Crate shrinks your DAW session by 40-70% — with absolutely zero quality loss — and verifies that it will arrive bit-for-bit-perfect. Over cafe Wi-Fi, hotel networks, or $3-a-gig mobile data. They open crate files for free.
The moments when standard tools cost you hours, money, or both.
A 4 GB session on hotel Wi-Fi at 5 Mbps takes over an hour. Crate packs it down to 1.2 GB — same session, a fraction of the wait, perfect verification, done before checkout.
A snare stem is 90% silence — Crate crushes it by 85%. Even dense audio shrinks 35–40%. A typical session? 40–70% smaller overall. ZIP and RAR can't tell silence from noise. Zero quality loss, every sample restored perfectly.
Cloud transfers corrupt files silently. You find out when the mixer hears a pop at 2 AM. Crate SHA-256 verifies every file on both ends — instantly.
Crate is a tool, not a service. It rides on whatever you already use to send files.
Drag your consolidated folder onto Crate. It losslessly encodes every audio file — absolutely zero quality loss — and builds a tamper-evident manifest.
WeTransfer, Google Drive, a USB stick — anything. The .crate file is 40-70% smaller. Optionally encrypt, split, or add recovery data.
All crate files are free to receive and unpack with our app. The receiver restores a byte-for-byte copy. Every file verified. Your DAW relinks perfectly... automatically.
ZIP saves 3% on a WAV file. RAR manages about 30%. Crate saves 40–70% on a typical session — because it understands audio. Silence-heavy stems compress up to 85%. And neither ZIP nor RAR verifies anything.
No subscription. No account. Works offline.
Download Crate and unpack any .crate file — always free. No purchase, no account, no limits. Packing is the only paid feature.
Download CratePack unlimited sessions. Completely lossless — zero quality loss. Verified, encrypted, split, recoverable. All updates included. Paid upgrades are rare, if ever.
Buy a licenseOne app. Unpacking is always free. Buy a license only when you're ready to pack.
.crate file? Download Crate — unpacking is always free.No — ever. Crate works fully offline. A one-time license key unlocks packing. No login, no cloud, no tracking.
The same app — Crate. It's a free download, and unpacking is always free. No account, no payment, on Mac, Windows, or Linux. They drag the .crate file on and get a byte-for-byte copy.
Yes — completely lossless, zero quality loss. Not "nearly" lossless, not "perceptually" lossless. Every single sample is mathematically identical to the original. FLAC and WavPack are proven lossless codecs used by archives and studios worldwide. Then SHA-256 verifies every file. Bit-for-bit identical, guaranteed.
Yes. Every file is restored to the exact same bytes — same size, same content, same metadata — as if Crate never touched it. Sessions relink and reopen exactly as they were. Pro Tools, Logic, Ableton, Studio One, Reaper, FL Studio, Cubase — everything relinks automatically.
It depends on the content. Silence-heavy stems (kick, snare, percussion) compress 80-85% — a snare track is 90% silence and Crate crushes it. Sparse stems (vocals, guitar) compress 50-60%. Dense continuous audio (pads, buses) still compresses 35-45%. A typical 40-80 stem mix session shrinks 40-70% overall. ZIP on the same files? About 3%. Every bit of quality is preserved — completely lossless, sample-for-sample identical.
Every format your DAW can export. WAV, AIFF, AIFF-C, CAF, Wave64 — all losslessly compressed and restored byte-for-byte. Float and integer PCM, mono to surround, any bit depth and sample rate. Already-compressed formats (MP3, AAC, FLAC, OGG) and non-audio files (session files, notes, images) are stored perfectly as-is. Even niche formats like RF64 and BW64 are preserved bit-for-bit. Nothing is ever modified or left behind.
All of them. Crate works at the file level, not inside your DAW — so it's completely DAW-agnostic. Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Cubase, Nuendo, Studio One, Reaper, FL Studio, Bitwig, Pyramix, SADiE — if it saves files to disk, Crate handles it. Session files, plugin settings, and every piece of metadata come through intact. Open the session on the other end and everything relinks.
No. Pay once, pack forever. All updates included. Paid upgrades are rare, if ever. Receiving is always free for everyone.
Because a 4 GB session shouldn't cost someone a day's pay to download. In much of the world, mobile data is $3–10 per gigabyte — and that's often the only connection available. Crate shrinks that session down to about 1.2 GB with zero quality loss, so collaborators everywhere can receive your work without choosing between bandwidth and rent. It started as a tool for sending stems across oceans on bad connections. It turned into the way audio should have always moved.
ZIP barely touches audio — a 4 GB session shrinks to maybe 3.8 GB. RAR does better with its audio mode, getting that down to around 2.8 GB. Crate uses purpose-built lossless codecs that understand PCM audio and takes the same session to about 1.2 GB — with zero quality loss. On silence-heavy stems like kick and snare, Crate compresses 80–85% where RAR manages around 40%. Then Crate SHA-256 verifies every file to prove the restore is identical. Neither ZIP nor RAR does that.
Yes — any service, any method. Crate is a tool, not a platform. Pack your session, then send the .crate file however you want — Google Drive, Dropbox, WeTransfer, S3, a USB drive, even AirDrop. Crate doesn't upload, doesn't store, doesn't touch the internet. Your files, your choice of transport.
Crate catches it. Every file is SHA-256 verified on pack and again on restore — if even one bit is wrong, you'll know immediately instead of discovering a click in the mix at 2 AM. For unreliable connections, add PAR2 recovery data and Crate can repair corruption automatically without re-downloading. Split into resumable volumes so a dropped connection doesn't mean starting over.
A one-time license fee unlocks packing. Unpacking is always free for everyone, everywhere — no payment, no account.