These terms cover the SoundByte-Labs website and our applications — SoundLink, ADR Pilot and TrakBox. They are written to be read. If anything here is unclear, ask us at support@soundbyteinc.com before you buy, not after.

1. Who you are dealing with

These apps are made and sold by SoundByte Inc. ("we", "us"), 445 Holly Stream Trail, Roswell, GA 30075, USA. By creating an account, downloading an app, or subscribing, you agree to these terms. If you are agreeing on behalf of a studio or company, you confirm you are allowed to do that.

2. Your account

• You need an account to download our apps. It is one account per person; don't share your password.
• Use a real email address you control. It is how you reset your password and how we tell you about your subscription. We do not currently verify addresses at signup, so a typo is yours to fix — email us and we will sort it out.
• You are responsible for what happens under your account. Tell us promptly if you think someone else is using it.
• You may close your account at any time by emailing us. See the Privacy Policy for what happens to your data.

3. SoundLink: what is free and what is not

SoundLink is a two-way audio bridge between two Macs. The split is deliberate and worth understanding before you pay for anything:

• Free, with no time limit: downloading and using the app, being listed in the directory, being called by anyone, answering a call, and sending and receiving audio for the whole of that session. Talent never need to buy anything.
• Needs a Studio Plan: starting a session yourself.

SoundLink is currently released as a beta. It works, it is used for real sessions, and it is also younger than our other apps. We say so on the app's page and we mean it — see section 9 about connections, and section 11 about what we do and don't promise.

4. The 14-day trial

New accounts get 14 days in which starting sessions is included. No card is required and nothing is charged when it ends — the account simply reverts to the free tier described above, and everything except starting a session keeps working. One trial per person; we may end a trial that is obviously being farmed across multiple accounts.

5. Subscriptions and billing

• The Studio Plan is billed monthly or yearly at the rate shown on your plan page when you subscribe (an introductory rate is currently available), charged in advance and renewing automatically at that same rate until you cancel.
• Cancel any time from the billing portal linked on your plan page. Cancelling stops the next charge; you keep the plan until the end of the period you have already paid for. We do not pro-rate part-months.
• Refunds: if it isn't for you, email support@soundbyteinc.com within 14 days of a charge and we will refund it in full. This applies to your first charge on a plan; we are reasonable about renewals you genuinely didn't intend, so ask.
• Payments are handled by Stripe. We never see or store your card number.
• Prices are in US dollars and exclude any tax we are required to collect where you are. We may change prices, but never for a period you have already paid for, and we will email you before a change affects a renewal.
• If a renewal payment fails, Stripe retries it for a while. If it keeps failing, the plan reverts to the free tier — you are not billed in arrears and nothing is sent to collections.

6. Perpetual licences (ADR Pilot, TrakBox)

These are bought outright rather than subscribed to. A serial key activates on up to 2 machines using a hardware fingerprint, the licence does not expire, and the purchase includes 1 year of updates, optionally renewable after that. If you replace a Mac, email us and we will move the activation.

7. What you may not do

• Share, resell, sublicense or rent your account, serial key or plan.
• Work around the plan check, the licence check, or the trial — including by creating accounts to repeat a trial.
• Reverse-engineer or decompile the apps, except where the law says you may despite this clause.
• Use the directory to harvest members' details, or to send anyone unsolicited marketing.
• Use the apps to record or transmit anyone without whatever consent the law where you are requires. That is on you, not us — we cannot see your sessions and have no way to police them.
• Use the service for anything illegal, or to harass another member.

8. The directory

SoundLink lists members by username so studios can find each other. You can switch off discoverability in the app at any time, which removes you from search while leaving your account and your contacts working. Being listed shows your username, display name and optional location — never your email address.

9. Connections, honestly

SoundLink sends audio directly between the two Macs. That is what makes it fast, and it is also the one thing we cannot guarantee: some networks — certain corporate firewalls, hotel Wi-Fi, and some mobile carriers — refuse direct connections between two machines. When that happens the call will not connect, and it is a property of the network rather than a fault we can fix remotely.

