# Welcome To perfectly placed audio

### **Boombox** Studio is our first standalone application, bringing the Boombox plugin straight to your desktop. *** ## System requirements Boombox Studio runs on macOS or Windows operating systems. Included with **Boombox** is our **royalty-free audio library** of sound effects. Boombox sounds can be used in your favorite DAW application as *.WAV* files as outlined in our **EULA** *(End-User License Agreement)* *For more about the allowances and restrictions of our Royalty Free License see below:* {% content-ref url="/pages/-M2GpvZc8Fb6mmrotnYW" %} [EULA](/more/eula) {% endcontent-ref %} ## Get in touch If you still have questions after reviewing this **Boombox** guide please [**Contact Us**](https://mtmograph.com/pages/contact-us). Enjoy learning and we hope Boombox is a fantastic addition to your workflow. # Installation ## Summary After you purchase a License, your download will be available in two locations. 1. A order confirmation will be sent to the Checkout Email with a Download link and License Key 2. On our website: ## Finalize installation #### Mac On Mac, you'll want to unzip the downloaded file, and run the .dmg installer. Mac will likely prompt you to add Boombox Studio to your Applications folder. *This is necessary to ensure you continue to get updates to your application.* After that, you can run Boombox Studio from your Applications folder, and pin it to your taskbar. #### Windows Unzip the downloaded file, and run the .exe installer. # Activate license Easy as 1, 2, 3 ## **Summary** When **Boombox** is first installed a **License Key** is required to activate and finalize the process. You can **log in** and **out** of your License Key and easily switch to a different workstation. ### Get license key You can get your License Key from your Checkout Email.\ If you forgot your License Key, you can recover it on our [License Recovery page](https://mtmograph.com/pages/license-recovery) ### Multiple Seats If the License Key is valid, but the Seat Count is reached. Boombox will prompt you with a license manager screen where you can log in or out of workstations using your License Key. ### Failed license check If the License Key check fails, a couple of situations may have happened: 1. The License Key isn't real, or entered incorrectly 2. The workstation has no internet connection to verify the license {% hint style="warning" %} For more information, or for assistance please [**Contact Us**](https://mtmograph.com/pages/contact-us) {% endhint %} # Sound Packs Fresh audio is more fun ## Summary Just like regular design, [**sound design**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_design) also comes in trends, and having a flexible library becomes essential for creators to keep up with a fast-moving industry. We aim to release a new Sound Pack each month full of interesting sounds to enhance the library. Each new Sound Pack is continually maintained and improved by our Composer and head of Audio Production, [Isaac Brockshus](https://mtmograph.com/pages/about-us). The maintenance includes improving existing Tags and Cue Points, re-mastering audio and adding even more new sounds. ## Downloading It's easy and fun to get the latest Sound Packs. New Sound Packs are synced out via the Mt. Mograph servers and updates are automatically delivered to you. All you have to do is click the 'Available' packs and see what new ones are available. {% hint style="success" %} Sound Packs you have already installed will receive updates automatically. {% endhint %} ## Sound Data There is a lot more than meets the eye with the Boombox Library sounds. They include tags and cue points to make sound design more fluid. ### Cue Point Every sound effect in the Library has a "cue" point / or in musical terms "hit point". Align your CTI (Current Timeline Indicator) with a visual action in your Composition or Sequence and when you Add the sound, the cue point will line up with the CTI. ### Search Tags Sounds have a wide spectrum of flavors, so it's important to have more than one way to find the right sound effects. Each sound has tags, describing the sound in terms of motion, action, and even phonetically making them very easy to find. # Troubleshooting Common issues and solutions. ## Contact us Please send us an email describing your problem to # Packs ## Summary The Packs page is the place where you can find all the packs that come with Boombox, and also your own packs, which you can import here or make yourself. This page is the perfect starting place if you are looking for a specific sound, vibe, or emotion that you want to add to your timeline!

