Privacy
The short version: the website keeps as little about you as it can. It has no analytics, no ads and no tracking. If you make an account, the company that runs our logins keeps your account details. We only add you to our email list if you click to join, and only see your messages if you send us one. We never sell anything about you.
Just visiting
Like every website, ours has to send pages to your internet address. The pages come from Netlify, which hosts the site, through Cloudflare, which runs our web address. Both see your internet address and the usual details any browser sends (which page, what browser) and keep them briefly in their logs. The site's fonts come from Google Fonts, so Google sees your internet address too when they load. There's no analytics, advertising or tracking code on the site.
Your account
Accounts are run by Clerk (clerk.com), a company that specialises in logins. When you create an account, Clerk keeps:
- your username, first and last name and email address,
- your password, stored scrambled so that nobody, including us, can read it. Stec Audio never sees it,
- when you signed up and last logged in, and the browsers and devices you're logged in on (you can see these yourself under Your account → Security).
To keep you logged in, Clerk puts a small file (a cookie) in your browser. It's only used for logging in, not for tracking.
If you use "Continue with Google", Google tells Clerk your name, email address and profile picture link, and Google knows you signed in to Stec Audio. We don't get your Google password or anything else from your Google account.
Stec Audio can see your account details in Clerk's dashboard, so we can help if something goes wrong. Your details are held under Clerk's own privacy policy (clerk.com) too.
To delete your account: go to Your account → Details & security → Security → Delete account. That removes it from Clerk. Your place on the email list and any messages you sent are kept separately; see below for removing those.
Email updates
You're only added to our email list if you click Email me updates. That sends the email address on your account to Kit (kit.com), the service we send our emails with, and Kit emails you to confirm. Kit keeps your email address and whether you open our emails, under its own privacy policy. Every email has an unsubscribe link at the bottom; one click takes you off the list.
Messages you send us
When you use Message us, your message, the topic you picked, your username and your account email are stored by Netlify, which runs the form. Netlify automatically checks messages for spam. We read your message and reply to your email. To have your messages deleted, email [email protected].
Buying Sample Assistant
When Sample Assistant goes on sale, purchases are handled by Lemon Squeezy (lemonsqueezy.com), which takes the payment and issues your license. We never see your card details. What the app itself sends is described in the next section.
The short version: your audio and your chats never leave your Mac. The AI assistant runs on your own computer, not on a server. The app has no analytics and no tracking. It goes online once a day to check for a new version and to check that your subscription is still active, and otherwise only when you ask it to download something. This page lists every one of those times.
What stays on your Mac
- Your audio. The app reads the sample folders you point it at so it can find and analyse sounds. It never uploads them, and it never moves or changes your original files. Chops, bounces and exports are new files the app creates for you.
- Your chats. Everything you type to the assistant is handled by an AI model running on your Mac. It talks only to your own computer (the address
127.0.0.1, which means "this Mac"). No chat text is sent anywhere. - What the app learns about your library. File names, locations, lengths, tempo, and sound measurements like brightness and punch are saved on your Mac so searches are fast. They are never sent anywhere.
The only times the app goes online
Checking for updates, once a day
About once a day, the app asks updates.stecaudio.com whether there is a newer version. It sends only what any web request sends - your internet address - plus the app's version number and your macOS version, so the right update is offered. Nothing about your audio, chats, library, projects or settings is sent, and nothing that identifies you.
What happens next is up to you, in Settings → Updates → Automatic Updates:
- On (the starting setting): a new version downloads in the background from
updates.stecaudio.comand installs when you next quit the app. - Off: nothing downloads by itself. The app shows you the new version and asks first. (If you turn it off while an update has already downloaded, or is downloading, that one update still installs when you quit, and the app tells you so.)
The daily check runs either way, so the app can tell you when there's an update. You can also check at any time with Check for Updates. Updates are signed by Stec Audio, and the app refuses any update that isn't.
Checking your license, once a day
Sample Assistant is a subscription. When you enter your license key, and then about once a day while the app is open, it asks Lemon Squeezy (api.lemonsqueezy.com), the company that sells and bills the subscription, whether your key is still active. It sends:
- your license key,
- this Mac's network name (for example
Sams-MacBook-Pro), so you can tell your Macs apart if you ever need to remove one, and - an activation ID, a code Lemon Squeezy gave this Mac when you entered the key.
