Saltado Sessions

All features

Saltado Sessions at a glance. Runs on your machine, no account needed, in six languages. Works with ten DAWs, Ableton Live to GarageBand, with Ableton read the deepest. Free covers the core: unlimited projects, the compatibility checker, Plugin Passport, the Planner and the label directory; Pro adds the studio power tools (marked Pro).

Early access. Sessions is genuinely useful today and still being built. The $44 price rises as it fills out, and buying now includes every update that follows.

Projects

One library for every DAW you use. An Ableton project manager that is not only for Ableton: Sessions scans your whole computer, finds every project you have ever made across all ten supported DAWs, and reads the BPM straight out of the file where the format stores one. Ableton is read the deepest, including the key and what is inside the set, so your catalog is organized and searchable without tagging a thing. It is the file management you keep meaning to do, done once and then kept up to date, and the by-hand way to organize Ableton projects is written up if you would rather do it yourself.

  • Scans your computer for every project, across all ten DAWs
  • Tempo where the format stores it (Ableton, FL Studio, Logic, REAPER, Studio One); key from Ableton sets and Logic. The other five are found, grouped and opened like any other, and their numbers are left blank rather than guessed
  • Ratings, statuses, tags and notes
  • Customizable status pipeline, idea to released
  • Find any project again: search, sort and filter your whole catalog
  • Two ways to look at the library: the table, or a grid of cover art
  • Cover artwork: drop an image in a project folder and Sessions finds it, or pick one from the row menu, and a rescan never overwrites your choice
  • Until a project has artwork its card draws the track's own waveform in your accent colour, with the BPM, key and length across the foot of the picture
  • Column chooser: hide the columns you never read
  • Set vitals from Ableton sets: true length, bars, time signature, markers
  • Arrangement view: see a set's clips, colors and MIDI without opening Live
  • Track counts and file details per set, with the version of Live, Bitwig or Cubase that wrote it where the file records one
  • Works with sets saved by any version of Live
  • What Ableton had open recently, on a card inside Sessions, read straight from Live's own preferences
  • Drag projects and samples straight into other applications
  • Manual edits always survive rescans
How to find old Ableton projects, by BPM or key →

Previews Pro

Hear a track without opening Ableton. Sessions matches your exported bounces back to their projects, so you can preview any finished idea from a waveform right inside the app.

  • Bounces found where you actually keep them: your exports folder, and anywhere under the project folder itself, three levels down, so Bounces, Renders, Masters and the rest are all read
  • Teach it your own folder names in Settings, and a name you type wins over every list the app ships with
  • Stems and takes folders are listed but never picked automatically, so a loose vocal take can't quietly become what a project plays
  • A bounce you chose by hand is remembered, and stays on the list even after it moves
  • Play any track without opening the DAW
  • Waveform with a draggable preview window
  • Level-matched playback, matched by loudness rather than by peaks, and per-track volume
  • Preview samples used inside a project
Hear any project without opening your DAW →

Track health Pro

How loud your master really is, and what streaming will do about it. Sessions measures each bounce in LUFS, the same loudness measure Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music normalize to, and then tells you the consequence in a sentence instead of handing you a number to go and look up. Platform targets are approximate and written as guidance, never a pass-or-fail badge: how loud the track should be is still your call.

  • Integrated loudness, loudness range and true peak, per bounce
  • Said as a consequence: roughly how much Spotify will turn this track down, or up
  • A true peak over full scale is called out; the tighter mastering ceiling is noted and left alone, because most well-made masters sit above it
  • The loudness curve drawn along the waveform in its own lane, with the moments that clipped marked
  • A live metering console riding the waveform while a preview plays, in three views: hidden, a simple glance, or the whole console, cycled from the transport
    • Momentary, short-term and gated integrated loudness, the integrated reading carrying its signed distance from the -14 reference
    • Live true peak, with a clip lamp per channel that stays lit once it fires
    • PSR, and left and right level bars with peak-hold ticks
    • Stereo correlation full band, and again below 120 Hz, because a mix can be mono-safe up top and out of phase where the bass lives
    • A goniometer with trails, and 30 seconds of momentary history under it
    • Every part switchable on its own, so the console shows only what you read
  • Read from WAV bounces; other formats are named as unmeasured rather than guessed at
  • Level matching changes only what you hear, never the file: the measurements are taken from the bounce on disk either way

Session files

Manage the files inside every project folder without leaving the app: open a set in its DAW, duplicate or rename it, spot samples that were never collected, and start a new project by launching your DAW straight from the app. The samples a set uses are listed too, and the ones that came out of your Splice library are named with the pack they came from and link straight back to it, which still works after Collect All and Save has copied and renamed them into the project folder. Sessions finds them; the licence certificate itself is Splice's own flow on their site, and there is no bulk export of it.

