One take, from their room to your timeline.
Your collaborator records in their own DAW while you hear them live. The take itself is recorded on their computer, delivered to you as a WAV, checked byte for byte, and stamped with where it was recorded. Here is each step, and the detail behind it.
The five stages
Step through one take. At your own pace.
Stage 1 of 5
They record in their own DAW
Your collaborator works in their own session, the way they always do. A SessionLinked plugin sits on each track they send: the vocal, the guitar, the room mic. Nothing else in their session changes.
One plugin per track: an Audio Unit in Logic Pro, VST3 elsewhere. No drivers to install and no system audio to re-route.
Stage 2 of 5
You hear them as they play
Each track they send streams into your SessionLinked mixer while they record, so you can react, direct and play along. How close to real time it feels depends on both connections and both setups.
The live feed is for playing together. On a rough connection it can drop out for a moment.
Stage 3 of 5
The take is recorded on their computer
The take is not captured from the live stream. Their DAW records it at full resolution on their own computer, so a dropout in the live feed never reaches the file you keep.
In Logic Pro and REAPER, the DAW’s own recording becomes the take: you get exactly what it recorded.
Stage 4 of 5
It is delivered, then checked byte for byte
When they stop, the take is sent to you as a WAV file and compared with the original, byte for byte. A take that can’t be verified is marked that way, never quietly trusted.
Your recordings are encrypted on your computer before upload; we hold no key.
Stage 5 of 5
It goes back on the bar it was played
The take arrives named by player, track and take, and stamped with the position it was recorded at. Drag it into your session. In Logic Pro, Move to Recorded Position puts it on that bar; in REAPER, our integration moves it there for you.
The stamp is a standard Broadcast Wave time reference inside the WAV, so the file still opens in any DAW.
Two paths
Play live. Keep every take.
SessionLinked runs two separate paths at once, and never mixes them up: a live feed so you can play together, and the take itself, recorded on their computer and delivered whole.
The live feed
For playing together
- Their tracks stream into your SessionLinked mixer as they play, each with solo, mute and a fader.
- Pick any output on your Mac: headphones, interface or speakers.
- How close to real time it feels depends on both connections and both setups. On a rough connection it can drop out for a moment. It never touches the take.
The take
For keeping
- Recorded at full resolution on their computer, by their DAW — not captured from the live stream.
- Delivered as a WAV file and checked byte for byte when it arrives. A take that can’t be verified is marked that way.
- Named by player, track and take, and kept in your session library.
Actual end-to-end latency in a real session varies with your hardware, audio interface, buffer size, sample rate, DAW configuration, network conditions, and any third-party audio components. We do not guarantee a specific millisecond figure.
Where takes land
The take knows its bar. Your DAW puts it there.
Every take carries a Broadcast Wave time stamp of the position it was recorded at, inside the WAV itself. SessionLinked hands you the file; your DAW reads the stamp and places it. How that works differs by DAW, and we say exactly how far each one is verified.
| DAW | Receiving | How a take is placed |
|---|---|---|
| Logic Pro | Proven | Drag the take in, then Edit ▸ Move ▸ To Recorded Position (⌥⇧⌘R). Measured at 0 samples off on our rig. |
| REAPER | Proven | Turn on Settings ▸ Reaper integration once and restart REAPER. Then drop takes anywhere: each one moves to where it was recorded. 9 of 9 takes from Logic Pro placed sample-exact on our rig, in each of two runs. |
| Pro Tools | In testing | Spot mode, then Original Time Stamp. Placed exactly by script on our rig; the by-hand route isn’t verified yet. |
| FL Studio | Not yet tested | Not tested yet. Takes are standard WAV files you can drag in. |
| Ableton Live | In testing | Use SessionLinked’s Drop at bar 1 copy and drop it on bar 1. There is no Live setting to change. On our rig, with Live 12 on its default settings, 6 of 6 takes placed at bar 1 by script landed unwarped and exact. Other drop routes, and a few unusual files, may still be stretched by Live’s Auto-Warp: turning it off is the fallback. |
| Cubase | Not yet tested | Not tested yet. Takes are standard WAV files you can drag in. |
| Studio One | Not yet tested | Not tested yet. Takes are standard WAV files you can drag in. |
Privacy
Private by design.
