XLN Audio Life on your Mac — 1.2.3

XLN Audio Life is a plugin and standalone application that turns audio from everyday life into beats.

Record phone sounds straight into a track

• Grabbing sounds from your phone with the Life Field Recorder app (Android and iOS) and bringing them straight into a track.
• Generating endless rhythms from any audio you record or import, so you never run out of starting points.
• Sidechaining sequencer lanes to the kick using the Duck feature added in version 1.2.
• Recording audio from your DAW with the Life DAW Recorder companion app.

Offline use and English-only interface

• Version 1.2 enabled offline use when files are stored or recorded on the computer.
• Buffered input handles DAW audio recording in version 1.2.
• Interface is in English only.

Chops audio on transients instead of drawing spectral filters

If you have used Izotope Iris, you know it also makes instruments from sampled audio. Iris lets you draw spectral filters over a sound and play it chromatically. Life takes a different path: it chops the audio on transients and builds a beat grid, not a melodic instrument. You get a sequencer with lanes for hats, kick, snare and whatever else you assign, rather than a keyboard you play. For someone running a school game club or a home studio, Life is faster when you just want a rhythm from a coffee machine recording; Iris is better when you want to turn a door slam into a pad.

AudioStacker from another developer layers loops from its own library. Life has no library — you bring the sounds. That is the main difference. AudioStacker is a remix tool for people who like curated loops. Life is a capture tool for people who record their own world. The Life Field Recorder app (Android and iOS) means you can grab a park bench creak on your phone and have it on your Mac in seconds, something you cannot do with AudioStacker.

ReCycle is an older tool that slices loops and lets you rearrange slices. Life does that too, but it adds the Duck feature for sidechaining. ReCycle has no mobile companion. For a teacher who records classroom sounds for a beat project, Life is more integrated from phone to DAW.

Life DAW Recorder not seeing audio input

The most frequent one is the Life DAW Recorder app not seeing audio input. This happens when the DAW is not set to route audio through the correct output bus. Go into your DAW's audio settings and make sure the track you want to record is assigned to a bus that the Life DAW Recorder can access. In many DAWs, you must create a separate audio channel and set its output to the Life DAW Recorder virtual device.

Another snag: imported files sound quiet or distorted. Life works best with loud, clear recordings. If you record a street sound on your phone and the wind covers the signal, the beat generator will choke on noisy transients. Try recording close to the source and keep the phone microphone away from wind. The Life Field Recorder app has a basic level meter — use it.

People also forget that version 1.2 works offline only if the files are stored on the computer. If you recorded something a month ago and moved it to external storage, Life will not find it. Keep your captured sounds in the default Life library folder on your internal drive.

Dragging too many sounds into the sequencer

Beginners often drag too many sounds into the sequencer at once. Life can handle a few lanes, but if you dump twenty samples into the beat grid, it becomes mud. Start with four or five lanes: kick, snare, hat, one percussive hit, one melodic hit. Let the generator build a rhythm from those, then listen and remove the lanes that do not fit.

They also skip the Duck feature. The Duck sidechains all sequencer lanes to the kick, so the kick punches through the mix. Without it, lanes fight each other and the beat sounds flat. Enable Duck on your kick lane and adjust the amount so the other sounds duck just enough.

Another mistake is ignoring the Life Field Recorder app and trying to use only built-in DAW recording. The mobile app captures sounds where you find them, and the quality is often better than recording through a laptop microphone. Use the phone app, record something outside, then transfer it via Wi-Fi or cable. It makes a difference.

Making a cafeteria beat from phone recordings

I wanted to make a beat for a short film about the school cafeteria. I took my phone, opened the Life Field Recorder app, and recorded the clatter of trays, a few students talking, and the hum of the refrigerator. I dragged the tray clatter into lane one, the talking into lane two, and the fridge hum into lane three. I set lane one to kick, lane two to snare, lane three to hat. The generator started playing a rhythm immediately. I did not like how the fridge hum took over, so I lowered its volume and enabled Duck on the tray lane. Now the kick punched through. I added one more lane with a spoon tapping sound I recorded later. The rhythm was good, so I exported the MIDI pattern to my DAW and layered it under the film dialogue. The whole session took maybe twelve minutes.

If you are a teacher running a game club, you could do this with students: give them a phone, let them record five things in the schoolyard, then come back and build a beat together. Life makes it fast enough that you do not lose their attention.

• macOS 10.13 or later
• Intel or Apple Silicon