Neutone
Neutone builds real-time neural audio plugins for music production. Its Morpho plugin reshapes any incoming sound into a different timbre inside your DAW, and lets you train private custom models from your own recordings, without code.
What is Neutone?
Neutone is an independent music technology studio based in Tokyo that turns neural audio synthesis into instruments you can actually play. Its work reaches musicians through three product lines rather than one.
Morpho is the flagship: a real-time tone morphing plugin that resynthesises whatever you feed it into a completely different style while keeping the shape of the original sound intact. A drum take can come out as a beating djembe. The library spans more than 32 handcrafted models, from African percussion to old radio transmissions, and a Mix control sets how far you go. The free version ships five models and is yours to keep forever, with a seven-day trial of the full library; the paid Full Bundle adds 27 more.
What sets Morpho apart is custom training. You buy a Training Token, drop your own audio into the Training Dashboard, and Neutone's engineers run the training. No code, no prior experience and no GPU are required. The finished model appears in your model browser, stays private to you and belongs to you exclusively, though it only runs inside Morpho.
Neutone FX takes the opposite approach. It is a free plugin that hosts experimental machine-learning models contributed by the community, and it is meant to stay free. Researchers convert their PyTorch models with the open-source Neutone SDK and submit them for review on GitHub, which gives academic work a route into a DAW without an audio-programming detour.
The third line is a set of Max for Live devices for Ableton Live: neu.rhythm learns your drum loops and generates new grooves, neu.grains rebuilds audio from the latent grains of other sounds, neu.vochord is a vocoder with pitch following and algorithmic chords, and pesto~ is a free Max MSP external for real-time neural pitch estimation.
Everything runs locally as VST3, AU or standalone, on macOS 12 or later and Windows 10 and 11, tested on Ableton Live, Logic Pro, Bitwig Studio, Studio One, Cubase and Reaper. Neutone states that its models are trained only on sounds it holds the rights to, and displays each model's sources in the browser.
What it does
- Reshape any incoming audio into a radically different timbre, in real time
- Train a private tone-morphing model on your own recordings, with no code and no GPU
- Load experimental research models straight into your DAW
- Browse more than 32 handcrafted models, from African drums to old radio transmissions
- Generate new drum grooves from your own loops with the neu.rhythm Max for Live device
- Resynthesise a sound from the latent grains of another with neu.grains
- Publish your own PyTorch audio model to the community through the open-source Neutone SDK
When to use Neutone / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Neutone is the right fit.
When to use Neutone
- Music producers chasing timbres that no sample library or synth preset can give them
- Composers and sound designers working inside Ableton Live, Logic Pro, Cubase, Bitwig Studio, Studio One or Reaper
- Musicians who want a model trained on their own recordings without writing a line of code
- Audio machine-learning researchers who need their PyTorch models playable in real time in a DAW
- Creators who refuse subscriptions and prefer a one-time purchase they keep for good
When not to use Neutone
- European organisations that need a documented GDPR framework, a DPA or a subprocessor list
- Anyone hoping to work from a phone, a tablet or a browser: everything runs on desktop, inside a DAW
- Developers looking for a self-serve audio API rather than a negotiated licensing deal
- Owners of Intel Macs who want the latest Neutone FX releases, dropped from version 1.6.1
- Producers on older machines: an Apple M1-class CPU or faster is the recommended baseline
How to use Neutone
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Download the Windows or macOS installer from the product page; no account is needed for the free version
- Install the plugin and open it in your DAW as VST3 or AU, or run the standalone build
- Pick a model in the model browser, where models download on demand
- Send audio into the plugin and set the Mix control to balance the original and transformed signal
- Manage storage from the settings menu: delete models one by one or all at once, and move the user folder if needed
- To train your own model, create an account and buy a Training Token
