nota-daw/nota v0.57.1

Nota 0.57.1

on GitHub

🎛 Nota 0.57.1 is out

Nota 0.57 gives your voice a new instrument and your hands more precise tools. Nota Vocoder makes a vocal speak through a synth; the clip editor opens several MIDI clips at once; any knob takes a typed value; and the whole interface scales to your screen. Underneath, the engine now spreads a heavy project over several cores.

1. Nota Vocoder
A new audio effect with two inputs. Drop it on a vocal and you hear a robot voice straight away, from an internal saw at the pitch you choose. Switch the carrier to Noise for a whisper, or to Track and pick a pad or a synth to make it speak the words — mute that track and it keeps feeding the vocoder. 8–32 bands, Formant to make the voice smaller or larger, Unvoiced to keep consonants clear, Hold to freeze the sound, a live band graph whose edges you drag, and seven presets from Robot choir to Talk box.

2. Edit several MIDI clips at once
Select two or more MIDI clips, on one track or several, and double-click one. The clip editor shows all their notes on the arrangement's bars: fix a bass line split over several clips in one go, or write a melody while you see the chords of another clip. Select, move, transpose, quantize or run a clip tool across them, with one undo for the whole edit. A strip under the ruler picks the clip new notes go into, or locks a clip as a dimmed reference.

3. An interface that fits your screen
Settings → Appearance → Interface scale offers 75 to 200 %. Every window, menu, knob and device card follows at once, text stays sharp, and the choice is kept. Pick 125 % or more when the text is too small on a laptop, or 75 % to fit more tracks.

4. Type the exact value
⌥-click any knob, fader or slider (Alt-click on Windows and Linux), or double-click its value, and type it in the units shown — 1.2k, -6, 12 ms, 30L, 1/4. Tab moves to the next value on the card, and a typed value is one undo step that records into automation like a drag. Double-click still resets to the default.

5. A clip editor that knows where it is
Click or drag the clip editors' rulers to move the playhead, and grab the playhead line itself. The rulers read the clip's place in the arrangement — a clip at bar 9 starts at 9 — and switch to time with the transport read-out. The audio clip editor gets a Tempo field next to Warp, with ÷2 and ×2 to fix a half- or double-time detection, and the waveform stretches live while you drag a warp marker.

6. More cores, faster scans, updates you see
A project too heavy for one core now renders on several, export and freeze use every core, and an idle engine uses no CPU. Plug-in scans no longer hang on a stuck plug-in and get through large folders in minutes. And Nota checks for updates on every launch and daily, showing a new version in the status bar.

Added
• Nota Vocoder: a two-input audio effect with Saw, Noise or another track as the carrier, 8–32 bands, Formant, Unvoiced, Hold, a live band graph and seven presets (e173014)
• Edit several MIDI clips at once in the clip editor, with an active clip, locked reference clips and one undo for the whole edit; ⌘D in the piano roll continues copies into the next clip instead of piling them at the clip's end (82babfe, 2d26c78)
• Interface scale (75–200 %) in Settings → Appearance, applied at once to every window (ef60d49)
• Type an exact value into any knob, fader or slider: ⌥-click it or double-click its value; Type value… and Reset to default in its right-click menu (be7666c, 92a0608)
• Update checks on every launch and once a day, a new version shown in the status bar, Help → Check for updates… and Settings → Updates (79e42a5)
• Move the playhead from the clip editors: click or drag the ruler, or drag the playhead line itself (994d0fb)
• Rulers read in time: click the transport's position read-out and the arrangement and clip editor rulers switch with it (994d0fb)
• A Tempo field next to the audio clip's Warp switch, with ÷2 and ×2 (994d0fb)
• The waveform stretches live while you drag a warp marker; Esc puts it back (994d0fb)
• Copy, cut and duplicate a time range across the selected tracks; ⌘V pastes onto the track you clicked last (974407a)
• Recent instruments in a track's Add track menu: the last five you added, one click away (d4cfb96)
• A plug-in's window opens when you add it from the browser, by drag and drop or from the palette; off in Preferences → Plug-ins (3f4a904)
• The "+" at the end of the device chain opens the browser on Audio effects, ready to type (3f4a904)
• Delete a saved preset from the browser's Presets tab, or open its folder (3f4a904)
• A star button in the History tab lists only the versions you starred (a82f723)
• Fold the browser's Built-in and Plug-ins sections by clicking their headers (a82f723)

Changed
• A project too heavy for one core renders on several, export and freeze use every core, and an idle engine uses no CPU (64250a5, 7915116, f585070)
• Context menus redesigned: the object's name, colour and type on top, the same command order everywhere, Delete last in red; the track menu sets colour and height in one click and Live freeze is a switch (d4cfb96, ca2d305)
• The clip editor ruler shows the clip's arrangement position, and unwarped audio clips read in bars too (994d0fb)
• What's New and the GitHub release list every change with its commit, and the release's contributors (e0afaf2)
• The mixer fader no longer jumps to where you click; drag it like any other control (be7666c)
• The Pattern tab shows only on a Drum Rack track, and the detail panel isn't resizable while Devices is shown (a82f723)
• The plug-in card's Open editor button toggles to Close editor, and says so when the window can't open (a82f723)
• Convert to melody and harmony need the AI model and offer to download it, instead of falling back to a worse converter (a82f723)
• "Reveal in Finder" reads Show in Explorer on Windows and Show in file manager on Linux (a82f723)
• The audio clip editor says to turn on Warp when nothing snaps on an unwarped clip (a82f723)

Fixed
• Plug-in scans finish: a stuck plug-in is stopped after 30 seconds, four are probed at a time, progress shows, found plug-ins are saved as the scan goes, and each scan writes a log (724b363)
• Heavy Aurora presets like Super Saw render about 2.5× faster with identical sound, so dense arrangements no longer stutter (2304e1a)
• macOS: Audio Unit plug-ins get exactly their own channels and no longer waste work on every audio block (de96d1d)
• New project and Open ask before discarding unsaved changes, and the detail panel follows the new project (efb2e90)
• A sidechain source keeps feeding its key when muted or when another track is soloed, and a duplicated track keeps its effects' sidechain (64250a5, e173014)
• Replacing a Drum Rack pad's sample keeps the pad's level, pan, sends, choke and effects (3f4a904)
• Chorus, Flanger, Lens and Phaser can go into rack chains (3f4a904)
• Space and Delete work again after editing a warp marker's BPM (3f4a904)
• Double-clicking an audio effect with no track to land on starts its own audio track (3f4a904)
• The audio clip editor shows the playhead while stopped (994d0fb)
• ⌘1–⌘5 change the arrangement's grid when the audio clip editor follows none (994d0fb)
• Resizing a track no longer brings back its old arm, mute or solo state (a82f723)
• Buttons no longer have a lighter top edge (a82f723)
• macOS: About Nota and Settings… sit directly in the Nota app menu (a6e107c)

Contributors
@ambertape, @chrislaupama, @rafi612

Install

First launch: Nota isn't signed with a paid certificate yet. On macOS, if it says Apple could not verify Nota, open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway — step-by-step guide. On Windows, click More info → Run anyway in SmartScreen.