Waves Illugen

[kraster]

Not an instrument per se but an AI sample creator.

It uses AI prompts to generate sounds.

Each generated sound costs credits and the pricing model has three monthly pricing subscritption tiers, Basic 150 credits at 7.99 per month, Premium 300 credits at 12.99 per month and Pro 600 credits at 19.99 per month. You also get double when you first sign up. Unused credits do rollover to the next month.

There are three types of sounds that can be generated. One shots, Loops (with selectable BPM) and two flavours of SFX short and long

Each of these cost 1, 2, 1 and 3 credits respectively.

You get 30 credits to start with.

I tried it and no matter what I put in the results were pretty terrible. It seems to take a basic sound and just put some post processing on it but the overall sound was like low grade mp3.

It generates three sounds at a time which you can download as a wav file.

The blurb on the site actively encourages you to be "zany" with the prompts. So I tried something like "Cat playing drums while mewling in time". I just got a basic drum loop with what sounded like a stomach grumble in the middle.

I tried another "Dark Tribal Chant in A minor" and I got a drum loop with a low note that wasn't in A.

Even the stuff that more resembled the prompt just sounded really low grade.

My reaction to their claim of being able to "Generate sounds that have never existed" was: There's probably a good reason for that.

https://www.waves.com/illugen

[Cuauhtli]

It uses your credits even if you don't like what it creates? I mean the subscription part is already a dealbreaker but if it eats your credits just for entering a prompt, that's insane.

[stanlea]

I agree, just tried it and that's a low QI IA for sure.

[kraster]

It uses your credits even if you don't like what it creates? I mean the subscription part is already a dealbreaker but if it eats your credits just for entering a prompt, that's insane.

Yep. Once you hit that generate button there's no going back.

More like a slot machine than a plugin.

[Ah_Dziz]

How many credits per sound?

[KBSoundSmith]

It uses your credits even if you don't like what it creates? I mean the subscription part is already a dealbreaker but if it eats your credits just for entering a prompt, that's insane.

Yep. Once you hit that generate button there's no going back.

More like a slot machine than a plugin.

Somehow, I've never been able to muster an ounce of regret for never buying into the Waves ecosystem...

[dionenoid]

It sounds really bad. Like a lo-res mp3. So for lo-fi sounds it's pretty good

But seriously, it really needs a lot of improvement. It's not that good at understanding prompts at all. For example it doesn't understand when you ask for a text, or doesn't always understand musical context (note, chord, rhythm). Plus it cuts off reverb/decay/tails all the time. And also, most of the results have these weird phase/stereo issues going on that make them unusable.

Unfortunately, i do think that we will see lots of these kind of tools soon, with improved quality. But this isn't there yet.

I do applaud Waves to only use proper training models tho :

Illugen’s model was trained exclusively on documented, legally owned material. Ethical AI development is a top priority for us at Waves Audio—we are committed to respecting creators’ rights and ensuring our training sources are properly licensed and documented.

[TS-12]

gave it a demo, gave it prompts to generate a roomy country snare, but it only generated some toy snare with weird noises

[solvni_music]

I remember i have done a python script that generate kick drums .wav files ...GPT Can Do it too...

[seafire]

gave it a demo, gave it prompts to generate a roomy country snare, but it only generated some toy snare with weird noises

Pretty accurate then

[noddog]

Version 2.0 out now. I wonder if the quality has improved at all.

[Ou_Tis]

Version 2.0 out now. I wonder if the quality has improved at all.

Yes:



Also now lets you set the key, tempo, loop length, and width.

[zerocrossing]

It uses your credits even if you don't like what it creates? I mean the subscription part is already a dealbreaker but if it eats your credits just for entering a prompt, that's insane.

Out of curiosity, I signed up for an OpenArt AI video generator. It would constantly make the stupidest mistakes, like rendering half a human. Every time you asked it to fix the mistake, it cost credits, and it would also then not correct the mistake.

[DCrown]

I use Waves plugins for so many years and I am very disappointed that Waves offers AI products now.
I am not going to use Waves any more, I won't support AI. Have to drastically change my workflow unfortunately

[Ou_Tis]

I use Waves plugins for so many years and I am very disappointed that Waves offers AI products now.
I am not going to use Waves any more, I won't support AI. Have to drastically change my workflow unfortunately

Is your primary objection that generative AI is "stealing" by training on copyrighted material without permission? The FAQ says: "ILLUGEN’s model was trained exclusively on documented, legally owned material. Ethical AI development is a top priority for us at Waves Audio—we are committed to respecting creators’ rights and ensuring our training sources are properly licensed and documented." So that shouldn't be an issue with this.

It also doesn't generate full songs, just one-shots and loops. So that's not an issue with this either.