- Prepare the dataset: more than an hour of unique, non-repeating audio, ideally one instrument, free of noise
- Upload the files (.wav, .aiff, .flac or .mp3) in the Training Dashboard and start a session; Neutone's engineers handle the training
- Load the finished model from your model browser; it stays private to your account, and one retraining attempt is included
- For Neutone FX, download the free plugin and browse community models; to publish your own, follow the SDK guide on GitHub and submit it for review
Pros & Cons
Pros
- One-time purchase with no subscription: the licence cannot lapse
- A free version of Morpho kept forever, and Neutone FX free and maintained
- Models trained only on sounds Neutone holds rights to, with each model's sources displayed in the browser
- You keep exclusive ownership of the models you train, and they stay private to your account
- Commercial use of the output is explicitly allowed, Artist models included
- Processing runs locally and in real time, with no cloud dependency to play
- Open-source SDK and conference papers: the underlying technology is publicly documented
Cons
- No GDPR wording anywhere on the site: the published framework is Japan's personal data protection act
- No DPA, no subprocessor list and no stated retention period
- The terms let Neutone reuse Created Content and Posted Models, and pass them to third parties, to improve the service or market itself
- Trained models are locked to Morpho and cannot be exported to Neutone FX or elsewhere
- Model training requires a full licence: the free version cannot train
- Desktop only, inside a DAW: no mobile app and no web version of the product itself
- Support runs through email and Discord, with no help centre and no published response commitment
Pricing & Plans
Neutone provides a permanent free tier. Neutone Morpho is available in a free version that includes five models and is kept indefinitely, alongside a seven-day trial of the complete model library, and Neutone FX is free in full. On the paid side, the lowest published price point is USD 29, which applies to a Morpho Training Token and to each of the neu.rhythm, neu.grains and neu.vochord Max for Live devices. The Morpho Full Bundle is priced at USD 99, tax included, as a one-time purchase covering 27 models in addition to the five free ones. A Starter tier is offered alongside the Full Bundle, but its price is rendered in JavaScript and could not be read. Payments are processed by Paddle.com Market Limited, acting as reseller and merchant of record.
- five models kept forever
- plus a seven-day trial of the full model library
- offered alongside the Full Bundle
- price not readable without JavaScript
- USD 99 one-time
- tax included
- 27 models plus the five free ones
- USD 29 per trained model
- one retraining attempt included
- free
- neu.rhythm
- neu.grains and neu.vochord at USD 29 each
- pesto~ free
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Neutone handles your data.
GDPR overview
There is no GDPR implementation to report, because Neutone never mentions the regulation. Searching the ten pages collected, archived HTML included, returns no occurrence of GDPR, EEA or any European data-protection wording. The published framework is Japanese: the privacy policy is built on the Act on the Protection of Personal Information and national guidelines, the terms are governed by Japanese law with exclusive jurisdiction in the Tokyo District Court, and the policy states that its Japanese version is the binding one. No Article 27 EU representative is designated and no data protection officer is named. Personal-data enquiries go to the Officer in Charge of Personal Information Management at contact@neutone.jp, and users may request disclosure, correction or suspension of use after identity verification. The absence of a GDPR claim here is silence, not a refusal.
Who owns the data?
Neutone's terms split ownership in two. The company and its licensors keep every intellectual property right over the software, systems, modules and shipped content, which users may not modify, resell or republish without consent. Everything users make is theirs: compositions, other Created Content and the models they post belong to the users, unless Neutone contributed creatively. The catch sits in the same clause. During and after the agreement, Neutone remains entitled to use Created Content, Posted Models and related usage information, or to provide them to third parties, in order to run or improve the service, develop new services or market itself, and users accept this in advance.
