Waves’ ILLUGEN text-to-sound engine can create sounds nobody has heard before using ultra-specific prompts – here’s how it worksWaves has launched an AI-powered text-to-sound engine called ILLUGEN, and it’s capable of making unique sounds from specific and incredibly weird prompts.
The new tool is available as a subscription-only app as of current, with three tiers (basic, premium, and pro) available, and prices starting at $7.99 per month. This model is an interesting choice, given Waves’ previous u-turn on making its plugins available through subscription plans only after significant backlash.

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Those who do fancy signing up can simply feed ILLUGEN a text prompt, pick from their favourite of three generated sounds, and then simply drag and drop it into their DAW. Examples provided on the Waves website suggest your prompts can be as specific as “a snail’s journey scored with synths”, or “disco beat played by robots that are 20 percent funky and 80 percent malfunctioning”.
As ILLUGEN is rather new, some of its functions remain pretty straightforward – it currently doesn’t fully support musical keys and scales, and though you can still request them, Waves says it can’t guarantee precise results at this time. ILLUGEN also only works in a 4/4 time signature right now.
You can find out more in the video below:

Some questions have already been raised as to how copyright works if you were to use these sounds in your music, and as to how ILLUGEN’s AI model was trained. Waves has stated that the model was trained “exclusively on documented, legally owned material”, and that ethical AI development is a “top priority” for the brand.
It also notes that users of ILLUGEN own the rights to use the samples they generate in their own creative work, such as music, sound design, games, or films. However, “you may not repackage or resell the samples as standalone sound libraries, nor use them to train other AI models”.
To find out more about ILLUGEN (including answers to a list of FAQs) or subscribe, you can head over to Waves.
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