WELCOME TO HOT SPOTTER
It's hard to stay objective about your music during mixing and mastering. Hot Spotter analyzes your music and presents easy-to-read graphs, interactive DJ-style waveforms, and acoustic data points that make it easy to spot both the hot and cold parts of your tracks.
Download See it read a real album ↓
Scan 20 tracks for free · WAV · AIFF · FLAC · MP3
HOW IT WORKS
Hot Spotter was built by a producer and mastering engineer with over 2,000 credits. It's a standalone app designed to streamline the process of getting an objective view of loudness, dynamics, and tone for an album, mixtape, or full discography.
Drag the album folder onto Hot Spotter. It analyzes WAV, AIFF, FLAC and MP3s with an industry-standard engine (integrated LUFS, EBU R 128), all on your machine. No cloud, fully functional offline.
Every track is measured against your album's own average, or a reference or target you set. Tracks that drift louder or quieter get flagged for your review, and the tinted waveform shows exactly which sections do it.
Bounce a new master or confirm a track is how you like it, then hit Analyze Again. Every change is tracked in History, so you can watch your album's levels take shape.
OVERVIEW
Hot Spotter is a unique loudness meter that focuses on loudness and balance across as many tracks as you can throw at it. Perfect for albums, mixtapes, single series, an entire discography.
Traditional loudness meters focus on A/Bing, comparing two tracks to one another. Hot Spotter expands on this idea, allowing artists, producers, and engineers to create a consistent sound across a full collection of music.
Algorithms don't listen to your music, they watch user behavior. Is your song's mix or master turning off listeners?
In the era of streaming, passive listening, and playlists, having a consistent loudness and tone across an album or catalog is critical. Listeners skip tracks that are too quiet or too compressed, and streaming platforms' algorithms impose penalties.
For artists that create lo-fi, ambient, acoustic, or classical music, having a consistent loudness and tone across your whole album can vastly increase the performance on streaming of your project.
For artists with dynamic genres, like jazz, EDM, and rock, you can now pinpoint which tracks should be your loudest and have the most energy, and ensure that they punch above their weight in the context of your album and against your references.
TONAL BALANCE
Hot Spotter supports reference tracks, either an individual song or a whole folder. Load up your favorite track or an album that inspired you.
See bass levels, loudness (Integrated LUFS), dynamics, and even a visual EQ spectrum at a glance. Turn on or off as many data points as you like.
Working on an album? Catch tracks that might be too compressed or too quiet.
Creating a mixtape? Make sure every beat hits.
Releasing singles? Ensure each one can land on a playlist with your inspirations.
TRIM
In traditional metering apps, you'd have to edit, re-export, and re-analyze a track with a long intro or outro to get a clear loudness reading. Use the Trim feature in Hot Spotter to instantly adjust the readings to focus on the core of your song.
Use keyboard shortcuts to rapidly Trim as many tracks as you want across your album. Then A/B the trimmed versions against the full tracks to see things lock in.
SPOT REPORT
There's always more work to be done. Mark spots on your waveforms or in your frequency spectrum to make notes to help your songs be the best they can be.
Export a Spot Report in a beautiful interactive report, or keep it simple and copy paste into your favorite note or chat app.
TRACK DETAILS
Utilize the integrated audio player to review your mixes while making notes. Use your trim markers to review all your drops, or sort and reorder the tracklist to lock down the best sequence.
No more waiting for release day to see if the masters sound good on Spotify.
MAKE IT YOURS
Every waveform, graph and chip in the app follows the palette you pick. Thermal is the default, and Unlimited adds a custom palette in your own colors.
PRICING
$0
$5
$19 once
Free updates for everyone · 14-day refund on both · Buy from inside the app when you're ready
Prices in US dollars. Checkout shows your local currency and adds tax where it applies.
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Per track: integrated LUFS, true peak (dBTP), loudness range (LRA), short-term loudness over time, dynamics (PSR), and a five-band tonal balance (sub, bass, low-mid, high-mid, high). Loudness and tonal balance are shown against the album's own average.
Per album: mean loudness, loudness spread, and a full change history between runs.
Good gravy, they don't!
−14 LUFS is a playback normalization number, not a mastering order. Hot Spotter shows you whether your album is consistent with itself. Does track five jump out of bounds? Is that intro too quiet, and will it get people to skip?
If you do want a fixed number, click the album average and type one; it becomes your target. Or load up your favorite album or track and use it as a reference.
WAV, AIFF, FLAC and MP3. If a folder mixes MP3s with lossless files, Hot Spotter asks which formats to analyze, as lossy formats like MP3 can meter louder than lossless formats like WAV.
If you have MP3s alongside lossless versions, no worries: a WAV+MP3 pair of the same song is detected and shown as one track.
Absolutely not! Hot Spotter is a native desktop app, and analysis runs on your machine. The app only goes online to check for updates, to activate or deactivate your license key, and, if you turn them on, to send anonymous usage reports. Those never include your audio, file names or measurements. See exactly what's sent.
Both. Mac: macOS 13 Ventura or later (Apple Silicon and Intel). Windows: Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit).
You can scan 20 tracks for free on each computer, with no account and no time limit. When you need more, buy from inside the app: a 20-Track Pack adds 20 tracks for $5, and you can buy as many as you like. Or go Unlimited for $19 once to help support development.
Unlimited covers two computers and adds custom colors. No subscription: everyone gets future updates for free, and both come with a 14-day refund if Hot Spotter isn't for you. Something missing? Tell us.
The free version analyzes 20 tracks on each computer. A track is a file name inside an album folder, counted once: re-exporting a master to the same file name is free, renaming it or moving the folder counts as new, and a WAV+MP3 pair of the same song counts once.
References never count, and neither do failed or cancelled runs. Free tracks are used first, then pack tracks. Your reports and history stay readable after your tracks run out.
No. A 20-Track Pack stays on the one computer that redeems it, and it can't be moved later. If you work on two computers, Unlimited covers both.
Replacing a computer you use with Unlimited? Email me and I'll free up its spot.
Your key is in the email Dodo Payments sent when you bought Hot Spotter, and in Dodo's customer portal. Still can't find it? Email me and I'll help.
I'm Chris, also known as DJ Cutman, a DJ and producer running my own label. I built Hot Spotter to help me get more consistent playback on streaming services, and as my friends found out about the project, they asked me to develop it into an app.
Found a bug, or have a feature request? Accidentally scanned the wrong folder and used up all your free tracks? Send me an email or DM me on Instagram @VideoGameDJ.
DOWNLOAD HOT SPOTTER
Download now and scan 20 tracks for free. Need more? Add 20 tracks for $5, or go Unlimited for $19 once. No subscription. macOS 13 Ventura or later (Apple Silicon and Intel), or Windows 10 or 11.
Download Release notes → Send feedback →
The Mac app is signed and notarized and updates itself.
