Why Universal Audio’s CEO wants you to talk to your DAWIt’s easy to see where Universal Audio’s idea for LUNA’s voice activation came from, especially after speaking with Bill Putnam Jr, the company’s CEO.
When I last spoke with Putnam Jr in October 2024, the Californian audio wiz detailed his morning routine of creative writing and wandering through Santa Cruz. These daily habits remain intact 12 months later, but he’s no longer strolling around the scenic coastal town alone. Now, he has an assistant.
“My favourite workflow these days is to walk around Santa Cruz while using voice mode on ChatGPT. I’ll be thinking, working on something, and say, ‘Oh, take a note of that,’ and it’ll store it in my Notion database,” says Putnam. “My favourite interface for ChatGPT is voice now.”
Last week, Universal Audio released LUNA 2.0, the second iteration of its popular DAW. It arrives four months after LUNA 1.9, which introduced new AI tools: Hands-Free Recording, Instrument Detection, and the Smart Tempo Suite. The former allows producers to say, “Hey Luna, start recording”, rather than hitting the recording button in the DAW, while the latter two features help with faster project organisation.
Credit: Universal Audio
But who exactly is asking for an AI-assisted DAW, and why would producers and engineers want to talk to LUNA?
“If you’ve got an instrument in your hand, or you’re at the microphone and you want to just jump into singing, you want to keep the computer keyboard out of the equation,” explains Putnam. He cites his own experiences in recording guitar parts into LUNA, and previously having to pause his performance, reach over to his desk and hit the record button before finding his way back into the groove, interrupting his creative flow.
Our voices, to Putnam, are increasingly becoming a powerful means of software navigation. “There are a lot of places where voice is going to be the most natural, best interface,” he says, before caveating that meticulous audio editing work will still require a screen: “Nothing’s gonna replace a highly detailed visual user interface for that.”
Bill Putnam Jr. Image: Universal Audio
With a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford, Putnam has long been curious about AI’s potential. He looks to fellow Stanford alumni and the “Godfather of AI music” David Cope, for challenging his own thoughts on generative music and creative theories. Putnam is, however, careful to avoid becoming an overly enthusiastic AI evangelist.
“Our mission at UA is to thrill and inspire music makers, and just put anything we do through that filter. ‘Will this thrill and inspire music makers?’ If the answer is yes, we should do it. If the answer is no, we shouldn’t do it,” he explains.
LUNA 2.0 isn’t a dramatic overhaul, but it seems to address UA’s mission to some effect. The free version now has support for ARA plugins, which has been heavily requested by the LUNA userbase; the Pro tier now brings an additional 15 UAD plugins, plus Melodyne Essential, which is being touted as “great value” by customers.
However, regarding the AI features, Putnam says he’s heard “the full gamut” of feedback.
“There are people who get it,” he says, “but other people ask, ‘Why would I ever want to talk to a DAW?’ If your workflow is just mixing and editing, you might never want to. But for some people, that’s not the case; there’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all…AI is clearly overhyped right now, and we’re starting to see the negative side.”
Bill Putnam Jr. Image: Universal Audio
“I’ve seen some reactions that say, ‘Well, you’re just feeding into the hype. This is just AI slop’ or whatever. [But UA] needs to go out there and be willing to be pioneers; we need to be willing to make mistakes. There are gonna be some swings and misses across the industry. And, hopefully, we don’t beat people up too much for that; we just learn a lesson and make something better.”
The distinction between ‘AI slop’ and the vision that Putnam has for a modern DAW is important to him. Many producers and creators are right to be cautious of generative AI, he says, but remains firm that Universal Audio’s goals differ from generative AI apps Suno and Udio. “It’s very hard to spend the time to get to the point where music is fun. And it should be,” Putnam says. “Making a tool that can automatically create a soundtrack and replace a music maker is not like Universal Audio.”
Still, some commenters on Universal Audio’s LUNA 1.9 announcement video are adamant that any use of AI in music-making is blasphemous. “The most human music is the music without AI involvement,” reads one comment, while another says: “THIS is what they throw us after all the suggestions we’ve made about LUNA the last 5 years, AI?…So tired of AI being shoved up our noses.”

For Putnam, the backlash is partly a communication problem. Some features, he argues, shouldn’t even be marketed as AI. LUNA’s Instrument Detection, which automatically labels tracks based on the instrument being recorded, is one tool the CEO thinks doesn’t warrant an AI fanfare.
“Naming tracks is something I always avoid,” he says with a chuckle. “You get too many tracks and it’s like, ‘What was this?!’ But [Instrument Detection] is something that you shouldn’t even have to know is AI. You shouldn’t even have to know that it’s a feature. You should just not have to think about it.”
UA isn’t alone in its push for DAW innovation. Apple has integrated AI into Logic Pro via the Mastering Assistant, while Image-Line has baked an entire chatbot into FL Studio 2025 (it’s called Gopher, and we actually found it pretty useful). Evidently, DAW developers are looking in a plethora of directions with AI, and how it can assist creators using their software. Whether artists want that assistance is another question.
“I think artists are the right people to have the burden of figuring out how to make AI serve humanity, and not serve up humanity. Artists have a long history of taking technology and figuring out the ways that it could best suit whatever kind of expression they’re going for. I have tremendous faith in humans’ propensity and desire to create, but even more so in artists’ ability to cut through the shit and figure out what works and what doesn’t, and lead the way.”
Putnam acknowledges, however, that generative AI platforms are very much infringing on the livelihood of working musicians. “There’s clearly potential for disruption on the commercial side – everything where music is filler or background. That’s going to be suited to some kind of automatic generative algorithm, and that will be threatening to people who had that as their day job.”
He believes strongly, however, that human creativity is unquenchable. “It’s what makes us uniquely human,” he says. “I think there is no chance that humans are going to lose the urge to create and find ways to create.”
As bleeding-edge tech continues to disrupt and concern almost every industry on the planet, Putnam, who is now in his 60s, is just glad that he’s around to take on the challenge.
“If I were sitting this out or if I were retired, I’d be regretting it. Change is always hard and always creates fear, and people just innately don’t want to transform, but [it can be] the most satisfying thing.”
Bill Putnam Jr with a portrait of Bill Putnam Sr. Image: Universal Audio
Putnam is reminded of his dad, Bill Putnam Sr, the founder of Universal Audio and the creator of some of the most coveted analogue studio gear in history. “We get so many analogue purists who say ‘it has to be tubes, it has to be this way,’” he says.
“My dad never would have been that. Even though people identify him with the past, he was always looking to the future. Literally, towards the end of his life, he was thrilled about where digital was going – super fast-acting compressors, simulated reverberant spaces. He saw what digital was going to do.”
“He would be thrilled by this next iteration of AI, I’m certain. We think about him as a representative of a static past, but he was not static. He was dynamic. He was always moving.”
 
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