Orbit
Orbit 0.6 · Early Access

Your songs, podcasts and ideas in one studio.

Orbit is a DAW for Windows and Mac. It comes with 33 instruments and effects of its own, and you can switch between workspaces for music, podcasts, sketching ideas and playing live. While it's in Early Access, it's free.

Try Orbit

That's our Reverb up there, reacting to the song below. You can drag it around.

01 · The main window

One window for everything

The bar at the top has the transport and the tools. Below it is the song, and underneath you see the devices of the track you clicked. You can rearrange the buttons in the top bar. If the window gets narrow, whole groups of buttons move into a tray.

02 · Arrangement

The arrangement

This is a short song we use for demos. Every track has a colour, and its clips show the waveform in that colour. Above the tracks are the chords and the song sections. When you move a section, its chords and markers move with it. The track headers light up a little with the volume.

03 · Devices

Small view, big window

Every device has a small view in the rack and a big one in its own window. Here it's the Reverb on the master. The small view shows how long each frequency rings out. The big one is the moving display from the top of the page. Both have all the controls.

04 · Themes

Colour themes

Orbit has six themes. Nocturne is the default, this page uses Charcoal, and Kazy was contributed by a producer. Click one to see it:

Features

What Orbit can do

Recording

Orbit keeps the last ten minutes of whatever comes in on your inputs, audio and MIDI. So if you played something good while you weren't recording, you can still get it back. It's called Recall and sits in the top bar.

  • TakesLoop recording creates take sets. You can listen through the takes, build comps A and B, and flatten them when you're done.
  • InputsAudio and MIDI at the same time, mono or stereo inputs, a one-bar count-in and automatic latency compensation.
  • VersionsEvery project has two arrangement versions, A and B. You switch between them in the top bar.

Editing

You trim a clip by dragging its edge and fade it at the corner. Range selections work across several tracks at once. Smart Quantize looks at your playing beat by beat and decides whether it's straight, triplets or swing. Notes you played together stay together, and running it a second time doesn't change anything.

  • AudioFade curves, crossfades, slip editing, Ripple Delete, Strip Silence, transient detection, warp markers and audio quantize that you can undo anytime.
  • MIDIPiano roll with velocity and controller lanes, MPE, probability and ratchets per note. Generators for arpeggios, melodies, chords, basslines and rhythms.
  • TempoTempo changes as jumps or curves, time signature changes, all sample-accurate.
  • PitchA pitch editor for vocals and other monophonic parts, with formant, vibrato and up to four harmony voices.

Modulation

There are four modulators: LFO, Shaper, Random and Follower. You can put them on any knob in Orbit. With a rack you can also put a whole chain of devices behind four macro knobs. A modulated knob shows two values, the one you set and the one it's at right now. You can try it here:

Set to
40 %
Right now
40 %
Source
LFO 1, 0.5 Hz

Drag the knob or use the arrow keys.

Producer tools

These are in the Tools menu. You mark a range in the arrangement and pick a tool. The result is written onto the track as normal audio or MIDI, so you can keep editing it.

  • Reverse Reverb Lead-in
  • Tape Stop in Marked Range
  • Filter Sweep In and Out
  • Add Riser, Fall or Build-up
  • Add Break or Fill
  • Prep Vocal
  • Double This Vocal
  • Slice to Sampler
  • Sample This
  • Unroll Loop to Arrangement
  • Harmony into Chord Track
  • Chords from Arrangement

Command palette

Press Ctrl+Enter, or Cmd+Enter on a Mac, and type what you want to do. The palette looks at what you've selected and offers what fits. If you type a control's name and a number, like "size 65" with the Reverb selected, its Size knob goes to 65 %.

  • SelectionA marked range can be looped, copied, exported or cleaned up. Selected clips get clip commands like Reverse, Transpose and Bounce in Place.
  • TracksMute, solo, arm, rename, recolour, group and route tracks, or make them a few dB louder or quieter.
  • DevicesAdd any device or plug-in by name. A selected device can be opened, bypassed or removed, and every control on it can be set by typing.
  • Everything elseThe producer tools and the workspaces are in there too. Commands you use a lot move up the list.

Workspaces and podcasts

A project can be opened in different workspaces. Music is the one you saw above. Ideas is an open canvas for loops and sketches. Performance is for launching scenes live, and Video puts the picture next to the timeline. Podcast covers everything from writing the script to publishing.

  • Music
  • Podcast
  • Ideas
  • Performance
  • Video
  • TranscriptionSpeech is transcribed on your own computer with Whisper, on the graphics card if possible. You edit the text, and the audio is cut along with it.
  • Clean UpFinds silences and filler words and cuts them in one go. You can undo it in one step or bring single cuts back from the script.
  • AI helpOptional. Chapters, marked passages and show notes are made on our server, with free credits every month. Transcripts are only kept in memory and are deleted 15 minutes after the job.
Devices

Instruments and effects

All of these come with Orbit. Each one has its own colour and a display that shows what it's doing to the sound. You can use them right in the rack, the big window is optional.