## Boombox packs When you open Boombox for the first time you will see that there is already an extensive collection of packs that come with Boombox. These packs regularly and new packs appear almost every month. You can start exploring these packs by syncing all of the packs, or if space on your workstation is limited, sync just single packs that fit your style perfectly. Each pack comes with a pack preview sound that you can play by clicking on the pack, and playing the waveform at the bottom of the screen. The tabs on the left allow you to filter through Installed, User, Available, and Syncing packs. You can also right-click on any of the packs to get the pack info. This includes a description of the pack, as well as the most common 'tags' that are found in that pack. ## User packs To create a user pack, you can navigate to the 'User' tab, and click 'Create Pack' in the footer. Alternatively, you can search "**Create User Pack**" in the global Actions (CMD/CTRL + K) or click "**+ new**" on the Collections page

This brings you to the Pack Manager. Here, you can choose a custom pack image to display (or keep the default gradient we provide). You can edit the pack name and description on the right-hand side. Add sounds by drag-and-drop, or clicking on the 'Add Sounds' button. Once your pack has sounds, it will look like the below:

Here, you can edit the name of each sound, and add custom tags that can be searched on the Browse page. When you upload sounds, we try to detect the natural 'cue point' of the sound, i.e., where the sound impacts. If you want to change this cue point, you can do so in the sound panel on the right. The cue point is utilized when integrating with specific actions via **Connections**. If you are happy with your pack, you can hit "Save" in the footer and close the Pack Manager. # Browse On the Browse page, you are able to interact with all of the sounds in Boombox

Boombox Studio Browse page — Browse Page

## Searching sounds To find the perfect sound for your animation you need good ways to look for them. Boombox has multiple options to do this. If you have a specific sound in mind and you know what it's called as well you can use the search bar to type in the name of this sound. The list will automatically filter for you.

## Searching Tags If you are not sure what a sound is called, but you know the vibe of the sound that you are looking for, you can use the list of tags on the left side of the list of sounds. Every sound has multiple tags and by clicking on a tag you get a list of all the sounds that have that specific tag. By holding CMD/CTRL + clicking the tags you can select multiple tags. Also note that if you have a tag already selected, and you hold CMD/CTRL while hovering the Tags block, we will show you only the tags that have SFX overlap with the currently active tag:

If you know that you are looking for sounds in a specific pack or packs, you can search for packs by clicking on the little Boombox circle logo in the search bar. This will open up a list of all the packs installed and from here you can select one or multiple and make that your selection. You can remove the packs from your selection again by clicking their bubble images in the search bar.

### Layout The Preference dropdown in the top right corner will allow you to change the layout of the Browse page.

You can sort the sounds in ascending or descending order by **Sound Name, Duration, Pack, and Favorite status,** by clicking on the row headers in the Sounds column. Filter sounds by duration using the slider in the **Filters** column. ### Actions Drag any sound out of the panel to import it into the timeline or folder of your choosing.\ \ You can easily favorite a sound by clicking the Star Icon

next to the sound, or by selecting a sound and pressing `f` # Live Editor Compose on the perfect stage ## Summary The Boombox Studio Live Editor, or 'Constellation', is available for After Effects and Premiere Pro connections. Sounds are essential in motion design and setting these up can be hard and confusing. That's why we started a mission to set up sounds more visually and see how all your sounds fit together. The Live Editor is the tool we ended up with and it lets you edit the pan and volume of a single sound or multiple sounds together in a compact and complete space ## Constellation The main part of the Live Editor is the Constellation where you can see all of your timeline sounds and drag them around. In the Constellation you can simultaneously control the volume and pan of a sound or multiple sounds together. By design, the constellation will show a visual representation of all of the sounds in your currently active AE/PR composition. You can also list the sounds next to, or below, the constellation by toggling the appropriate preferences:

The sounds are shown in *chronological* order as they are listed in your timeline.

### Bi-Directional Live Polling When on the Live Editor, this screen will continuously poll your active timeline, and update accordingly. Any changes to the selected sound, ordering of sounds, pan, volume, or title, will reflect in Boombox Studio. Additionally, any updates to the sounds' pan, volume, or selected status will reflect immediately in your AE/PR timeline. {% hint style="warning" %} If you notice any lagginess, it could be due to a large number of sounds in your timeline. We are currently working on a way to alleviate this! {% endhint %} ### Selected Sound If you start selecting sounds in your timeline or in the Constellation they start appearing **blue** indicating that you are editing this sound or multiple sounds. By **Shift or CMD/CTRL + Click,** you can add or remove sounds from your selection. In the Constellation you can adjust the volume and pan of only one sound indicated by turning **blue**. If you have multiple sounds selected you can edit the pan and volume separately of these sounds in the Info panel. ### Volume In the Constellation you can edit both the pan and volume of a sound. The volume of a sound in the Constellation ranges initially from **-16dB** to **1dB** and starts in the center of the Constellation and increasing as you drag the sound more to the blue outside border of the Constellation. You can customize the volume range to your liking in one of the Constellation preferences:

### Panning Panning a sound works in a circular way. A sound starts above the center at **0°** and pans to left or right depending on which way you drag the sound, all the way to below the center of the Constellation where the sound is completely panned either left or right. ### Audio skinning To edit the sounds with a bit more context to their neighboring sounds, you can try out the Audio Skin function. It essentially filters sounds to only show a couple of previous sounds and the next sounds, so you will get a nice overview of where a sound group is placed in space.

