Mix your first ambience

The Studio tab is where a scene is mixed. A scene is a stack of up to 16 layers. Each layer is either a generated sound (rain, wind, stream, fire, hum, drone or a noise colour), a real recording from Wikimedia Commons, or audio you imported. Nothing plays until you press Play in the top bar (or Space when no button has focus).

Start from an empty scene

1. Open File → New scene. The Studio shows “No layers yet”.
2. Press Add layer and choose Rain.
3. Press Play. The first time, the browser renders a 30-second seamless loop of the rain; then it plays until you press Stop.

Add two more: Add layer → Wind and Add layer → Stream. Each new layer fades in over three seconds.

Shape each layer

Every layer card has the same controls:

• Volume in dB (−60 is silent, 0 is the generator’s own level, up to +6),
• Pan from left to right,
• Start after (seconds) — when the layer begins after you press Play,
• Fade in (seconds) and Fade out at the export end (seconds),
• Loop — repeat the layer; turn it off for a one-off sound such as a single thunder recording.

Sliders change the sound while it plays. Generated layers also show their parameters, for example Intensity, Drops per second at full intensity and Brightness for rain, or Gustiness and Pitch for wind. New variation changes the seed: the same seed always gives exactly the same sound, a new seed gives new drops, gusts and crackles.

Add a real recording

Switch to Explorer, search, and press Add to scene on a recording. Back in the Studio it appears with the badge Recording, a link to its source page, the author and the licence badge. You can also use Add layer → Recording from saved recordings… for recordings you saved earlier.

When a recording cannot be loaded — you are offline or the file was removed from Commons — the app tells you which one and keeps playing the other layers.

Mute, solo and order

• Mute silences a layer; Solo plays only the soloed layers. Both are toggle buttons; with a layer card focused, the M and S keys do the same.
• The arrow buttons Move layer up / Move layer down change the order, Duplicate layer copies a layer with a new seed, and Remove layer deletes it (Ctrl+Z brings it back).

Filters

Open Filter on a layer to cut lows or highs: Low-pass (keep lows) makes rain sound like it falls behind a window, Band-pass (keep a band) turns pink noise into a murmur-like band. Set Filter frequency (Hz) and Filter Q.

What kind of scene is it?

The badge next to Scene says what your scene is made of: Generated (only synthesized layers), Authentic (only real recordings) or Composite (both). Credits… lists every recording you use with a ready attribution line — see Export, credits and sharing.

Your scene is saved in this browser automatically; File → Recent projects… brings older scenes back.