SoundXtract vs FreqReact
FreqReact reads the audio as frequency bands and drives After Effects properties from them. SoundXtract separates the music into instruments and drives Premiere Pro from those. Different apps, and a different idea of what a sound is. We make SoundXtract, so judge us on the concessions below rather than on our say-so.
FreqReact 3 for After Effects, checked September 2026. If something here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will fix it.
Side by side
| Capability | FreqReact | SoundXtract |
|---|---|---|
| Host app | After Effects | Premiere Pro (After Effects is in the works) |
| What drives the animation | Frequency bands you mark out on the track by hand, then bake | Musical events detected per instrument: kicks, snares, bass notes, melody |
| What it hands back | Any keyframable property moved for you, third-party plugin parameters included. Composing that into a look is still your job. | A finished effect rather than a moved property: bounce, flash, camera shake, colour switch. A closed set of well-known looks, extended as users ask for more. |
| Motion between the hits | Oscillate, wiggle, elastic and steps keep a property moving | An attack and release curve per hit, shaped by you |
| Beat and downbeat detection | No | Two classical estimators cross-checked, with a neural network as tie-breaker |
| Stem separation | No | Vocals, bass, melody and drums split out, usable as audio |
| Markers on the timeline | No | Sequence and clip markers on any detected sound |
| Editing the sequence | No | Align, cut, reshuffle and re-trim clips; place project items on the beat |
| Where the analysis runs | On your machine, offline | Our GPU servers, over the internet |
| Tracks you can analyse | Unlimited | Metered: 1 free per month, 10 or 30 on a plan, more as extra credits |
| Price | $69 once, two machines, lifetime updates | Free tier, or from $9.99 / month |
| Try before paying | No trial build; a 14-day no-questions refund instead | Free tier, no card |
Buy FreqReact if
These are real advantages and we are not going to argue them away.
It lives in After Effects
Visualizers, lyric videos and title work get built in comps, and that is FreqReact’s home. SoundXtract is a Premiere Pro panel today. After Effects is on our list, but a plan is not a feature and you should not buy on one.
Any property, not a set of looks
A reactor drives scale, position, rotation, colour, a text source, a particle emitter. We hand back finished effects from a closed set, and we add to it when users ask, but it is still a set. If the look you want is one nobody has asked for yet and you would rather build it yourself, FreqReact gives you that control and we do not.
Motion between the hits, not only on them
Oscillate, wiggle, elastic and steps keep an object alive across a whole bar. Our effects fire on a detected strike and settle. For a shape breathing with a pad or a bassline, that difference is the whole look.
One payment, offline, unmetered
$69 on two machines, no account, no upload, no monthly count. Analyse a hundred tracks on a plane if the work calls for it. Ours runs on our servers and meters by track.
Finished visualizers to start from
Seven copyright-free After Effects templates, free to download, most of them running without any plugin at all. We ship effects you apply to your own footage, not projects you open and re-skin.
Buy SoundXtract if
A frequency band is a guess about which instrument lives there.
An instrument is not a frequency band
The kick and the bass note share everything under 100 Hz. A snare and a clap sit on top of each other. A vocal cuts straight through the guitars. SoundXtract separates the music into stems first and finds the strike on the isolated instrument, so the snare means the snare even while the bass is playing under it.
It knows where the bar starts
Beats, downbeats, tempo. A frequency reader can tell you the low end got loud. It cannot tell you that was beat one, and a hit that has to land on the grid needs the grid.
It is in Premiere, where the cut already is
No export, no comp, no round trip to find out whether the idea works against the edit you actually have. Pick an instrument, watch it run on the sequence, change your mind.
It edits, it does not only animate
Markers on any detected sound, clips aligned to the beat as you drop them, clips already on the sequence cut and re-trimmed, project items placed for you. An audio-reactive plugin animates properties. It does not assemble a timeline.
The keyframes are Premiere's own
Bounce, flash, camera shake and colour are written onto Motion, Transform, Levels and VR Color Gradients, all of which Premiere already ships. Whoever opens the project next renders it without installing anything.
The stems are audio, not just a trigger
Pull the vocal up under dialogue, drop an instrument, build a bed. The separation that drives the effects is the same separation you mix with.
A free tier, not a countdown
One track a month, forever, without a card. Enough to run it on real footage before deciding. Every new account also gets an offer for 5 more credits just for a few honest words about the first session.
What both of them do
The premise is the same: stop keyframing to a waveform by eye. If this list is all you need, either tool will do it in its own app.
- Animation that follows the music instead of being keyframed by hand
- Your own audio file, with no music library to buy into
- Control over how sharply each reaction rises and falls
- macOS and Windows
The short version
In After Effects this is not a close call: FreqReact is there, we are not yet, and $69 once is hard to argue with. Anywhere else, SoundXtract is the better tool for the job: it reacts to a named instrument rather than to a band you marked out yourself, it hands back a finished effect rather than a moved property, and it does it where the cut already lives. The free tier costs nothing to find out.
Try SoundXtract freeOne track a month, no card.