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Importing, tracks and undo

  • Drag files from the desktop file manager or the Browser:
    • onto the track headers: new tracks inserted at that point, starting at bar 1;
    • onto an audio track’s lane: placed there at the snapped position;
    • onto another lane: a new track after it, at that position;
    • below the tracks: a new track at the end.
    • Several files become consecutive regions on a lane, or one track each on the headers.
  • Accepted audio: WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP3, OGG Vorbis, M4A/AAC/MP4 and CAF. A WAV file already at the project’s sample rate is used where it is; anything else is converted (with high-quality resampling) into the project’s Audio Files/.
  • The silence an encoder adds at the start and end of MP3 and AAC files is trimmed, so the audio starts exactly on time. For M4A/MP4 files Marbble reads it from the file’s iTunes gapless tag (iTunSMPB) or, without one, from its edit list.
  • File › Import Audio File… (Ctrl+Shift+I) imports one WAV file at the playhead onto the selected audio track (or the first audio track). The lane menu’s Import Audio File Here… accepts every supported format and several files.
  • MIDI files (.mid, .midi, .smf, .kar) can be dropped the same way; see MIDI files.

Tracks

Section titled “Tracks”

From the Track menu, the track header’s right-click menu, or keys:

  • New Tracks… (Ctrl+Alt+N): Audio or Software Instrument, the number of tracks (1 to 64), the input (with Ascending, each extra track takes the next input), the instrument, and whether the new tracks are record-enabled and monitored. New tracks go below the selected track.
  • New Aux (see Sends and aux buses).
  • Duplicate Track copies settings, plug-ins with their current settings, automation and regions. New Track with Same Settings copies everything except the regions and automation.
  • Rename Track, Track Color, Track On, Mute, Solo, Record Enable, Select All Regions on Track, Export Track as MIDI File…, Reset Track Height.
  • Track Alternatives (Track › Track Alternatives, or the right-click menu): other sets of regions for an audio or instrument track, as in Logic. New Alternative starts an empty one, Duplicate Alternative a copy of the current regions; they are named A, B, C…. Once a track has more than one, its header shows a pop-up with the current one’s name: click it to switch (the regions swap, and the track plays the new set), or to Rename… or Delete one (deleting the current one switches to another; the last one stays). Each is an undo step; inactive alternatives are saved with the project. A frozen track’s alternatives can’t change.
  • Delete Track (Ctrl+Backspace) and Delete Unused Tracks (tracks without regions; stacks that still hold tracks and auxes that something feeds are kept). Deleting a stack deletes its subtracks.
  • Select Previous / Next Track: Up and Down arrows. Mute / Solo the selected track: M and S.

Undo

Section titled “Undo”

Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z undo and redo every edit: regions, tracks, names, colours, volume, pan, EQ, plug-in slots and settings, sends, automation, recordings, imports, markers, take folders and Project Settings. The Edit menus show what will be undone, and a toast confirms it. A run of drags on one control counts as one step.

That includes a parameter moved in a VST3’s own window, with its name in the step (“TONE3000: Gain”). Each drag there is one step, and Undo and Redo put the plug-in and its window back. Moves of a parameter while automation is being written belong to that pass’s Write Automation step instead; a controller assignment moving a VST3’s parameter, and automation playing it, make no step. A plug-in that doesn’t announce its drags gets a step for each burst of edits (a pause of a quarter of a second ends one), and one that keeps moving a parameter by itself gets none for it. A preset loaded inside a plug-in is one step if the plug-in tells the host that its parameters changed; if it doesn’t, the load makes no step.

Not undoable, as in Logic: mute, solo, record enable, input monitoring, the transport, the cycle and Autopunch ranges, and the metronome and count-in switches.

The history holds 100 steps by default (Settings › General › Undo Steps) and is cleared when another project is opened or created.