To add a Track, press the + button.
The Track is an empty shell which contains the Track Header (VU Meter, Volume and Pan controls, and Button Group), and the Waveform Display, which will contain the Regions. The number of channels (1 or 2, mono or stereo) is determined by the first Region to be recorded or pasted onto a Track.
To open the Hotbox, Long-Touch over a Region or empty area in a Track in the Waveform display.
The Hotbox is a feature which pops up a context sensitive group of buttons surrounding the touch area. To use the Hotbox, Long-Touch over a Track or over a Track Header, and while still holding, slide over to a button, and release the touch. If you open the Hotbox over a Region, you get an option of copying the Region. And if you open the Hotbox over empty space on a track, you get a Hotbox which includes the option of pasting if the Pasteboard contains compatible data.
The Hotbox can be used to rename, copy, paste, bounce, edit, erase, slice, and open the Audio Browser.
The Edit tool when used on a single Region allows changing the start and end locations using the outer handles, the fade in and out locations using the inner handles, and the Region volume using the center handle. When using the Edit tool on multiple Regions, they can be moved between tracks and forward and backward through the timeline.
The Slice tool will split the selected region at the Hotbox location. If the Playhead is close to the Hotbox location, the Playhead location will be used instead.
Important Note: Please disable the "Input Monitor" in the Menu if you are using the internal microphone and speakers, as feedback can result.
Start by arming a track for recording. Use the Arm button in the Track Buttons to enable that track for recording. The button will light up to indicate the Track is armed.
Now that a track is armed for recording, simply press the play and record buttons located in the Toolbar. To stop recording, press the play or record button again. The resulting Audio will be placed in the songs audio library, viewable in the Audio Browser. The recorded Region will be latency compensated and placed on the Track.
Regions are used to save filespace. Many different Regions can share the same Audio file, and because a Region only uses a small amount of memory, a huge amount of filespace can be saved.
The Regions of a song are visible in the main waveform display on the Tracks. The actual audio that the Regions are referencing, is visible in the Audio Browser under the "Song" tab.
To select and deselect Regions, simply tap on a Region. A selected Region will be highlighted.
When you choose 'Edit' from the Hotbox on a single Region, it will change to ghost mode, allowing you to change the start and end points, the fade in and out points, and the volume using Drag Handles:
You can also drag the Region body where no Handles appear, to move the Region between tracks or through the Timeline. To commit the changes, tap outside the Region without moving.
To open the Audio Browser, Long-Touch to open the Hotbox and select the button labeled Audio.
There are tabs labeled "Song", "Shared", and "Import".
These are the local Audio files of a song. As you add audio to a song by Recording or Pasting, the audio will always be visible in this tab. The Audio Browser can be used to create Regions and copy them for pasting into a song. To create a Region and copy it to the Pasteboard, tap the button labeled Region Copy. For previewing the Region prior to copying, tap the Play button. The Loop toggle button can be used to help preview a region that will be used for Region Tiling within a song. The circular Handles can be used to adjust the start and end points of the Region to be copied. After pressing the Region Copy button, close the Audio Browser and try pasting into a song using the Paste button.
This is the shared documents folder of MultiTrack DAW, and is shared with all songs. It is also shared in Finder on a Mac, or using iTunes File Sharing. Mixdowns will also render into this folder. Files opened from other apps will appear in this folder as well. This Shared tab will also appear in the [Help / Export / Upgrade] available from the Menu.
Use this to browse the Files on the device, including iCloud files. After you select a file it will be duplicated into the Documents directory and the Shared tab will open and display it. You can then tap the 'Copy' button and Paste onto a track.
Browse and Import from the Music Library on the device. After you select a song it will be extracted into the Documents directory and the Shared tab will open and display it. You can then tap the 'Copy' button and Paste onto a track.
Important: MultiTrack can't read music items that are in iCloud, so make sure to download them to the Music Library first using the Music App.
There are many ways to get audio into MultiTrack, depending on where the audio exists. If the audio is in another app, go to that app and try to export it, or share it, to MultiTrack. The audio file will be copied to the MultiTrack documents directory, aka the Shared tab in the Audio Browser, and a file player will appear which can be used to Copy the audio to the Pasteboard.
Tap the Copy button to copy the audio to the Pasteboard, and then use the Hotbox to paste the audio onto a track.
To use the copy and paste functionality of MultiTrack, Long-Touch to open the Hotbox and select the copy or paste button. The copy button will only be visible if one or more regions are selected, and the paste button will only be visible if data is in the Pasteboard.
