ARADAR as a music player for producers

ARADAR is a music player for macOS built for producers. You play your own collection with key, BPM, Camelot code, and LUFS on screen, you filter it by any of them, and you check mono, side, and phone from the player bar. The same library later compares your finished tracks with the labels in it.

This article covers the player side only: what you see while a track plays, which checks you run without opening your DAW, how loudness matching works, and how a watched folder keeps the library filled. The label profiles and the demo log are covered on the producers page.

What a producer sees while a track plays

Double-click a track and the player bar opens at the bottom of the window. It shows the artwork, the title, transport controls with a volume slider, and the track’s numbers: BPM, key, Camelot code, integrated LUFS, and length. The full waveform is the timeline – click anywhere to jump, drag to scrub.

The numbers come from the file and from analysis. On import, ARADAR reads key and BPM from the tags, fills an empty BPM from the audio, and measures integrated LUFS, loudness range, true peak, RMS, crest factor, and a 10-band frequency curve. The Camelot code (8A, 5B) is worked out from the stored key, so a track tagged Amin shows 8A next to it. Click any row to open the Inspector with the full set of measurements.

Click the title in the player bar and the library scrolls to that track and selects it. Next and Previous step through the queue, and Space plays and pauses.

Checks you run from the player bar

Between the transport and the waveform sits a 3×3 grid of buttons. The first two rows solo one frequency band each – press 0–80 to hear only the sub, 5k–20k for the air. Solos add up, so sub plus highs is one click away. The third row holds the channel checks: MONO folds the track to mono, SIDE plays only the stereo content so the center nulls out, and PHONE combines mono with a band limit of 300–4,000 Hz to stand in for a phone speaker. The six band ranges and the phone range are editable in Settings → Playback.

Press Loop to the right of the waveform and ARADAR draws start and end markers you can drag. The section repeats until you press Loop again, and the markers stay faintly visible for that track for the rest of the session. Checks stay pressed across track changes on purpose, so you can A/B one band or one fold-down between your track and a reference without clicking again. All nine checks and Loop Section are also in the Playback menu. The library help lists every control.

Play every track at one loudness

A master at −6 LUFS next to one at −12 LUFS sounds better at first listen only because it is louder. Match loudness on playback in Settings → Playback turns down any track louder than the target – −12, −14, −16, or −18 LUFS, or a custom number – and leaves quieter tracks alone. ARADAR never boosts a track and never changes the audio file; the cut happens on playback only.

When a track is turned down, the player bar shows the cut next to LUFS, such as −6.0 dB, so you always know how much you are hearing. The Playback menu lists Off and the same targets, so you can switch while listening. Matching is off by default; −14 LUFS is the default target when you turn it on.

Keep the library filled without importing

If you bounce into the same folder every day, add that folder under Settings → General → Watched Folders, or keep the checkbox on the first-run screen, and ARADAR scans it when it starts, right after you add it, and whenever you press Find new next to Import or choose File → Find New Files (⇧⌘R). New audio files wait in the import window until you press Import or Later.

A file whose size changed is re-analyzed, and its rating, tags, notes, and links stay. A track you removed to Recently Deleted is not brought back. The files themselves are never moved, renamed, or copied – ARADAR keeps a bookmark to each one, so the library works from internal drives, external drives, or a NAS.

Filter the collection the way you think

The Library has dropdowns for Genre, Artist, Note, Label, Origin, and Rating. Camelot, Year, BPM, LUFS, Duration, Format, Mix Type, and Played sit under More Filters, and the filters stack: a label plus F minor plus 2024 narrows a few thousand tracks to a handful. The Artist dropdown includes remixer names, so one filter finds everything a person made.

Never played finds the tracks you have not listened to yet – a green mark appears after about 12 seconds of playback. Ratings, tags, and notes save to ARADAR’s own database, so you can annotate heavily and the file’s ID3 tags stay untouched. Drag any row into Ableton, Logic, or Pro Tools and the DAW gets the original file, no copy. For the full method, see how to organize reference tracks.

Formats, files, and privacy

ARADAR plays AIFF, WAV, FLAC, MP3, and M4A. AIFF is the best choice for a producer’s library: lossless, with ID3 tags every DAW writes, and it drags into a DAW without a decode step. The reasons are in audio formats for reference tracks.

Everything stays on your Mac. There is no account, no cloud, and no telemetry on what you play or how you organize it. Once a license is activated, the app stays fully licensed without an internet connection for 30 days. Six themes – three dark, one light, and two that follow macOS – keep the charts readable in a dim room or on a shared screen.

The same library that you play every day feeds ARADAR’s label profiles – a sound profile for each label built from its releases in your collection, a match score for your own tracks, and a log of every demo you send.