This is exactly why the trial exists and why the refund window is 14 days: test it on the networks you actually work from before you commit. If it will not connect for you, tell us — we would rather refund you and learn what your network does than keep the money.

10. Your audio and your sessions

What you send through SoundLink is yours. Audio travels directly between the two machines and never passes through our servers, so we cannot listen to it, record it, or hand it to anyone else — there is nothing on our side to hand over. Recordings made by the app are written to your own Mac and stay there unless you send them somewhere.

11. Availability, and what we don't promise

We run the accounts and directory service on Cloudflare and we work to keep it up, but it is not guaranteed to be available at any particular moment, and there is no uptime commitment attached to these plans.

Nothing here limits any right you have under consumer law that cannot lawfully be limited. If the law where you live gives you a guarantee stronger than this section, you keep it.

12. Your side of the bargain

SoundLink is a bridge between two rooms — it is not a recorder, not a backup, and not an archive. Because we cannot see your sessions and cannot control either end's network or hardware, protecting the work is yours to do:

• Record locally, in your own DAW, at both ends, for anything that matters. We build the app to make that straightforward for exactly this reason.
• Test before a paid session. Use the trial, the connection test and the echo test on the networks and machines you will actually work from. A first live use on a client's clock is a risk you are choosing to take.
• Keep your own backups of anything the app writes to your Mac.
• Make sure you have whatever consent the law where you are requires before recording or transmitting anyone.

13. Limits on liability

We are also not liable for failures caused by things outside our control: your network or your peer's, an internet or carrier outage, a firewall or router that refuses direct connections, your or your peer's hardware or operating system, a third-party service we rely on (such as Cloudflare, Stripe or a STUN provider), or force majeure.

These limits are a deliberate allocation of risk and are part of the basis on which the apps are priced. A subscription is a modest monthly fee; it cannot also carry the financial risk of a session. If we had to underwrite lost sessions, the product could not exist at this price. They apply even if a remedy in these terms is found to have failed its essential purpose. Nothing in this section excludes liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.

14. Claims arising from how you use it

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless SoundByte Inc. and its owners, officers, employees and contractors from any claim, demand, loss or cost (including reasonable legal fees) brought by a third party and arising from your use of the apps — in particular any claim that you recorded, transmitted or distributed someone without the consent the law required, that you infringed someone's rights, or that you broke section 7. This is the flip side of the fact that we cannot see your sessions: we have no ability to prevent such a thing, so we cannot carry the risk of it.

15. Suspending or ending an account

We can suspend or close an account that breaks section 7, that is being used to harass members, or where we are legally required to. Where it is our call rather than a legal obligation, we will tell you why and refund any unused paid time. You can close your account at any time.

16. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. If a change materially affects you, we will email the address on your account at least 14 days before it takes effect, so you can cancel first if you disagree. The "last updated" date at the top always tells you which version you are reading.

17. Governing law, disputes and the rest

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Georgia, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The state and federal courts located in Fulton County, Georgia have exclusive jurisdiction — except that nothing stops you from bringing a claim in your own country where consumer law gives you that right.

Any claim must be brought within one year of when it arose, or it is permanently barred, to the extent the law allows such a limit.

If any part of these terms is held unenforceable, that part is narrowed to the minimum extent necessary and the rest stays in force — in particular, if a limit in section 13 is reduced, every other limit continues to apply. Our not enforcing something on one occasion is not a waiver of it. These terms, with the Privacy Policy, are the whole agreement between us about the apps.

18. Contact

SoundByte Inc., 445 Holly Stream Trail, Roswell, GA 30075, USA
Accounts, billing and refunds: support@soundbyteinc.com
Anything else: info@soundbyteinc.com

See also our Privacy Policy.

The short version: we cannot hear your sessions, we don't keep a record of who called whom, and there is no analytics or advertising code anywhere on this site or in our apps. What follows is the detail, including the parts that are less flattering.

1. What we collect

When you create an account: your email address, the username and display name you choose, and a one-way hash of your password — never the password itself. Optionally a location and phone number if you choose to add them to your profile; both are optional and neither is required to use anything.