Toggling Audio Skin and other options are hidden in the Drawer on the right side of the Live Editor. Turning on Audio Skin will give every sound a more unique color as well, compared to the regular view. The active sound will be **blue**, and the 'pre' and 'post' sounds will be shades of **yellow** and **red**, respectively. The next option to toggle is Audio Ghosts. If toggled on, all sounds that are currently not editable are displayed by a greyed-out cross. The Pre and Post options of the Audio Skin menu are sliders for you to determine how many sounds you want to display before the selected sound and after the selected sound.

Constellation with Audio Skinning enabled

## Timeline Above the constellation, we have added a mini timeline of all the sounds in your current project. Every sound is represented with a small star and by clicking on one you can select the sound. We made it also easy to cycle through sounds with the arrows on the left and right sides of the timeline.

## Additional Preferences #### Auto-Play When the Auto-Play is toggled on, sounds will automatically play after updating them. This way you can hear the new volume and/or pan of the sound. # Collections ## Summary The Collections page is the spot to find all of the packs and sounds you created.

## Collections All of your packs are shown as a list and as a grid. You can select a pack and start browsing the sounds by clicking once on the list item or double-clicking on the pack in the grid. Once you have a pack selected you can perform various actions llike **Edit Pack, Export Pack and Remove Pack**. You can find all of these actions in the footer.

If you select a sound and open the Drawer (by clicking on the Drawer icon in the top right corner), you are also able to edit sounds without opening the Pack Manager page

# Favorites ## Summary The Favorites page is the spot to find all of your favorite sounds.

Once you have favorited a sound you are able to find it on this page. If you unfavorite a sound it will be removed from this page. You can also clear the favorites page by clicking on **Clear all Favorites** in the footer. # History ## Summary The History page is the spot to find all the sounds you have used in the past

Once you have used a sound either by dragging it out into another program or adding it to a timeline using the connections, the sound will appear on the History page. The list of sounds is filtered on the date that the sound was used. You can select a specific timeframe filter in the Drawer

You can remove a sound from History by right-clicking and selecting **Remove from History** or remove all sounds from History by clicking on **Clear all History** in the footer. # Connections ## Summary Boombox Studio offers a unique way to further integrate with some of the most common DAWs out there. In the application, we term this integration a **Connection**. You can currently establish connections with the following applications: * After Effects * Premiere Pro * Audition * DaVinci Resolve (free) * DaVinci Resolve Studio **Add Sound -** Connections offer a faster and more refined way of importing SFX to your timelines. Specifically, you get the ability to add SFX to your timeline at your current CTI. Moreover, the SFX will be added such that the Cue Point of the sound matches exactly where your CTI is located. So, if you are scrubbing a video, and have established the perfect place for a sound to 'impact', the Connections feature becomes extremely easy to use, and a huge timesaver. {% hint style="info" %} Every Boombox sound has a cue point. This is the point in the sound where audio "hits" or peaks. Line up the CTI with the peak of your animation to sync sounds perfectly! {% endhint %} {% hint style="info" %} For select applications (currently, AE, Premiere, and Audition), you also get the ability to 'Cue' and 'Swap' sounds. You may be familiar with these functions from our Boombox plugin. {% endhint %} **Cue Sound -** If you don't want to sync up a sound to the CTI, but rather to another sound, you can use this feature. First, select the sound in your timeline that you want to have your new sound lined up to, then select the sound that you want to import, then click "Cue Sound". Now you have these two sounds lined up perfectly on their cue points. **Swap Sound -** The third method of adding a sound is using the "Swap Sound" action. The name speaks for itself, it swaps the sound that you select with a new sound. So first, select the sound in the timeline that you want to swap with, then select the new sound that you want to have in your timeline, then click "Swap Sound" and these two sounds will be swapped, also lining up the new sound's cue point with the previous sound's cue point, making it extremely easy to test different sounds at an impact point. ## Establishing a Connection You can access the Connection management page either through the Settings menu, or directly from the Browse page. Depending on the application, there are some one-time prerequisites to take care of before Boombox can establish a connection to your app. # Adobe ### Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Audition Establishing connections with these applications require you to download a 'Satellite Extension'. You can download and install this directly from the Settings -> Connections page in Boombox.

