Ready to see what you can do with Krotos Studio? Get started with ease by following this walkthrough!
Krotos Studio is both an audio plugin and a standalone app. It can run inside Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) or as a desktop application. There is also a native plugin for DaVinci Resolve.
Standalone
To use the standalone app, look for 'Krotos Studio' on your desktop, or within the start menu (on Windows), or in your applications folder (on Mac).
VST
Create a MIDI or instrument track and look for Krotos Studio in your plugin list. You may need to re-sync your plugins within your DAW after installation.
Sign in to your Krotos account from within the plugin or standalone version of Krotos Studio. use the details you used to create your account to complete the checkout.
You must be connected to the internet to use Krotos Studio.
Once you are signed in, you will be presented with a welcome screen which provides you with an interactive walkthrough of the software. Watch this, or press the X to close it.
Click 'install factory content'
Choose where you want the content library to be saved on your computer. It is set to drive C by default, but you can change this to a secondary drive if you prefer.
Click 'Install now'
Wait for the content library to finish downloading. once complete,the presets will be readily available to use.
As well as the factory content, we release new content libraries for Krotos Studio every month as part of your subscription. The content libraries are installed from the library view.
To install, click the 'cloud' button with the downwards facing arrow next to each content pack. When finished the content will be automatically added to your library.
Krotos Studio is designed for you to access the most essential sound effects available for your content. Here are the controls explained, from left to right:
Menu: Save and recall sounds from here
Search Bar: Use this to search for the sounds you need, for example, City, Forest, Pistol, Riser, Whoosh.
Categories: We have grouped Krotos Studio’s sounds into essential scenarios, such as ‘ambiences, footsteps, Foley, whoosh’. Simply click on the category you’d like to explore.
Presets: Within each category is a selection of presets. For example, in ‘Ambiences’, you’ll find different environment presets such as Suburb, Apartment & Countryside. Scroll up and down using your mouse to fully explore the range of presets on offer for each category.
To create your own unique sounds, select a category and then select a preset that matches the scene you are working on. Krotos Studio will load it up, ready to use.
Performance Area: This is how you interact with the sounds in Krotos Studio. Each preset has an intuitive layout to provide refined control over the sound.
Overall Volume: This sets the volume of Krotos Studio.
With the basic controls out of the way, all that is left to do is start performing!
To create sounds in Krotos Studio, use the performance area. The performance area of each preset is unique to that preset and will feature intuitive layout controls that let you trigger and refine that specific sound.
XY Pads
These square areas in the performance area can be clicked on and dragged to trigger a performance. This is written on the XY pad itself, as it is a key component to interacting with the preset.
On presets with multiple XY Pads, the leftmost pad will be the one that triggers the sounds, whilst the other XY pads, dials and buttons are used to adjust the individual elements within the preset.
The ‘Ambience’ presets play back automatically once selected.
Each preset has descriptive terms situated around the XY pads. In ‘Countryside’ for example, you have ‘Birds and Insects’ and ‘Wind’ around the leftmost pad, and ‘Farm Animals’ and ‘Stream’ around the rightmost pad.
The closer you position the dot to these terms, the more of that particular characteristic you will hear. Keep the dot closer to the centre to hear all four elements together.
Each preset has an intuitive layout to provide refined control over the sound. We will demonstrate some examples of these a little later.
Adding sounds from Krotos Studio to your project is as simple as dragging and dropping.
As you perform your sounds, Krotos Studio is already capturing your performance in the background. You will see this ‘recording’ message when you interact with the performance controls:
When you stop performing your sound, Krotos Studio will display the message “Drag Recording”
Simply click and drag from the ‘Drag Recording’ message to the timeline in your software, and release the click. The sound will appear in your project on an audio track.
Krotos Studio can add sounds pretty much anywhere - Whether it is video editing software like Premiere or Davinci, a DAW like Pro Tools or Reaper, or a Game Engine and middleware like Unreal Engine, Unity, FMOD or Wwise.
…Or you can simply drag the sound to a location on your computer's file system if you want to save the sound for later.
Krotos Studio only produces stereo files. In certain environments, you may need to add a stereo track to your timeline prior to dragging sounds from Krotos Studio into your projects.
If you have made changes to a preset, you can save these using the burger menu on the UI. This means that your sounds can be recalled in the way that you have set the presets.
And that's all there is to it! Krotos Studio is designed to give you straightforward, fast sounds quickly and easily, so you can carry on with your project without a hitch. Have fun!