Selecting one or more Regions and using Hotbox Bounce will mixdown all the selected Regions into a new audio clip and copy it to the system Pasteboard. Volume, fades, panning, normalization, and Track FX will be applied, but not Bus FX or Main FX.
When bouncing or copying, if the Hotbox is opened within the Loop Markers, the copy or bounce will be trimmed to the Loop Markers, and any reverb/delay tails will be sliced off. This workflow is intended for creating Loops which can be placed on tracks, to quickly arrange a song. Adjust the Tempo and Time Signature using the Metronome, and turn on Snap in the Menu to make this easy.
The Loop Markers select an area used for previewing and adjusting a loop. To open the Loop Markers, touch the Ruler and drag right. To close the Loop Markers, touch the Ruler and drag left. After the Loop Markers are visible, the start and end points can be adjusted by dragging the small circle handles in the Ruler.
When Regions are copied within the selection area, the copied Regions will be trimmed to the Loop Markers area.
Tapping the OUT button in the toolbar will open the OUT Fader and VU Meter. Use this to access the Bus 1 FX, Bus 2 FX, Main FX panels, and AirPlay/Bluetooth button which will open the iOS Route Picker for selecting an audio route. Use the slider to adjust the main output level for playback. The little triangle is the Zero dB marker, tap it to return the fader to zero.
Tapping the Track Buttons will pop up a large version. These buttons can be used to select an input for the track, Arm the track for recording, access the Track FX (Compressor, EQ, AU/IAA Effects chain, and Bus 1 and Bus 2 Sends), change the track Color, Mute and Solo the track, and Freeze the track.
To add Bus FX to a track, use the Track Buttons and tap the FX button, and on the Bus tab turn up a Send knob to feed signal to an FX Bus. Send 1 sends to Bus 1 FX and Send 2 sends to Bus 2 FX in the effects panels.
Access the Bus effects panels using the OUT fader.
Reverb and Delay are available in the Bus FX control panel as well as a serial chain of up to 4 AU/IAA plugins. To turn on and off the Bus FX, use the power button in the upper left corner of each effect. Controls are also available to change the mix for each effect.
To change the order of effects, simply drag the Tab itself left or right. The signal flow is from left to right, so leftmost Tabs will get the signal first.
By default, Bus 1 FX has Reverb on and Bus 2 FX has Delay on.
The No-Clip knob can help for certain AU/IAA plugins that clip if the signal is too loud. If you hear clipping from effects in the chain, try turning the No-Clip knob down a bit to see if the sound gets better. The signal being sent to the plugin chain will be reduced, and the signal coming back from the plugin chain will be boosted by the inverse amount to maintain unity gain. Normally, you can just leave this control at the midpoint (zero dB).
Access the Main FX panel using the OUT fader.
Effects in the Main FX panel will be applied to the entire signal as a final step, use these effects for mastering. Compressor and EQ are built-in, and up to 4 AU/IAA plugins can be added.
To change the order of effects, simply drag the Tabs left and right. The signal flow is from left to right, so leftmost Tabs will get the signal first.
To open the Menu, tap the Menu button located in the Toolbar.
1. Close Song - use this option to close the current song and return to the Song List. Don't worry about saving, changes are always automatically saved.
2. Help / Export / Upgrade - this option will open a tab control that can: view this help file, Mixdown the current song to a file in the shared folder, view the shared folder, and upgrade MultiTrack DAW.
3. Input Monitor - when enabled, audio from the input will be echoed through to the output for live monitoring of the recording. Use this with headphones for best results.
4. Punch - this is used to automatically start and stop recording at a precise time. When enabled, two handles will be available to adjust the start and end times. To use Punch, arm the track for recording and record as normal, but recording will not start until the first handle is reached, and will stop at the second handle.
5. Auto Input - use this in conjunction with the "Punch" option. When enabled, the armed track will be heard when the Playhead is outside the punch range, and input will be heard when the Playhead is inside the punch range.
6. Follow - This option will automatically scroll the waveform view, to keep the playhead onscreen.
7. Snap - when enabled, moving the Playhead, Punch handles, Loop Markers, or editing Regions will snap them to the nearest Ruler line. Region moving will snap to Ruler lines as well as other regions' start and end points.
8. Redo - Redo the last Undo of a Region edit or recording.
9. Undo - undoes the last Region edit or recording.
To change Metronome settings, touch the upper left corner of MultiTrack.
