🎛️ Top Toolbar & Transport

The Top Toolbar in Omni DAW is the control center for playback, tempo, and view switches. It is located at the very top of the interface.

1. Transport Controls

• Play / Stop (Space): The transport button starts and stops playback from the current time cursor position.

• Record: Arms MIDI note or audio signal recording on the active track. It is enabled via the button on the transport bar (by default, there is no dedicated keyboard shortcut — see /docs/keyboard-shortcuts) or via MIDI Learn if you want to assign recording to a hardware controller.

• Record Source (MIDI / MIDI OUT / WAV): The key next to the transport shows what a recording captures on the selected instrument track; click it to choose:

  • Auto (default): instrument tracks record MIDI, tracks with a hardware input or a loaded sample record WAV.
  • MIDI: the notes played into the instrument (clip, keyboard, MIDI input). If nothing is played in but the instrument plays notes by itself, those are recorded instead.
  • MIDI OUT: only the notes the instrument plays by itself, sent on its MIDI output: a plugin's built-in sequencer, arpeggiator or chord generator (VST3, CLAP, VST2 and LV2 plugins running in-process). The popup says when a MIDI output was detected.
  • WAV: the track's audio.

  A MIDI take never comes back empty: if it ends with no notes but the track made sound (for example a plugin whose sequencer does not send its notes to the host), the take is kept as a WAV clip and a notice explains why. On an Auto track Omni then switches that track, and new tracks with the same plugin, to WAV. When a take records notes from a plugin's own sequencer, turn that sequencer off before playing the clip back, otherwise the notes play twice.

• Loop: Toggles looping for the designated section on the Arrangement View timeline. The toggle is located on the arrangement toolbar (using the mouse) — there is no default keyboard shortcut.

2. Tempo (BPM)

• BPM Fader / Entry: Adjusts the project tempo ranging from 20.0 to 300.0 BPM with decimal precision.
• The same range (20–300 BPM) applies independently to the "Orig BPM" field used for stretching (warping) a single audio clip.

3. Clip Launch Quantization (Clip Launch Mode)

In the Session View, a clip does not always start immediately upon clicking. The launch mode (ClipLaunchMode) has two values, toggled via a button on the Session View bar:

• Next Loop (default): The clicked clip is queued (blinks) and starts only when the currently playing clip on that track finishes its loop. This is not a selectable rhythmic grid (e.g., "every bar" or "every 1/4") — the reference point is always the loop length of the currently playing clip.
• Immediate: The clip switches instantly upon clicking, without waiting.

4. Groove: the swing engine

The project swing is a full groove engine. On the toolbar: SWING — a display of the style and depth (e.g. MPC 58%, JAZZ 2.4:1; drag = depth, MIDI Learn) and the GROOVE key, which opens the panel.

Kinds of swing (a strip of keys, each drawing its own rhythm):

• OFF — everything on the grid.
• MPC — Linn/MPC swing: the second note of each pair is delayed, 50–75% (54% tight, 58–62% hip-hop, 66% triplet, 71–75% shuffle).
• JAZZ — 8th-note swing whose ratio follows the tempo: about 3:1 at ballads, 2:1 at medium tempo, nearly even at 300 BPM.
• NEST — nested swing: 8ths and the 16ths inside them swing together (UK garage, 2-step, new jack swing).
• PUSH — rushed off-beats: the second note of the pair comes early.
• DRUNK — a lazy, uneven feel (Dilla style): each 16th of the beat sits late by a different amount, the downbeat stays.
• SAMBA — the 2nd sixteenth of the beat late, the 4th anticipated.
• WALTZ — Viennese waltz: in 3/4 the second beat comes early.
• CUSTOM — your own template: the four points of the beat dragged on the display (sideways = time, up/down = accent), or GRAB from a played clip.

The display shows two beats of the grid (a waltz bar): written on top, where the notes really play below, threads between them, the accent of each point, the humanize spread and the playhead. Drag: sideways = depth, up/down = accent; double-click = reset; Shift = fine.

Knobs: AMOUNT (style depth), ACCENT (the style's dynamics, negative inverts the profile), LEAN (beats 2 and 4 laid back or pushed, ±40 ms), HUMAN (random timing up to ±30 ms), VEL (random velocity). GRID — 1/8, 1/16, 1/32. SEED — humanize is deterministic: the same loop plays the same on every pass and in a bounce, chords move together.

What follows the groove: session piano-roll clips, arrangement MIDI clips, step sequencer clips without their own swing (0) and Euclidean clips at 50%. The TRACKS keys in the panel turn the groove off for chosen tracks (the track plays straight). Swing is a time warp: both the start and the end of a note move, so notes off the grid (flams, triplets, recorded phrases) move consistently. Projects with the old MPC template load and play as before.

5. View Switches

On the right side of the toolbar are buttons for quick application view changes:

• Session View / Arrangement View (F4): Toggles between the non-linear clip grid and the classic timeline. (Note: Tab is not a global shortcut for this switch — it only works locally in some panels, e.g., for navigating tabs in the Step Sequencer).
• Mixer Panel: Slides out the mixer panel showing Peak Meters and effect chains.
• Device Panel (F1): Opens a detailed view of the VST3/CLAP/LV2/VST2 plugin or built-in effect/synthesizer on the selected track.