Your recordings are encrypted on your computer before upload; we hold no key.
- Payments go through Stripe. We never see your card details.
- Strictly-necessary cookies only. We don’t track you across sites.
The engine
The take never depends on the network. Here’s the engine underneath.
SessionLinked streams lossless 24-bit multitrack from one DAW session to another, on Mac. Underneath it is a transport engine built for hostile networks: forward error correction that heals losses without waiting a round trip, retransmission for whatever’s left, FLAC compression on the wire, and a clock that never guesses. We measure it the way we expect you to doubt it.
Four networks. Zero gaps.
One stereo 24-bit/48kHz track of musical material, streamed at the real packet rate through simulated network profiles. “Retransmit only” is a conventional recovery design; “Full engine” is what two SessionLinked Macs negotiate automatically.
| Network | Engine | Delivered | Permanent gaps | Wire data (of raw) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio LAN1ms, lossless | Retransmit only | 100% | 0 | 100% |
| Studio LAN1ms, lossless | Full engine | 100% | 0 | 39% |
| Transatlantic75ms, 0.5% loss | Retransmit only | 100% | 0 | 100% |
| Transatlantic75ms, 0.5% loss | Full engine | 100% | 0 | 40% |
| Bad Wi-Fi3% loss + fades | Retransmit only | 99.5% | 1 | 156% |
| Bad Wi-Fi3% loss + fades | Full engine | 100% | 0 | 54% |
| Choked uplinknarrower than one raw track | Retransmit only | 65.5% | 51 | 208% |
| Choked uplinknarrower than one raw track | Full engine | 100% | 0 | 39% |
Measured 2026-06-11, engine 1.7.54, 200-packet runs at the real packet cadence, on simulated network profiles — not a live session. In real sessions today the live monitor can still drop out for up to about a second on a rough connection; we’re still finishing it. Your takes are recorded locally and byte-verified, so they don’t depend on it.
Endurance
And then we left it running for two hours
Sessions are hours, not seconds. The full engine streamed the transatlantic profile continuously for 120 minutes — 337,500 packets, 100.000% delivered, zero gaps, 16,511 losses healed in-flight, and flat memory across every checkpoint.
What the numbers mean.
Compression is resilience, not just savings
The choked-uplink row is the whole story. When the pipe is too narrow for a raw track, retransmitting harder just fills the queue faster — a third of the audio never arrives. FLAC shrinks the stream to ~39% of raw, the queue never fills, and the problem ceases to exist: 100% delivered on a link that drops 34% of a raw stream.
Losses heal without waiting a round trip
Parity packets travel with the audio, so a lost packet is rebuilt from its neighbours the moment they arrive — no “please resend” across the Atlantic. Retransmission still backstops anything parity can’t reach. On a clean link, neither costs you a byte: parity stops flowing entirely.
Lossless means lossless
Every delivered packet is byte-exact — FLAC is lossless and every packet is checksummed end-to-end. And the recording never depends on the network at all: your collaborator’s DAW captures everything locally, and the cloud reconciles any take the stream couldn’t complete.
Honest methodology
Simulated profiles are seeded and deterministic, but configurations aren’t packet-for-packet A/B comparable; read the columns as representative behavior. Engine layers were forced on/off to isolate them — a real session negotiates everything automatically, including falling back to raw PCM whenever that’s the better choice.
What you need
A Mac, your DAW, and a code.
- macOS 12 or later, on Apple silicon or Intel (a separate download for each). Windows is planned.
- A DAW. Proven today: Logic Pro to Logic Pro, and REAPER to and from Logic Pro, on macOS; the compatibility page says where every other DAW stands.
- An internet connection for sessions and updates.
- One SessionLinked plugin on each track you send. No drivers, nothing re-routed.
Early access opens soon. Join the list and we’ll email you once, the day it’s ready.