Semantic search for sound
The needles are in there.
haystack finds them.
Search your sound libraries by feel, instead of filename.
Describe the texture, emotion, or movement you hear in your head.
Haystack finds it. Drop it in or record it directly, and Haystack matches it.
The problem
Sometimes your best sounds are the ones you can't find.
Sound designers search by feel. The sound in your head has a texture, weight, movement. Sometimes keywords just don't hit the mark. So you guess at words and phrases and hope it lands results.
Sound design is translation.
Gary Rydstrom understood this. The liquid metal sound of the Terminator was revealed to him in his kitchen while feeding his dog. The right sound was never the obvious one, and it was rarely the one you could find by name.
Haystack searches the way you listen.
What it is
A different way to search.
I'm a sound designer, and I built Haystack because I kept hitting the same wall. I'd burn through every keyword I could think of and still not find the sound in my head. The words I actually reach for, fragile, delicate, brooding, would surface nothing at all.
So I taught it to listen instead. Haystack ignores filenames and metadata completely. It reads the fingerprint of the sound itself, its genetics, the DNA underneath the file. You describe what you're hearing, texture, material, emotion, motion, and it brings back the match.
It surfaces the needles you forgot you owned, the ones filed under a name you'd never think to search. And it all runs on your own machine, against your own library.
- Search by texture, material, motion, and mood.
- Click "similar" to surface more sounds like the one you want.
- Drag / Drop audio directly to find more just like it.
- Record audio or your voice directly into Haystack to find matches.
- Surface the needles in the Haystack.
- Runs on your own machine, against your own libraries.
Your sounds are unique. We make sure you find them.
It's the tool you reach for when keywords stop helping.
Built to be owned. One-time purchase. No subscription.