked up an S3 for his home studio as well, and we started trading soft key layouts and other time-saving tricks. Then he discovered SoundFlow, went deep fast, and I quickly followed. For the last few months, we have been texting almost daily with new script ideas, cool things we find on the SoundFlow Store, screenshots of our custom Surfaces, etc. It’s honestly become a bit of an obsession. Since he’s the one who got me hooked, I’ll let him take it from here for a while.
PW: It was during a long stretch of pandemic mixing in the summer of 2021 that I realized the repetitive tasks in my workflow were negatively impacting my life. My bouncing and stem-creating processes were long and arduous. Routing schemes required many pre-checks with plenty of room for human errors. I was often bursting with creative ideas, only to be blocked by technical barriers. That’s when I finally decided to try the software that had kept popping up on social media ads for weeks and weeks: SoundFlow.
SoundFlow turned out to be the exact application I had been dreaming about. You can, essentially, take almost any set of tasks you perform in Pro Tools (or other applications) and teach SoundFlow to automate those tasks. And... it’s super easy to use. And... it works in the cloud with your personalized commands following you around to any other studio seamlessly. In all, SoundFlow is freaking insane.
If you’re not a computer programmer, SoundFlow’s primary unit of function for you will be the Macro: the structure in which you can build a series of tasks. SoundFlow’s developers and power-users have already created pre-built tasks out of dozens of Pro Tools functions – not only the ones you can access via Pro Tools’ menu system or built-in shortcuts, but also some hidden stuff that EuControl doesn’t even have access to. Stringing together these basic Pro Tools building blocks into Macros is as easy as drag-and-drop, and it works really damn well. For example, I always want my bass tracks to be colored red, as would anyone else, I assume.
EC: Okay, I can’t let this slide. Bass is yellow, man!
PW: The standard way to do this is to click on that small color icon bar on the track, which pops up the color window, then mouse over to the tiny little red color icon, hoping you hit the right one, then close the window. And then on to the next instrument group, and so on. This is tedious and hard on the hand, and none of the native shortcuts in Pro Tools offer any help. Now I click “shift+1,” and SoundFlow instantly opens the color window, selects the exact red color I want, applies it to all my selected tracks, and then closes the color window. From there, I built out “shift+2” for drums, “shift+3” for guitars, etc., each with the specific colors I always use. This was my first Macro, and it took me about 5 minutes to create. I was hooked.
More complicated processes can be automated using Scripts written in JavaScript. The SoundFlow Forum is full of users sharing and improving on each other’s Scripts, which you can simply copy and paste into your SoundFlow account. I want to emphasize that you do NOT need to know how to write code to start using these Scripts immediately. There is a real sense of generosity in the Forum, and often other users will build Scripts for you if you describe what you are trying to achieve. I was in the middle of a mix and thought, “I wish I could hit a single button and have all the tracks selected send to a new aux, name the send, name the aux, solo-safe the aux, and call up the search field for a plug-in on insert B. Oh, and route this new aux’s output to wherever the first selected track was routed to.” I typed this into the Forum, and within 20 minutes, someone made this Script for me. I then edited it until it was working just how I wanted. I now use this command dozens of times a day. I trigger it with “shift+cmd+ctrl+opt+i,” but even if you’re copying and pasting someone else’s Scripts, you can choose whatever key command doesn’t already perform a function in Pro Tools.
If you’re worried about remembering a whole slew of new key commands, SoundFlow also integrates directly with any iOS, Android, or Elgato Stream Deck device (a small desktop control panel with customizable buttons). This gives you the ability to trigger any Script or Macro from a nicely designed set of buttons and icons. For example, I set up my iPad mini and a 5x3 Stream Deck to always display the memory location markers in my session for easy timeline navigation.
There is also a SoundFlow Store, where you can find packages of other people’s Scripts and Macros. Most of the packages are free, but a few cost up to $50. I will say, the few paid packages I’ve sprung for have been well worth it. One of the more expensive packages is made by Andrew Scheps, who is very active in the SoundFlow community, and it creates an offset counter. This may sound familiar: You are working on a mix where your Start marker is somewhere out in the middle of the session. However, when you get comments back from the band, they give you their notes based on the mix starting at 0:00. Constant complicated math ensues, marking up your timeline with memory locations to keep track of everything. Andrew wrote a beautiful application that displays a counter into which you can enter your offset, thereby easily syncing up your timeline with the clients’ reference times. I now love doing mix revisions. Seriously!
Overall, my mixing workflow has easily improved more in the last six months than in the previous six years. One of the main benefits is that I’m in a purely creative state for longer stretches of time. I’m not slowing down to remember complicated tasks; they are simply being executed seamlessly before my eyes. I now feel more like I’m making the computer work for me, much like how a guitar or a piano works for an instrumentalist.
EC: I’ll offer just a bit of counter-balance to Philip’s enthusiasm. Yes, SoundFlow is amazing, and yes, it has totally transformed my way of working, too. But it may be a little daunting for some users since even using Macros does feel a little bit like programming. The good news is that there are tons of video tutorials made by smart people who are good at explaining how to do things. Also, you can try it out for a month for free. About that, it did take a good month or more to feel like I was actually saving time by using SoundFlow, rather than spending extra time getting it to work the way I wanted. Now I have an iPad mini to the left of my computer keyboard and have gotten very adept at using my left pinky to trigger the proper button on the 9x7 grid that I built with all of my favorite Macros and Scripts. However, creating that tool was a pretty substantial time investment. For a while there, I had to limit how much time I’d spend in a day making SoundFlow commands versus actually mixing. A few months in, my time investment is most definitely paying off every time I do something like clear all the automation out of a session, transfer multiple tracks into Melodyne [Tape Op #84] quickly and simultaneously, or render an AudioSuite plug-in, each with a single pinky tap.
I do have two feature requests. First off, I’d love haptic feedback for the iOS app. Nothing satisfies like the illusion that you are actually clicking a button. The other request is a bigger deal for those of us living rurally: I’d love to have better access to SoundFlow without being online. There is an offline mode, but if you accidentally get logged out, you can’t sign back in until you regain service, and during one good ice storm, I frustratingly lost access to SoundFlow for several days. Another reality check is that, even though it’s way more stable with the newest update to version 5, there are still times when SoundFlow doesn’t perform the tasks you tell it to, which can also be frustrating. There is a little error window that can give you a hint as to why the Macro or Script is getting stuck, and if all else fails, the Forum is essential since it’s filled with kind people who, collectively, are remarkably invested in helping you reach all of your efficiency goals. Whether you are troubleshooting a broken task, or trying to build one from scratch, somebody will come to the rescue. It might even be SoundFlow’s> CEO, Christian Scheuer, responding on the Forum, who incidentally seems like a really nice guy.
SoundFlow is subscription-based, and I can hear everybody’s groans from here about that. But for a product like this, which is truly in constant development, it makes sense to me that a small startup would need a consistent income stream. There’s a tiered pricing structure, and the ten-buck-a-month “Cloud Pro” plan is what we both used for this review. The cheaper option has fewer features, and the more expensive options are for bigger production facilities. As of now, SoundFlow is Mac only. Although Pro Tools users are currently the most extensive customer base, you can use it to automate tasks in other DAWs, as well as other applications, such as the Finder. The possibilities for automating all of your mundane computer chores are limitless. Come, join us.
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