The Metronome Controller will pop up.
The Time Signature, Tempo, Volume, Display and Ruler controls are Touch drag controls. To use them, touch the control and drag up or down to scroll through the values. The Tempo can be changed from 40 bpm to 240 bpm.
The "Click in Play" and "Click in Record" buttons can be used to enable and disable the Metronome in play and record. The "Accent" button is used to accent the first beat in each bar.
To access the sharing capabilities of MultiTrack DAW, use the Menu item [Help / Export / Upgrade], and tap the Export tab.
Tapping the 'Mixdown' button will render the current song to a file and place it in the MultiTrack Documents folder, aka the Shared tab. This tab will automatically open when the mixdown is complete, and highlight the fresh mixdown file. The Documents folder will also appear in the Files app on the device (Files app → Browse → On My Phone → MultiTrack)
On a Mac you can use Finder to drag files into and out of this folder. On Windows, you can use iTunes File Sharing to access the folder.
To send with Email, create a mixdown, and then use the 'Share' button on the mixdown to send it to the Email app of your choice. The Email app will open and attach the file to an email.
Options for Mixdown:
Only available if the Loop Markers are currently enabled. This will only export the section of the song between the Loop Markers.
Renders each track to a separate file in a single folder.
Only available if Stems option is selected. With Normalize on, each separate stem will be the loudest possible without clipping (0.5 dB below FS). With Normalize off, all the files will still maintain their relative volume levels.
Only available if the Stems option and 'wav' filetype is selected. Combines all the separate stems into a single multi-channel wav file. Good for ambisonics.
To show the Projects Screen, close the current project using the Menu. All projects will appear here, as well as audio mixdowns, archives, and imported items. The Projects Screen is a view of the shared MultiTrack Documents folder.
To open a project, tap the icon for it. To rename, delete, archive, move, and reorder projects, Long-Touch the icon. To share projects, archive them first and then Long-Touch the zipped project to share it.
Projects Toolbar
This Toolbar can be used to create a New Project, create a New Folder, start the Wi-Fi server, and open the Options Panel.
New Project
The New Project button will open a panel for setting the name, bit depth, and samplerate:
Tap the Create button to create a new project with these settings.
New FolderTo better organize your projects and mixdowns, use the New Folder button. Items can be dragged and dropped into folders, or hovered over to navigate into folders. Hover a dragged item over the back button to navigate back out.
Wi-FiTo transfer songs, tracks, and audio using Wi-Fi, select the Wi-Fi button from the Toolbar. An IP address should be displayed. Type this address into a web browser on a computer which is connected to the same Wi-Fi network. Once connected to MultiTrack, the web browser will display the Documents folder. You can now click on a song icon to see all the transfer options for that song. Additional help for each song is available in the browser.
If you are having trouble getting an IP address, please check your network configuration in your devices Settings. See our support forum for details.
Options Panel
Buffer Latency: lower values use more CPU, higher values increase latency. Low Latency is relevant only when using Input Monitoring.
Measurement Mode: ON will remove the Apple default processing (EQ and Compressor) for the built-in microphone and speaker. It is recommended to turn this ON for music recording.
This warning will appear if you don't have enough filespace to perform the operation. Mixdowns, Archiving, Opening a song, Recording, Pasting, etc. are all operations that require filespace to complete. Running out of filespace is dangerous, and data corruption can occur so MultiTrack tries its best to predict the amount of needed space and pops up this warning. To free up filespace, go to the devices Settings (Settings → General → Storage). Also you can delete unused songs from the Song Menu, and use the Audio Browser to delete unused audio in each song.
Render Timeout
This warning will appear if an AudioUnit took too much time in its render operation, and can sound like a glitch or dropped audio in the stream. This can happen when trying to use too many plugins, the plugins are too resource intensive, the device is underpowered or background apps are running, or the buffer size is too small. Also, the AudioUnit plugin itself might have a problem, try contacting the plugin developer if this continues and the above steps didn't help. You can freeze tracks that have AudioUnits on them to reduce CPU usage.
Other AudioUnit Errors
These are various AudioUnit errors, please contact support@harmonicdog.com with the plugin name and as much information as possible about your setup.
If you need additional help not mentioned here, or are experiencing technical difficulties, we would be happy to help. We are confident we can solve any issue you may be having, or to answer any questions. Please send a message to support@harmonicdog.com or visit our support forum at forum.harmonicdog.com.
Version 69.9
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