Instruments

  • SynthesizerSubtractive and wavetable synth with a modulation matrix and its own effects.
  • Particle SynthAn arpeggiator that writes its own patterns, six base sounds and a particle layer on top.
  • Drum Machine24 pads with a step sequencer, pad effects and variations. Any pad can get its own track.
  • Grand PianoA concert grand, streamed from disk.
  • Electric PianoElectric Grand 80, Pad Reed EP, Reed EP 200 and Tine EP 73.
  • Electric BassDual-pickup and vintage finger bass with articulations and a pickup mixer.
  • Instrument LibraryGuitars, strings, keys, winds and mallets.
  • SamplerFor a single sample. Reverse, loop, warp, slices, envelopes, filter and LFO.
  • NEBULAGranular. Turns any sample into pads, textures or drones, or slices it to the song's grid.
  • RISEMakes risers and falls. You draw one note and its length sets how long the rise is.
  • FILLERDrum fills and build-ups from a single note. The length sets the form, the pitch sets the role.
  • FOUNDMakes beats out of your own recordings. It finds the hits, sorts them into a kit and copies the groove.

MIDI, modulation and hardware

  • SpaceArpAn arpeggiator. If you want more, there are lanes with their own rates, drawn rhythms and target notes.
  • LFO · ShaperWaves and drawn shapes for any knob, synced to the song.
  • Random · FollowerRandom values, or the level of another signal, as modulation.
  • RackPuts a chain of devices behind four macro knobs.
  • External InstrumentHardware synths as a track, with latency measurement and MIDI clock. Plus a plain MIDI Out.

Effects

  • CompressorVCA, FET and Opto characters, lookahead, mid/side.
  • Multiband CompressorTwo to four bands. With nothing set, the output is identical to the input.
  • Dynamic EQEight bands on top of the live spectrum. Each band can also work dynamically.
  • Resonance SuppressorFinds resonances and pushes them down while you watch.
  • ReverbRoom, hall, plate, chamber and bloom. It shows how long each frequency rings out.
  • DelayShows the echoes as rings on a time axis, so you can see if they sit on the beat.
  • LimiterTrue peak limiting.
  • GateA downward expander with hold and hysteresis.
  • FilterLow pass, high pass and band pass with 12 or 24 dB and a drive stage.
  • SaturationAnything from a bit of warmth to heavy drive.
  • Drum BusDrive, crunch and boom for drum groups, with transient control and auto gain.
  • Guitar AmpAmps, cabinets and pedals.
  • Auto PanPanning and tremolo from one LFO.
  • ModulationChorus, ensemble and phaser.
  • Loop MachineA live looper with four layers. It can follow the song, a tempo, or run free.
  • Pitch CorrectionLive pitch correction with harmony voices. Same engine as the pitch editor.
  • Voice ProcessorFor podcast mics, with Match, Automix, De-Reverb and Leveler.
  • Bus FinisherA mix bus and mastering chain with five macro knobs and loudness metering.
  • LUFS MeterLoudness after EBU R128, including true peak.
  • TunerGuitar, drop D, bass, five-string bass, ukulele or chromatic. Reference from 415 to 466 Hz.

Orbit also runs VST3 plug-ins, and Audio Units on Mac. Every plug-in runs in its own process, so if one crashes, Orbit keeps running.

Under the hood

Technical details

  • Audio threadNo locks, memory allocations or file access on the audio thread, at least not on purpose. Changes are prepared beforehand and swapped in all at once.
  • Plug-insEach plug-in is scanned in a separate process, and by default it also runs in its own process.
  • Latency compensationFor clips, tracks, groups, sends, returns and the master.
  • Mixing32-bit float. Orbit doesn't add saturation, limiting or dither unless you put it there. Pan laws: 0, −3, −4.5 or −6 dB.
  • ExportWAV, FLAC, MP3, AIFF and OGG from 44.1 to 96 kHz, optionally normalised to a loudness target. Export runs in the background while you keep working.
  • SafetyAutosave and backups. If a track suddenly puts out extreme levels, Orbit mutes it and tells you. Crash reports include your last few actions.
About

Who we are

We're Yoshy and Robert, and we both make music. We develop Orbit with help from Claude, an AI by Anthropic.

Orbit can record, arrange, edit and mix complete songs. Compared to DAWs that have been around for twenty years, a lot is still missing. There's no CLAP support yet, no notation, no surround and no video export, and you'll run into bugs. If you tell us what you need or what's broken, it comes straight to us.

Early Access

Try it

You sign in with your email address and get a six-digit code, no password needed. The same account works inside Orbit for the AI features.

Orbit is free while it's in Early Access. Later it will cost something, but we haven't decided how much yet. You'll read about it in the news before anything changes.

Sign up
  • Windows, 64-bit
  • macOS on Apple Silicon
  • macOS on Intel
  • Downloads for Windows and Mac
  • News and release notes
  • Feature requests and bug reports, with voting
  • Free monthly credits for the AI features