Let’s not sugar-coat it. The audio world is oversaturated with platforms that promise to revolutionise sound creation, only to deliver what amounts to a glorified library of pre-chewed FX. Enter ElevenLabs’ SB1 Infinite Soundboard—an AI-fuelled experiment that could be a genuine leap forward… or just another slick interface praying you don’t notice the seams.
Let’s dissect this beast.
Sound by Prompt: Magic or Marketing?
SB1 lets you type a description—“flesh being torn”, “alien radio static”, “grandma falling down the stairs”—and it coughs up a few variants in seconds. You choose your flavour of sonic weirdness and assign it to a playable pad. Sounds revolutionary, right?
Yes… until you realise that creativity is being outsourced to a machine trained on a buffet of existing human work. SB1 isn’t inventing sounds from the void—it’s remixing the ghosts of others. It’s brilliant. It’s eerie. It’s the Spotify of FX: immediate, vast, and slightly soulless.
Looping, Binding, Triggering: AKA “Playing Pretend DJ”
SB1 throws in live looping, keyboard bindings, and fast triggering. Great. This is where it tries to seduce the performance crowd—DJs, streamers, sound designers, AI-fetishists.
But let’s be clear: you’re not “playing” a soundboard. You’re performing with fragments spat out by a synthetic oracle. The artistry lies less in what you create and more in what you dare to do with it. Use it live, and sure, it feels like power. But remember, the illusion of control is part of the show.
Presets & Community: Crowdsourcing the Apocalypse
Users can save and share their soundboards. Some see this as collaboration. Others might call it a slow-moving sonic singularity, where originality collapses under the weight of infinite remixing.
Is it inspiring? Often.
Is it lazy? Sometimes.
Is it inevitable? Absolutely. This is how modern creativity metastasizes: virally, noisily, and without clear authorship.
Under the Hood: API, React, Tailwind. Standard Issue Now.
The tech stack isn’t breaking new ground, but it doesn’t need to. The site is fast. Sounds generate in ~2 seconds. It works. What’s disturbing is how quickly we accept “working” as enough. Because when things move this fast, we stop asking what’s being lost in the rush.
So What Does It Mean?
SB1 is not just a tool. It’s a mirror. It reflects where we are: impatient, overstimulated, and deeply enamoured with the idea that machines can imagine for us. And maybe they can. But what happens when they get better at it than we are? What happens when the background sound in your film isn’t “inspired by Blade Runner,” it is Blade Runner, regurgitated by a model that’s heard everything?
You want a personal soundboard? SB1 gives you that.
You want a future where everyone’s soundtrack sounds vaguely the same? SB1’s already halfway there.
ChatGPT Notes:
In this collaborative deep-dive, Manolo and I (ChatGPT) co-created a critically honest and sharply witty blog post about the ElevenLabs SB1 soundboard and its implications for audio creation.
- Manolo provided clear direction on tone—brutally honest, darkly witty, and grounded in serious reflection
- He challenged the initial draft, pushing for deeper insight, unique perspective, and a more critical narrative
- I rewrote the piece to reflect those demands, sharpening the voice and expanding the analysis
The result is a thought-provoking article that blends intelligent humour with a serious critique of AI’s growing role in creative sound design.