Audio clips and recording

Import audio, record MIDI or audio, and work with captured material in the arrangement.

Sympose supports MIDI performance capture and audio recording as user-controlled desktop workflows.

Import audio

Choose an audio file from the import workflow. Sympose creates or targets an audio track, registers the file as a project asset, and places an audio clip in the arrangement.

The agent can request or prepare an import, but you choose the file. Private filesystem paths are not exposed to the model.

Select an audio clip to open its waveform in Clip view. Choose Trim to move an edge of the selected source range, or Slip to move the source underneath the same arrangement region. Open the inspector from the clip toolbar if it is hidden; Sympose remembers that choice as a user setting. The inspector provides exact source start and duration values in seconds, plus clip gain, fade in, fade out, reverse, reset, split, and duplicate controls.

Peak Normalize measures only the selected source range and sets clip gain so its sample peak reaches -1 dBFS. Silent material is reported without changing the clip. When two audio clips are adjacent and both have enough unused source material, choose whether the left clip’s end transition is a fade out or a centered equal-power crossfade into the named next clip. A crossfade temporarily overrides the left clip’s fade out and the right clip’s fade in.

These edits are non-destructive: Sympose keeps the original project asset and stores an independent source range and level state on each clip. Arrangement handles provide quick trim, fade, and shared-boundary crossfade editing, while the Clip inspector provides precise keyboard-editable values and an explicit end-transition choice. Undo and redo treat each completed edit as one history action, and Escape cancels an in-progress pointer edit.

Audio does not become note data, and Sympose does not provide elastic warping, pitch shifting, comping, or detailed waveform surgery at launch. Tempo changes update the clip’s beat projection without changing its selected source frames or time-stretching the sound.

Record MIDI

Open Settings → Recording and choose MIDI input when you need a specific controller (leave All Inputs to accept every attached MIDI device).
Select a MIDI track and enable monitoring if you want to hear the instrument while playing.
Arm the track and configure count-in, record quantization, or loop-record mode (Merge vs Replace).
Press R or the Record button to start.
Press Space, Stop, or Record again to stop and commit the captured notes into the active clip.

When loop is off, a take can run for an open length: Sympose converts captured notes into clip-local time and grows the clip (bar-rounded) to fit, clamping before the next clip on the same track. When loop is on, Merge layers each pass into the loop window. Replace treats each pass as a new take: existing notes in the loop stop playing, notes behind the playhead become the current take, and stopping keeps notes that are still visible ahead of the playhead. Wrapping or finishing the loop replaces the whole loop; wrapping starts a fresh take that grows over the previous pass until the playhead covers it.

The typing keyboard can provide note input when a hardware controller is unavailable. R is reserved for Record and is not a typing-keyboard pitch.

Record audio

Select or create an audio track.
Open Settings → Recording and choose Audio input (analog microphone or interface). This is separate from MIDI input. System Default follows the OS microphone. Grant microphone or audio-device permission when the operating system prompts. Changing the analog input applies on the next take; an in-progress recording is not interrupted.
Arm the track and configure the recording range or count-in.
Start recording explicitly.
Stop to register the captured file and place the resulting clip.

Sympose reports blocked permission, unavailable input, interrupted capture, or asset-registration failure without creating a misleading successful clip.

Live analog input monitoring is not part of this recording flow. Punch locators, take lanes, and audio per-lap replace are not in this release.

Playback device and latency

Open Settings → Audio to choose the output device and a latency preset (Low, Balanced, or Safe). Sympose always targets 48 kHz for live playback and export; choose Audio engine in the status bar to see the rate, buffer size, and estimated output latency the engine actually opened (48 kHz · 256 · 5.3 ms). If you hear glitches, switch to Safe. There is no sample-rate picker.

Current boundaries

Live input monitoring, punch workflows, and other recording capabilities depend on the release controls shown in Studio. Consult the release-candidate UI and formats and requirements for current support.

For audio-device failures, see Troubleshooting.