  • Open a session in its DAW from the app
  • Duplicate, rename, delete (to the Recycle Bin)
  • Pick which set counts as the main one
  • Collect-and-save check: spot missing samples (Ableton sets)
  • Every sample a set uses, listed Pro
  • "Find on Splice" on the ones from your Splice library, named with their pack Pro
  • No Splice on this computer just means no Splice links, never an error
  • Rename the project folder safely
  • "+ New project" launches your main DAW blank, and the arrow beside it lists every DAW you have installed
  • Or start from a template: it stamps out a copy of any project you have parked in the Templates collection Pro

While Live is open

Sessions watches Ableton Live while you work. The set you have open is marked in the list with a running save clock, the app refuses to rename or delete a set out from under Live, and it can remind you when one has gone too long without a save.

  • Open sets marked in the list, with the time since the last save
  • Unsaved changes and never-saved sets called out
  • Rename and delete refused on a set that is open in Live
  • Save in Live and the project re-reads itself: BPM, key, length and the rest of its vitals catch up on their own
  • Studio time per project, banked per day. It counts only while Sessions is running, so it is a record of the time the app was there for, not a complete one
  • Save reminder: a system notification and a taskbar flash, never a popup over your session and never a sound
  • Off until you turn it on, with your own threshold from 5 to 60 minutes
  • If your system refuses the notification it says so, with advice for that system
  • Ableton Live only; on macOS it needs the one-time Accessibility permission

Clean up your library

Sessions walks you through fixing a messy library. Spot projects with missing samples, the ones Live reports as missing files, across your whole catalog (free, Ableton sets), then, with Pro, split a folder where every song was saved together into one folder per song, reclaim disk from duplicate samples by deleting only the unused copies (it never removes one a project actually uses), and drop new packs in to be filed automatically. Every move goes to the Recycle Bin and can be undone. There are longer walkthroughs of finding missing samples in Ableton and of organizing Ableton projects if you would rather understand it before you run it.

  • Missing-sample check across your whole catalog
  • Detangle: one folder where every song was saved together becomes one project folder per song Pro
  • It copies the samples across too, so each song comes out as a folder that opens on its own. Nothing is ever deleted from the original, which ends the run holding every file it started with
  • One at a time if you would rather: open a song in Ableton first, detangle just that folder, listen to it, undo that one on its own, and stop whenever you like
  • A folder holding a song Live had open in the last month is flagged before you detangle it, so you never split a project out from under work in progress, and afterwards it points you at Live's own Remove Unavailable Sets
  • "See why" on any pile: which songs it holds, which session files belong to each, and what the grouping was read from
  • Finding the piles is free, and so is marking one as intentional, which sticks even if you rename the folder
  • Duplicate-sample finder, project-aware and safe Pro
  • Drop-to-organize: packs, devices and sets auto-filed Pro
  • Every change journaled and reversible
How to clean up your projects and samples →

Library Pro

Catalog your whole studio: samples, racks, presets, Max for Live devices and plugins, with vendor names and a running count of how many tracks each plugin is actually used in.

  • Samples, racks, presets, Max for Live, plugins
  • MIDI and clips too: .mid, .midi and Live's .alc
  • Presets saved from inside the plugin's own menu, not only the ones the host files: FabFilter, Valhalla, Serum, Vital, u-he, Native Instruments and more, over 20 formats
  • Mine, Factory, Packs or Other: filter by where something came from
  • What kind of thing each plugin is, synth, EQ, compressor and so on, read from a 489-plugin research catalog
  • Copy list: your whole plugin inventory as clean text, ready to paste into an AI chat or a forum post
  • Plugin vendors and your own categories
  • "Used in N tracks" for every plugin
  • Folder browser and flat searchable list
  • Duplicate-sample finder, matched by content
  • Sample preview straight from the list

Labels & submissions

Where looking for labels accepting demos starts. Instead of the record label contact list you would otherwise build by hand, more than 1,200 labels and outlets arrive with the app, tagged by genre, each with the story of who runs it and what it releases. Labels that charge to consider a demo are flagged on the free tier too, because a pay-to-play warning is worth nothing to the person who already paid. Whether a given label has its inbox open this month is research you keep in the app, never a promise it makes. The directory is free; known demo routes and submission tracking are Pro: log every send and follow each track from first send to signed.

