Free Splice Create ‘All-In-One DAW’ Powered By Splice
Splice Create available in beta for Mac app users, a free DAW with Splice at the heart of its workflow, and a voice-controlled AI chatbot that can teach you how to make a track… or make it for you.
In recent years, the company has grown into a multi-million-dollar music tech behemoth, diversifying into mobile music-making apps, virtual instruments and even soft synths. Now, Splice takes the next step in its evolution from sample platform and software marketplace to an end-to-end music creation ecosystem by releasing its very own DAW.
Splice Create is a fully-fledged digital audio workstation with all the Splice catalog, instruments, and effects built in. It’s uniquely designed to sharpen your music production skills and help you break through creative blocks.
Splice’s sample library embedded directly into its workflow, and the most advanced AI-powered features we’ve seen in any DAW to date. It’s free to download, but exporting songs requires a Create Pro subscription, currently priced at $9.99/month.
Splice Create can host third-party plugins, and it arrives with five instruments included: the aforementioned Sampler and Drum Rack are joined by Splice INSTRUMENT, a virtual instrument released last year, and two stock soft synths. Synth is a new two-oscillator subtractive affair, while Astra is a hybrid synth with virtual analogue, wavetable, granular, FM and sample-based engines that was already available through Splice’s Creator plan. There’s a collection of 38 stock audio effects and utilities onboard, too, covering all the usual bases.
On the left-hand side of the interface is a browser that provides direct access to Splice’s extensive library of samples. Several DAWs, like Live and Pro Tools, already have Splice integration built-in, but the integration in Create is much deeper. Create an empty clip in an audio track and Splice will show a search bar that’s linked directly to the sample platform. Type in what you’re after, (“female R&B vocal”, for example) and Splice will choose a sample for you and load it up on the timeline, transposed and time-stretched to match the key and tempo of your project.
Select the clip, and a list of alternative Splice samples that fit your brief will pop up next to the clip editor below. Here you can search by similarity for sounds in Splice’s library (this even works with non-Splice sounds) or create Variations. This is an AI-based feature Splice added to the Splice Sounds plugin that generates unique alternatives to an existing sound that are close to. Using an in-house model trained on Splice’s catalogue, Variations are covered by the same license as the original sample, and the creator of that sample is compensated when a Variation is licensed.
And, Create lets you drag any sample into your project without automatically licensing a sample or using a Splice credit. They land in your project as MP3 previews, allowing you to build a track in Create using as many unlicensed samples as you want – when your track is finished, you’ll need to license those samples before you can export the project, otherwise they bounce as silence.
For producers that rely on Splice samples in their music-making, having this kind of direct access to the platform embedded into the DAW could prove to be a significant upgrade to their workflow – especially if their current DAW doesn’t already have Splice integration. The ability to audition samples on the timeline in the context of a project without licensing them or spending any credits is useful too, and means you don’t have to spend a dime on a sound until you’re sure it’s the right one for your track. On the whole, though, none of this is particularly game-changing.
Create is a perfectly serviceable DAW. It’d be well-suited to anyone that already works with Splice’s existing tools. What really sets Create apart, though – for better or worse – is its AI chatbot, Rheo.
Like most chatbots, Rheo can offer advice and guidance on topics related to music production
Like most chatbots, Rheo can offer guidance on how to use the DAW and give you advice on music-making more generally. Where it goes beyond anything we’ve seen in other DAWs, though, is its ability to control the software, taking actions inside the DAW in response to the user’s instructions, whether that’s through text commands in the chatbot interface or voice control. This kind of “agentic” AI – AI that can control computers, make decisions and complete tasks for you, rather than just generating text – poked its nose into the mainstream in 2026 with the release of tools like ChatGPT Work and Meta’s Muse.
The level of control that Rheo provides is much deeper than anything we’ve seen in another DAW. Rheo can search for sounds, generate melodies, design synth patches, create arrangements, analyse audio and execute multi-stage tasks that would usually take minutes in just a few seconds, all in response to conversational, natural-language instructions. Using Rheo requires “Rheo units”, which are distinct from Splice credits, and cost $10 per 1000. (Free users get 100 units to start off with.)
Rheo has two modes, Assist and Point. Point shows you how to do the task you ask it to complete, not only guiding you through the process with text instructions, but actually pointing out each step with a glowing cursor on the screen. Not sure how to set up sidechain compression on your kick and bass? Struggling to get set up for recording a vocal? Just ask Rheo, and it’ll walk you through it, step-by-step. This will be immensely helpful for beginners, and it’s a welcome alternative to simply having the AI do something for you, which won’t help to build skills in the long run.
Assist goes one step further and actually executes the task for you. As mentioned, the AI can do almost anything in the DAW.
Splice Create assistive features could be a real help for beginners learning their craft, but if the software makes it easier for beginners to ask for a melody instead of actually learning to write one, then perhaps it’s not pushing them in the right direction after all.
Splice says that it wants Create to “amplify” human creativity, not replace it. “Most music tools either make the song for you, or assume you already know how to do everything. Create is different,” Splice CEO Kakul Srivastava says in a press release – but Rheo can make the song for you, if you let it. Splice wants Create to help you go “deeper into the creative flow”, but go far enough down the AI rabbit hole, and you might stop being creative altogether.
Many music tools today either make the song for you, or assume you already know how. Splice Create is different—it helps you learn how to make the music you want. You determine and describe what you’re after, Create points the way only as you need, and you call all of the shots.
Splice Create is now available in beta (with Windows and web coming soon) as a standalone Mac app, and you can get started with it for free here.