Like any web request, Lemon Squeezy also sees your internet address. Nothing about your audio, chats, library, projects or settings is sent.
The app also asks when you press Check Again on the lock screen, when you press Remove This Mac in Settings → License (this frees the Mac's place on your key; a key works on 2 Macs - it needs an internet connection, and without one the key stays on this Mac until you try again online), when you use Remove All App Data (which frees the place the same way, if it can connect), and, if a check can't connect or your subscription has lapsed, once an hour until it gets an answer. If a daily check can't connect, the app keeps working for one more day, so a flight or a dropped connection doesn't lock you out. After that it asks you to connect.
Lemon Squeezy also knows your email address and payment details from checkout, and which Macs your key is on. That's their record of you as a customer, held under their own privacy policy (lemonsqueezy.com). Stec Audio sees your subscription and key status in Lemon Squeezy's dashboard; this app sends us nothing else.
Downloads you start
Each of these happens only when you start it.
| When | What it downloads | From |
|---|---|---|
| You set up the stem engine (for splitting songs into drums, bass, vocals and so on) | A copy of Python (about 24 MB), the engine's Python software (about 2.5 GB), then about 55 MB of separation model files | GitHub (github.com) for Python, the Python Package Index (pypi.org), and the Demucs project's download server run by Meta |
| You download a different AI model in Settings (the standard one is already built in) | That model file | Hugging Face (huggingface.co) |
Like any download, the site you download from sees your internet address and which file you asked for. The app sends nothing else. It never sends your audio, chats, library, settings, or any information about you. Once the stem engine is set up, splitting runs entirely on your Mac.
Accounts, analytics and tracking
The app has no sign-in screen and no user accounts of its own; you enter a license key once. Buying a subscription does create a customer record at Lemon Squeezy, with your email address and which Macs your key is on (see "Checking your license" above). The app itself contains no analytics, advertising or tracking code, and it never reports how you use it. (The daily update check and the license check above send nothing about how you use the app.)
If something goes wrong, the app writes a diagnostics log on your Mac, and a short crash note if it crashes (see below). These stay on your Mac. We only see them if you choose to send them to us. They can include the names of files you were working with.
(macOS itself can send crash reports to Apple if you've turned that on in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements. That's between you and Apple. This app doesn't send anything.)
What's stored, and where
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| The AI model, your chops, your library index and analysis | ~/Library/StecAudioSampleAssistant/ |
| The AI's saved warm-up (its instructions already read, so it starts in seconds; about 750 MB, one file, replaced when the app updates) | ~/Library/StecAudioSampleAssistant/prompt-cache/ |
| Your settings, including your license key, its activation ID and when it was last checked | ~/Library/Application Support/Stec Audio Sample Assistant.assistant and .settings |
| The Automatic Updates setting and window positions | ~/Library/Preferences/com.stecaudio.sampleassistant.plist |
| A downloaded update waiting to install (removed once installed) | ~/Library/Caches/com.stecaudio.sampleassistant/ |
| Diagnostics logs and crash notes (the last 10 of each) | ~/Library/Logs/StecAudioSampleAssistant/ |
| Stem splits and temporary bounces | macOS's temporary folder, in Stec Audio Sample Assistant (macOS clears it over time) |
| The stem engine, if you set it up | ~/Library/StecAudioSampleAssistant/stem_engine/ (its own copy of Python and a private Python environment, about 2.5 GB), plus the ~55 MB separation model files in ~/.cache/torch/hub/ |
| Projects and exports you save | Wherever you choose to save them |
~ means your home folder. In Finder, choose Go → Go to Folder… and paste the path.
How to delete everything
- Quit the app.
- Delete the folders and files listed above.
- Drag the app to the Trash.
That removes everything the app keeps on your Mac. The one record held elsewhere is your customer record at Lemon Squeezy (see "Checking your license"). Before deleting by hand, press Remove This Mac in Settings → License while online, so this Mac's place on your key is freed. Settings → Storage → Remove All App Data does this for you as it quits, if it can connect; if it can't, the place stays taken until you remove it from your other Mac or email [email protected].
If this ever changes
If a future version sends anything more off your Mac than what this page describes, it will be off unless you turn it on, it will say clearly what it sends and where, and this page will be updated before that version is released. (The daily update check and the license check arrived in versions after 0.1.2; they're described above.)
Contact
Questions about privacy: [email protected]