  • 1,200+ labels and outlets built in, tagged by genre
  • The story behind each one: who started it, where, and what changed
  • Pay-to-play submission fees flagged, on the free tier
  • Labels and outlets kept apart, so a magazine isn't pitched like an imprint
  • The label book stays yours: add your own labels, contacts and research notes alongside them
  • Known demo routes unlocked on 130+ of them Pro
  • One-click send that logs itself Pro
  • Tracker: sent / no reply / rejected / accepted / released Pro
  • Stale sends flagged after 30 days, reply times tracked Pro
  • The submissions desk, two panes: every send for a track on one side, the label you are working on the other Pro
  • A shortlist of the labels you mean to try, with ranked suggestions drawn from your own book Pro
  • A shortlisted label graduates by itself the moment you actually send Pro
How to submit a demo to a record label →

Sharing a project

Before you send an Ableton project to someone, or open the one they sent you, know it will actually open. The Compatibility Checker reads which plugins a set needs and names the missing plugins exactly, and Plugin Passport is a plugin list you can export and hand over, so two producers can compare whole collections before either of them wastes an afternoon.

  • Compatibility Checker: will it open?
  • Exactly which plugins you're missing, before you open
  • Plugin Passport: export your plugin list and swap it with a collaborator
  • Both have / only them / only you, at a glance
Will this Ableton project open? →

Friends & collab

The producers you work with, inside the app. Add them with a friend code or a username, see who is in the studio if they let you, and compare plugin collections without swapping a file. Friends is free for everyone: the people you work with do not need to have bought anything. Staging a project for a collab and sending a listen link both need the Vault underneath them, so those two ride the A&R + Vault subscription.

  • A friend code and a username of your own: add someone with either, they accept, and you are connected
  • A profile with a picture, framed by dragging and zooming the way cover art is
  • Open a friend's profile for how long you have been friends, the collabs you share, their studio numbers and their plugin list, with the overlap against your own machine worked out for you
  • Three switches, each off until you turn it on: whether friends see you are in the app or in a DAW, whether they see your plugin list, and whether they see your studio numbers. Turning one off ends it there and then
  • The Collab Queue: stage a backed-up project, attach a friend, and you both see it listed with its artwork, BPM, key, length and status. Part of the A&R + Vault subscription
  • A listen link on any project: a page that plays the bounce in a browser, and the notes your friend leaves come back into the app. Part of the A&R + Vault subscription

Import Pro

Drop a sample pack, a Max for Live device or a Live set on the Import page and Sessions files and catalogs it automatically. You decide where each kind of thing lands, and every run is listed afterwards and can be put back.

  • Drop zips, packs, devices, presets or projects
  • Everything filed and cataloged automatically
  • "Where things go": pick the destination folder for each kind
  • Anything you leave alone follows the library if you move it
  • Import history: what each run filed, and where
  • Undo any run whose files are still in place, not only the last one
  • File history of everything the app has done

Planner

A kanban board over your own status pipeline, so the tracks you are actually working on have somewhere to live. Cards move between your statuses, and a board is opt-in per project, so it stays a short list rather than your whole library.

  • Columns come from your own status pipeline
  • Drag a card to change a project's status
  • Opt in per project, so the board stays a short list
  • Hide the columns you aren't working in
  • Click a card to jump to the full project

Releases

Group finished tracks into singles, EPs and albums, so a body of work is something the app knows about rather than a folder name you have to remember. Reading a release is free and stays free: building and editing one is Pro, and a licence that lapses leaves every release you made still readable.

  • Singles, EPs and albums, with the tracklist in the order you want it
  • Total running time, added up from the tracks themselves
  • Readiness at a glance, read from your own status pipeline
  • A song can sit on a single and on the album at the same time
  • Build and edit releases Pro
  • Every release stays readable whatever your license says

Collections

Keep a separate collection for each of your artist aliases or projects inside one library, and move projects between them freely without ever touching the files on disk. Three collections free, unlimited with Pro.

  • Up to 3 collections free, unlimited with Pro
  • Move projects between collections, files never move
  • Archive collection for parking old work
  • Existing collections stay readable whatever your license says

Notes

A notebook inside the app for everything that lives around the music: your brand, how you want a release to go, what you learned about a label. Kept per collection or shared across all of them.

  • Notes per collection, or visible to every collection
  • Simple formatting: headings, lists, tables and code
  • Stored in your library and included in backups

Your account

Sessions works with no account at all, and that is not changing. An account is there for the things an account is genuinely good at: finding your license again, freeing up a machine you no longer use, and carrying your Pro onto a computer that isn't yours. None of it costs anything.