Once installed, restart your Adobe application. The satellite extension will run in the background whenever the Adobe application is running. No need to explicitly open any extensions, connections should be automatic. Once connected, you will see the connections listed in Boombox Studio:

With a connection made, and a sound selected, you will see the new Add, Cue, and Swap actions (and their corresponding keyboard shortcuts) listed in the footer:

# DaVinci Resolve {% hint style="info" %} You can currently only **Add** sounds to the Resolve timeline (Cue and Swap are not available). You can add sounds on the Cut, Edit, and Fairlight pages. {% endhint %} ## DaVinci Resolve Studio Before interacting with Resolve, be sure that Python is installed on your system. On many machines, it will come installed by default, and if you don't have it installed, Boombox will display an error indicating so. Once python is installed, all you need to do is click the "Enable" toggle on the Resolve connections page, and you're good to go! If you get any errors when attempting to add sounds to your timeline, you may need to update your Python version, or specify a custom path to a python installation. See Troubleshooting below. {% hint style="success" %} No additional scripts are needed to work with Resolve Studio - You do not need the *boombox\_client*, as with DaVinci Resolve (Free) {% endhint %} *** ## DaVinci Resolve (Free) To interface with the Free version of Resolve, you'll need to install a client script. You can easily do this by clicking the "Install" button on the Resolve (Free) connection page. After the script is installed, ensure Boombox is running. Then navigate to Resolve's Workspace -> Scripts menu, and run the `boombox_client` script. You should then see the **Resolve (Free)** connection appear in Boombox. *** ## Installing Python If you don't already have Python installed on your system, you can do so easily. * **Option 1**: Download directly from Python website: * Note that when installing via this method, you should click the option to **add python to your PATH**, when the python installer opens. {% hint style="info" %} For Windows users, we recommend installing [Version 3.11](https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3119/), as some users have reported issues interfacing with Resolve with the latest version of Python (3.12 at the time of this writing). If you are using the older version of Resolve (18), you may need to use [Python 3.10](https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3106/). {% endhint %} * **Option 2 (Mac)**: Install using Homebrew: * **Option 2 (Windows)**: Options listed here: ## Troubleshooting ### Working with multiple versions If you have multiple versions of python installed, python doesn't seem to be working with Resolve, or you'd prefer not to add a new python version to your PATH, you can manually specify a path to a python executable on the Resolve Connection Settings page. ### Version Links [Python 3.12](https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3127/) [Python 3.11](https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3119/) [Python 3.10](https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3106/) ### Verifying your installation #### Resolve Studio * You can verify your python installation is compatible by enabling the Resolve Studio connection, going to the Browse page, and trying to add a sound to the timeline. #### Resolve Free * You can verify the boombox\_client will work with the Resolve Free application by opening Resolve, and navigating to **Workspace -> Console**. Then, click the

button. If Resolve does not find the python installation, the Boombox client script will not work. # EULA The legal stuff ***Check out our EULA here:*** [***https://mtmograph.com/pages/legal***](https://mtmograph.com/pages/legal) # About us A team with a dream ## Note to user Thanks for using our tool, it means the world. We are **Mt. Mograph***,* the team behind [**Boombox**](https://mtmograph.com/products/boombox), [**Motion-4**](https://mtmograph.com/products/motion-4) and [**Wander**](https://mtmograph.com/products/wander) and we love developing animation software. Boombox was an idea that has been in production and constant evolution since February of 2018. Our goal is to bridge the gap between animation and sound through intuitive and familiar tools. We want the future motion designer to be able to produce a start-to-finish commercial with ease. Thanks for supporting our projects. Developed by **Mt. Mograph, LLC**.\ Copyright (c) 2014-2024 {% hint style="info" %} **Quick links:**\ 🏡 [mtmograph.com](https://www.mtmograph.com/)\ 🚀 [Motion Guide](https://motion.mtmograph.com/) \ 🔈 [Boombox Guide](https://boombox.mtmograph.com/)\ 🚀 [Wander Guide](https://wander.mtmograph.com/) {% endhint %} ## Developers 🏔 Matt Jylkka 🗺️ Luuk de Bruin 🧗 Cameron Jeffords ## Audio production 🔉 Isaac Brockshus ## Special thanks ### Artwork ✍ Lyndon Navalta \ 🎨 Jamie Givens ### Musicians 🥁 Ryan Anderson\ 🎻 Mile High Quartet