Arrives with v1, in the paid tier. The beta listens to one input device and holds this whole page back, it is here so you can see where the instrument is going, and every claim on it lands with v1, not before.
Sialk connects to a DAW from inside the DAW, with nothing to install: a plugin called Sialk: Connect that Sialk itself puts where your DAW looks, the first time it runs. No loopback driver, no aggregate device, no admin password. Ableton, Logic, anything that loads Audio Units.
The one-minute version
- Run Sialk once. Open your DAW - Sialk: Connect is in your plugin list (rescan if it is not).
- Drop it on the master bus and set it to Master. Sialk now hears your whole mix, clean, and follows your project's exact tempo and beat, not an estimate from a microphone.
- Drop more instances on tracks or groups, drums, bass, vocals, and give
each a stem number. Each becomes a stem in Sialk: its own level and
three bands, in every sketch, and its own source in every modulator menu.
The numbers match: Stem 1 on the plugin is stem 1 on Sialk's surface.
(In sketch code, arrays start at zero - Stem 1 is
audio.stems[0].)
Your audio is untouched, the plugin passes sound straight through and sends a copy to Sialk over localhost. Monitoring, routing and the mix never change.
What a stem is, in Sialk
Up to eight stems, in the order you numbered them. A sketch reads them as
audio.stems - the same level, bass, mid, high as the master, one set
per stem, and sialkStems[8] in GLSL. A parameter can be modulated by one
stem alone: opacity riding the drums while the melody does nothing.
Which instrument is stem 1 is your routing decision, made in the DAW - Sialk deliberately keeps no second mapping that could disagree with it.
The DAW's clock
A Connect instance carries the host's tempo and beat position with every block. While it is fresh, Sialk's BPM is your project's BPM at full confidence, and beat-synced LFOs ride the DAW's own bar lines. Stop the DAW, and Sialk hands back to its own tempo tracker within a quarter of a second.
The multichannel route
Not in a DAW, or in one that cannot load plugins? Sialk can also open a multichannel input device natively: stems routed to a loopback such as BlackHole 16ch, or a hardware interface, one instrument per channel pair, channels 1-2 are stem 1, 3-4 stem 2, and so on, up to eight. Choose the device under Settings → Audio → Stems. A browser caps audio input at two channels, so Sialk captures these devices with its own native helper, every channel arrives, not the first pair.
When both are available: an explicitly chosen stem device wins over the plugin, and the plugin's Master wins over the microphone. The status bar always names what is actually being heard.
What this replaces
Everything on play music into it still works and still matters, the microphone is what a gig sounds like. What Connect removes is the setup between your session and your visuals: no virtual devices, no re-routing, no second mix, and a tempo that is known rather than detected.