  • Sign in with Google without ever leaving the app
  • Or sign in by scanning a code, choosing how long the visit lasts
  • Two-factor if you want it: an authenticator app, an emailed code or a text, with recovery codes to print
  • See every machine and browser you are signed in on, and sign any of them out
  • Free up a machine you no longer use, yourself, instead of emailing us
  • Roaming: sign in on a computer that isn't licensed and your Pro is on for as long as that visit lasts, with no activation spent on it
  • "Keep me signed in on this computer", so a sign-in survives a restart until you sign out or revoke it
  • The A&R + Vault subscription roams the same way: sign in on any computer and label research works there

Setup & settings

The first run asks two questions, where your projects are and where your bounces land, then walks itself into the results. It is read-only: setting up moves and renames nothing on your disk, and the only thing it writes is the optional backup at the end. On a computer with no projects on it yet, Sessions can make you a projects folder, or you pick one with a real folder dialog instead of pasting a path.

  • Six languages: English, Spanish, German, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, switched any time in Settings
  • Text size setting that draws the whole interface larger, in Settings beside the language and theme choices
  • Choose which sections of a project's detail panel you see
  • A setup ring in the sidebar tracking four studio jobs, each row jumping straight to the setting that fixes it, and a first-run tour you can replay any time
  • Rename, reorder and recolor your own status pipeline
  • Windows installer asks where to install, in six languages, and about shortcuts
  • Uninstalling asks whether to keep your library, and keeping it is the default
  • Your projects and audio on disk are never touched either way
  • Language, text size and the rest of your settings travel with a backup

General

Sessions runs entirely on your computer, with no account and nothing about your music leaving it unless you turn on the Vault. It’s free for unlimited projects on Windows and macOS, with a one-time Pro upgrade.

  • Local-first: no account, and nothing leaves your machine on its own
  • Windows and macOS
  • Six studio themes, plus one of your own: pick a background, a text colour and an accent, and every other colour is worked out from those three so nothing lands unreadable
  • Type a hex code straight in, and save a palette under a name to come back to
  • A look per collection, so you can tell at a glance which one you are in
  • Jump to any project or page with Ctrl+K
  • Local backup and restore, plus a "back up my work" run that copies the irreplaceable files with a plain-language manifest
  • On the go: copy your library onto a USB stick and take it to another studio, or take just the songs you name instead of the whole library, and a second trip only copies what changed since the first. Merging what you changed elsewhere back into the original folders is the half still being built
  • The same stick can carry the Windows and Mac installers, so the studio you are visiting can install Sessions from the drive, and your DAW's own backup folders ride along with the copy
  • A help door in the app that answers from the product's own documentation, and points you at a real person when that is what you need. The same assistant is on this site, with a message tab that reaches support
  • A diagnostic report you can read before you email it, if something breaks
  • Unlimited projects free; Pro adds the power tools
  • One-time purchase, never a subscription

A&R + Vault

The one optional subscription, and the only part of Sessions that needs an account. $14 a month or $140 a year, on top of Pro, and buying Pro includes your first month of it. Everything else on this page is covered by the one-time price and always will be.

  • The Vault: your whole studio backed up online, projects, samples, bounces and recordings, and the same library opened on another computer. If you ever cancel, the Vault stays readable for 30 days on the monthly plan, or a full year on the yearly plan, so a lapse is never a cliff
  • A listen link for anyone: send a track as a web page that plays your bounce, with your artwork and its waveform on it. Whoever you send it to needs no account and no app, and the page plays the track rather than handing over the file
  • Their notes come back with it: they write against the moment in the track they mean, and those notes land in the app in their own Notes from friends section on that project, apart from your own. Every link is made for one person, so a note arrives with a name on it, and you can switch a link off whenever you like
  • Label research on demand: the other half of the same subscription. It goes and finds the current demo route and contact for a label, including labels the built-in directory doesn't know yet. It runs on research credits, 60 included each month with more available any time and no expiry
  • Thirty days of version history: a Versions drawer on any folder, what changed in each backup, and yesterday's version of a set back again as a download or as a stamped zip
  • A project brought over from your other computer, one project at a time and only when you ask for it. It is deliberately not a sync: the project lands as a second folder beside the first and both still open. A "newer" mark, naming the computer, tells you when the other one has moved on
  • Backing up as you work: the Vault can keep itself up to date in the background instead of waiting for you to start a backup, and it is off until you turn it on. Your DAW's own backup folders ride along with it
What it costs →

Being built now

Everything above is in the app you can download today; the bullets marked as part of the A&R + Vault subscription need the membership. This is what is being worked on for the next releases. Sessions is built by one developer, so the list stays short and honest: no dates promised, it ships when it is solid.

  • Your bounces on your phone: a phone app that plays the bounces in your Vault, so last night's mix is in your pocket in the morning. Part of the A&R + Vault subscription. What the app does
  • Bringing work back from a stick: taking your library out already works. Merging what you changed elsewhere back into the original folders is the half still being built, and it will never happen automatically
  • A smoother first run on macOS: fewer permission prompts while the first scan runs, and network drives become opt-in instead of something the scan waits on
See what shipped, release by release →
Get it free Get Pro · $44