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Canvas is a mixing plugin that turns your session into a 3D soundstage you can see. Every track becomes a glowing shape in one room: left to right is where it sits in the stereo field, up and down is its tone (bass at the floor, air at the ceiling), and front to back is how loud it is. Move a sound and Canvas makes the change for real, with EQ, pan, width and volume on that track.

No. Canvas doesn't place sounds in 3D headphone space. The room is a picture of a normal stereo mix: it shows where each sound sits between your speakers, which frequencies it fills and how loud it is, and lets you change those by moving it.

Download the installer from the downloads page, run it (.pkg on Mac, .exe on Windows), then open your DAW and add Canvas to a track. The 14-day trial starts the first time Canvas opens. No card or account needed.

No, it's the full plugin for 14 days. When the trial ends, Canvas mutes its tracks until you enter a licence key. The trial can't be restarted on the same computer.

Your licence key arrives by email straight after checkout (it looks like XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX). Open Canvas, click the licence badge in the top bar (or go to Settings, then Privacy & activation) and enter it. Every Canvas on that computer is activated at once, in every format.

Only to activate. After that Canvas works offline, and just checks in with our server once a day when you're connected (that's also how it knows when there's an update).

Each licence covers up to 3 computers. Moving to a new one? Open the licence screen on the old computer and choose Deactivate this machine to free up the slot, then activate on the new one.

You pay $16.50 a month for 6 months, then the licence is yours for good with nothing more to pay. You can use Canvas on up to 3 computers the whole time. If a payment fails we'll email you; if it isn't sorted, Canvas stops (mutes) until the payment goes through, and then your same key works again.

VST3, AU and AAX on macOS 12 or later (native on Apple Silicon and Intel), and VST3 and AAX on Windows 10 or later (64-bit). There's no Linux version.

Any DAW that loads VST3, AU or AAX plugins, including Logic Pro, Ableton Live, FL Studio, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper and Pro Tools. If your DAW doesn't pass track names to plugins, you can rename tracks inside Canvas.

Put it on each track you want to see and shape. Every Canvas in the session knows about the others, so opening any one of them shows the whole mix, and you can edit any track from any window. Put it on a bus to treat a whole group as one sound.

Last in the chain is usually best: Canvas draws each sound as it leaves Canvas, so with nothing after it, what you see is exactly what you hear.

Make sure every Canvas in the session is the same format: VST3 only sees VST3, AU only sees AU, AAX only sees AAX. Mixing formats splits your mix into separate rooms. Two projects open at once are kept apart on purpose.

Yes, as long as your DAW lets you put a stereo plugin on the track, which almost all do (Canvas needs a stereo output to pan and widen). In Pro Tools, insert it as a mono-to-stereo plugin.

A little: about 1,024 samples (around 21 ms at 48 kHz), which it reports to your DAW so playback stays perfectly in time. You'll only notice it when monitoring a live input through Canvas, so leave it off tracks you're recording through.

Yes. Each Canvas saves its settings with your project, and the main controls (pan, width, volume, tone, shelves, reverb, sidechain and more) can be automated from your DAW.

Yes. Canvas has a built-in reverb, or you can load your own reverb plugin inside it (VST3, or AU on Mac). Its tail can duck out of the way with Make Space too.

The sound processing is light; most of the work is drawing the room. In big sessions, turn on Lighter rendering in Settings: the visuals get simpler and the audio is exactly the same. Closing the Canvas window when you're not looking at it helps too.

Yes, every update is free. Canvas lets you know when a new version is out, with a badge in the top bar and a list of what's changed.

Sales are final (see the licence agreement), which is why the 14-day trial is the full plugin. Try everything first. If something's wrong with a purchase, email us.

The Canvas user manual covers the plugin in detail, and the video tutorials above walk through a full mix.

Yes. See our education page, or email info@artdsp.net.