SlowBird vs Amazing Slow Downer
Amazing Slow Downer, by Roni Music, is the tool a great many musicians have used for this job for years, and it is good at it: slow a record down without changing its key, drop the pitch to your instrument, loop the bar you cannot get. If that is the whole of what you need, it does it and it does it well.
SlowBird does that same core job and adds the part that is missing: it keeps your work. Amazing Slow Downer is a player you point at a file — you open the take, set your loop, and when you close it that setup is gone. SlowBird treats the same recording as a library entry. Name a passage and it stays pinned to the audio, still looping, under the name you gave it, months later. That is the difference, and whether it is worth anything to you depends entirely on whether you come back to the same records.
| SlowBird | Amazing Slow Downer | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | £19.99 / $25 one-time, Mac and Windows on one licence | $49.99 one-time for desktop; mobile sold separately |
| Platforms | macOS 14+ and Windows 10+ | Mac, Windows, iOS and Android |
| Slow down without pitch change | Yes — 5% to 200% | Yes — 20% to 200% |
| Pitch | Semitones, plus a ±100-cent fine trim | Semitones, plus cents |
| Looping | Drag on the waveform; the seam is measured to be click-free | Yes, set by time or by dragging |
| Saved passages | Named, coloured notes pinned to the track — click one to loop it, still there next year | Loop points per file; no named library of passages |
| Library | Built in — search by tune, soloist and instrument; speed, pitch and loops remembered per track | Opens files from disk, one at a time |
| Working out notes | Pitch heat map over a reference keyboard | EQ to isolate a frequency range |
| On your phone | No — desktop only, and none planned | Yes, iOS and Android apps |
Which one should you actually buy?
Amazing Slow Downer, if you want it on your phone as well as your computer, or if you work through material once and move on. It has been doing this longer than we have and it is dependable.
SlowBird, if you keep returning to the same records — if there is a Lester Young solo you have been picking at for a month, and three lines in it you want to find again without scrubbing. It is also half the price, and one licence covers both your Mac and your PC.
There is also a comparison with Transcribe!, which is the other tool people weigh this against.
macOS 14 or later · Windows 10 or later · one licence covers both