When you subscribe: Stripe's customer and subscription identifiers, your plan status and renewal date. Card numbers go to Stripe and never reach us.

When you use SoundLink: the contacts you add, and whether each of you has agreed to connect. While the app is open, the fact that you are online is held in memory only, for as long as your app stays connected, so that other members can see you are available.

When you send a problem report: your username and display name, your Mac's model identifier, the app version, and recent connection statistics and events. It deliberately does not include your contact list or anyone else's email address.

When you activate a perpetual app (ADR Pilot, TrakBox): a hardware fingerprint of that Mac, so the serial key can be tied to it.

2. What we do not collect

• Your audio. It travels directly between the two Macs and never passes through our servers. We could not hand it over if we were asked, because we do not have it.
• A log of your sessions. We do not store who you called, when, or for how long. Presence lives in memory and disappears when your app disconnects. This is a deliberate design decision, not an oversight — such a log would be a liability to you and of no use to you.
• Analytics, trackers or advertising cookies. There are none on this website. We do not use Google Analytics or any equivalent, we do not have a Facebook pixel, and we do not sell, rent or share your data with anyone for marketing. We could not tell you how many people visited this page.

The website stores one thing in your browser: your sign-in token, kept in local storage so you stay signed in between visits. It is not a tracking cookie and it goes nowhere but back to us.

3. IP addresses, and the honest part about peer-to-peer

To connect two Macs directly, each has to learn the other's public address. This has two consequences we would rather state plainly than bury:

• The app asks a STUN server (operated by Cloudflare and by Google) what its own public address is. Those providers see your IP address as part of answering.
• During a call, the other party's machine learns your IP address, and yours learns theirs. This is inherent to any direct connection — it is how the audio finds its way — and it is true of every peer-to-peer audio tool, whether or not they mention it.

Our servers see your IP address when your app or browser talks to them, as any server does. We do not build profiles from it.

4. Who else processes data for us

• Cloudflare — hosts this website, the accounts service, the database and the app downloads. Data is stored in the United States.
• Stripe — takes payments and holds your billing details. Stripe is the controller of your card data, not us.
• Resend — sends the handful of emails we send: a password-reset code, a note that someone added you as a contact, and trial reminders.
• Google Fonts — this site loads a typeface from Google's servers, which means Google receives your IP address when the page loads. We mention it because it is technically a transfer to a third party, and we are looking at serving the font ourselves to remove it.
• Vultr — hosts the echo test server in Atlanta that the app can bounce audio off to check your microphone and network.

We do not sell your data. There is no advertising business here to sell it to.

5. How long we keep things

• Account details — for as long as you have an account, and deleted when you close it.
• Billing records — kept as long as tax and accounting law requires, typically seven years, even after an account closes. Stripe keeps its own records on the same basis.
• Sign-in codes — expire in 10 minutes.
• Problem reports — kept while the problem is open and cleared out afterwards.
• Presence — not kept at all; it exists only while your app is connected.

6. Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us to show you what we hold about you, correct it, export it, or delete it. Email support@soundbyteinc.com and we will do it within 30 days. We will not make you jump through hoops or try to talk you out of it, and asking will never affect your account.

If you are in the UK or EU, our basis for holding account data is performing the contract you signed up for; for billing records it is a legal obligation; for problem reports it is our legitimate interest in fixing the app. You can object, and you can complain to your data protection authority.

7. Children

These are professional audio tools and are not intended for anyone under 16. We do not knowingly collect data from children. If you believe a child has created an account, tell us and we will remove it.

8. Security

Passwords are stored as one-way hashes. Sign-in tokens are stored hashed, so a copy of our database would not hand anyone a working login. Everything travels over HTTPS. No system is perfect; if we ever have a breach that affects you, we will email you and say what happened rather than hope you don't notice.

9. Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will email the address on your account before it takes effect. The date at the top tells you which version you are reading.

10. Contact

Privacy questions, data requests, and anything in this document: support@soundbyteinc.com, or write to SoundByte Inc., 445 Holly Stream Trail, Roswell, GA 30075, USA.

See also our Terms of Service.