DEMONtd × Daydream
Drive real-time AI music and sound design directly from your TouchDesigner network. DEMONtd brings Daydream’s open-source diffusion engine into TD as a native operator — sub-100ms parameter latency, 25Hz frame-level control, no batch-and-wait.
TouchDesigner
CHOPs · SOPs · MIDI · OSC
DEMON
Diffusion engine
Audio out
48kHz · 25Hz
~81ms end-to-end
DEMONtd is the TouchDesigner operator for DEMON, Daydream’s open-source real-time music and sound design engine. Where a typical AI music tool is a batch-and-wait service, DEMONtd is an instrument: every parameter is steerable at frame rate, with sub-100ms latency from your hand on a controller to the audio stream out of your soundcard.
Plug it into your TouchDesigner network like any other audio operator. Drive prompts and macros from CHOPs. Modulate from audio inputs, MIDI hardware, OSC over the network, or the global timeline. Sync to performance state. Reshape genre, structure, timbre, and density in real time — without breaking flow and without rendering offline.
DEMONtd runs locally on your own GPU, fully open source. It works alongside Scope, the rest of the Daydream stack, and any other TouchDesigner operator you already use.
Frame-level control at 25Hz with end-to-end latency under 100ms. Audio responds the millisecond your hand moves a controller — playable as an instrument, not a generator.
Patch CHOPs into DEMONtd inputs to modulate timbre, density, genre, and structure from audio analysis, MIDI, OSC, or the timeline. Standard TouchDesigner conventions.
No external server, no plugin bridge. DEMONtd is a first-class TouchDesigner operator that reads CHOPs/SOPs and writes audio CHOP out — composable with whatever else you build.
The engine and the operator are both open source. Runs on your own GPU; no Daydream account required for local execution. Cloud inference is optional for machines without a GPU.
DEMONtd is the TouchDesigner operator for DEMON, Daydream's open-source real-time music and sound design engine. It lets you drive AI audio generation directly from a TouchDesigner network — patch CHOPs into prompts and macros, modulate from audio inputs or MIDI hardware, and reshape genre, timbre, and structure in real time without leaving TD.
DEMON is the engine — the open-source real-time music diffusion model and runtime, built on ACE-Step v1.5. DEMONtd is the TouchDesigner-native wrapper around DEMON: it exposes the engine as a TD operator with CHOP inputs and audio CHOP output, so you can compose DEMON into a TouchDesigner network alongside everything else you build.
For local execution, yes — DEMONtd is local-first and the underlying diffusion model needs an NVIDIA GPU with at least 8GB of VRAM. An RTX 4090 or 5090 is the sweet spot for sub-100ms latency. If you don't have a GPU, you can also point DEMONtd at the Daydream cloud for hosted inference.
DEMONtd targets TouchDesigner 2023.x and newer. Check the README on the DEMONtd GitHub repo for the exact tested versions and any release-by-release compatibility notes.
Sub-100ms end-to-end on a modern consumer GPU running locally. That's the threshold where the engine starts feeling like an instrument under your hands — parameters reshape the audio stream the millisecond a CHOP value changes, instead of after a batch render.
Yes. Patch any TouchDesigner CHOP — Audio Analysis, Audio Filter, Audio Spectrum, MIDI In, OSC In, Timeline, or anything you build — into DEMONtd's parameter inputs. The operator updates at 25Hz so audio-rate modulation works for everything except sample-accurate sync, which is rare in this kind of workflow anyway.
Yes. DEMONtd and the DEMON engine are both open source under permissive licenses — free to download, run locally, and modify. Cloud inference (if you don't have a GPU) is the only paid option, and that's optional.
Today: ACE-Step v1.5 (2B turbo + 5B XL turbo). Stable Audio 3.0 and Magenta RT2 are on the roadmap. Models hot-swap at runtime — you can switch architectures mid-session without restarting your TouchDesigner project.
Yes — Scope (Daydream's real-time AI video tool) and DEMONtd are designed to compose. Use Scope for generative video and DEMONtd for generative audio in the same TouchDesigner project, modulating each from the same control surface or driving Scope from DEMONtd's audio analysis (or vice versa).
Clone the repo, follow the quickstart, and route AI audio through your TD network in minutes. Open source, free to run on your own GPU, and supported by an active community.