Reuse rights
Users may reuse what they produce, freely and without asking. The terms grant a worldwide, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the service to create musical works and other content, and to supply or sell that content to third parties, for profit or not. The FAQ says it plainly: sounds made with any model, Artist models included, can be used commercially. Two limits apply. Any other money-making use, notably selling products built on the software itself, needs Neutone's written consent. And a model produced through the training service stays exclusive and private to the account that trained it, and cannot be loaded into Neutone FX or any other platform.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Neutone publishes nothing about where user data is stored. No hosting country, no region and no cloud provider is named in the privacy policy, the terms or the legal notice, so no jurisdiction can be stated beyond the company's own: Neutone operates from Tokyo, its terms are governed by Japanese law, and disputes go to the Tokyo District Court. What can be measured describes delivery, not storage. On 11 August 2026 the site resolved to an anycast CDN node geolocated in the United States, which says nothing about where data is kept. Installers and the manual are served from Supabase storage, the SDK documentation sits on Notion and the code on GitHub. Site analytics run on plausible.io, which the policy says stores no identifiable information and sets no cookies to track users across other sites. Payments are handled by Paddle.com Market Limited as reseller and merchant of record, so payment data is processed by Paddle rather than by Neutone. Anyone with a hosting requirement should ask Neutone directly at contact@neutone.jp, because the published documents do not answer the question.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Neutone.
- The terms let Neutone reuse what you create with the service, and pass it to third parties, during and after your contract; read that clause before running client material through the plugin
- No retention period is published and Neutone owes no duty to keep or back up the models you post, so treat the platform as temporary storage and keep local copies
- A model you paid to train is locked to Morpho: leave the ecosystem and the instrument you built does not come with you
- No GDPR framework, no DPA and no subprocessor list, so an organisation with compliance obligations cannot document this purchase from the site alone
- The terms allow Neutone to modify or discontinue the service without prior notice, which sits awkwardly beside a licence bought once and for all
- Training a model on someone else's recordings needs the copyright holder's permission, as the FAQ states; the temptation to skip that step is the obvious one
- Leaning on preset models is a quick way to sound like everyone else using them, since the tool rewards feeding it material only you have
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low for playing, moderate for training. Installing Morpho or Neutone FX is a standard plugin install: download a .exe or a .dmg, run it, open the plugin in your DAW as VST3 or AU. No account is needed for the free version. Morpho asks for macOS 12 or later, or Windows 10 or 11, with an Apple M1-class CPU or faster recommended; Neutone FX suggests 8 GB of RAM and 8 GB of storage. Training needs no code, but preparing an hour of clean, consistent audio is real work. Publishing a model to Neutone FX is a developer task.
Deployment
Integrations
Behind Neutone
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Neutone.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use sounds made with Neutone Morpho commercially?
What are the Morpho models trained on?
Can I train a model with the free version?
Who owns a model I train, and can other users load it?
Can I use my trained model outside Morpho?
What is the difference between Morpho and Neutone FX?
Which operating systems and DAWs are supported?
What audio do I need to train my own model?
Is there a subscription?
Is there a student discount, and where do I get help?
Should you pick Neutone?
Neutone is a real product from a real company, and the evidence is easy to check: a Tokyo address, a phone number, a Japanese statutory disclosure page, terms dated and revised, versioned installers, a dated PDF manual, a detailed FAQ and two conference papers with arXiv preprints. That is worth saying in a field where a landing page and a waiting list often pass for a product.
What it offers is genuinely unusual. Morpho does something no sample library does, rebuilding a sound in another timbre while keeping its gesture, and the training service turns your own recordings into an instrument without a line of code. Neutone also states, and documents inside the plugin, that its models are trained only on material it holds rights to. In generative audio, that is rare enough to note. The commercial model runs against the market too: one-time purchases, a free version kept forever, and a free plugin the company says will stay free.
The reservations are about paperwork rather than product. The site never mentions the GDPR, its framework being Japanese law, and publishes no DPA, no subprocessor list and no retention period, which will stop some European organisations. The terms also let Neutone reuse content created with the service, and hand it to third parties, to improve or market the service; an individual will shrug, a studio working under client NDAs should read that clause first. Models you train are locked to Morpho, and everything needs a DAW and a reasonably recent CPU.
For producers, sound designers and audio researchers, Neutone is worth the download: the free version costs nothing but disk space. For teams with procurement requirements, ask for the data terms in writing before buying.
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