- IRC #non at irc.freenode.net
The Non Timeline is a powerful, reliable and fast modular Digital Audio Timeline arranger, released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It utilizes the JACK Audio Connection Kit for inter-application audio I/O and the NTK GUI toolkit for a fast and lightweight user interface.
Non Timeline can be used alone or in concert with Non Mixer and Non Sequencer to form a complete studio.
Please see the Manual for more information (and plenty of screenshots).
Non Timeline shares many features in common with other, similar projects. However, Non Timeline's unique architecture permits surprising new functionality.
Unlike legacy DAWs, which keep project state in huge, memory wasting, hard to manage XML (or binary equivalent) trees, Non Timeline has the unique ability to store project state in a compact continuous journal of bidirectional delta messages--similar to the journal part of journaling filesystems--in plain ASCII.
The Non Timeline disk format takes the form of a journal of delta messages. Each project file contains the complete history of that project since the last (optional) compaction operation. These journals are so terse that it is practical to keep the complete history of a project from the time it was first opened. No XML or other bloated, buggy, resource hungry format is employed.
This has a number of highly desirable consequences. Among them:
Non Timeline's journalling capability can drastically change your workflow. No longer will you fear a system failure. No longer will your pinky finger become sore from hitting Control-S after every important change. No longer will you have to attempt, in vain, to manually edit a completely incomprehensible XML 'document', because Ardour has corrupted its own memory and therefore the project you 'saved'.
For the absolute best in low latency, high performance, production grade audio, Non Timeline uses JACK for realtime audio routing.
Sound sources (audio files) are represented by regions. Any number of regions may represent different parts of the same source. All editing is performed on these region structures--the sound sources themselves are considered read-only (except for captures in-progress).
Tracks in a DAW are unlike tracks on tape in that a single track can contain more than one channel of audio. Each audio track has its own record, mute, solo, and gain, as well an active take and any number of inactive takes. A track may also have any number of Annotation and Control sequences associated with it.
A take is a sequence of regions. Each track has current take, implied by 'the track', as well as any number of other, inactive takes. A track may be set to display all takes simultaneously, to ease the process of reviewing past takes or stitching together a new take from parts of previous takes. Old takes may be deleted, either one by one or all at once, when they are no longer required. Takes may not be transferred between tracks (there's no technical reason why they can't, but allowing this would be bad design).
Non Timeline can be set to automatically create new takes for armed tracks at the beginning of recording. This is especially useful in combination with looped recording.
Bounce audio at faster than realtime speeds.
Audio files can be dragged and dropped from any DND capable file-browser directly onto tracks.
Recording may be optionally looped over an arbitrary section of the timeline, this allows an individual to record multiple takes of a part without having to return to the workstation to setup a new take.
Recording may be limited to specific sections of the timeline by the definition of punch cursors. Any number of punch cursors may be defined.
Where regions overlap, a cross-fade exists. This means that the transition from region A to region B will be gradual rather than abrupt. The shape of the gain curve may be selected separately for region A and B of the cross-fade. Available curves include: Linear, Sigmoid, Logarithmic, and Parabolic.
Each track can have associated with it any number of control sequences, a subset of which may be visible at any one time. Each control sequence comprises a series of control points, which collectively represent a graph of changes to a single controllable value over time. Anything may be controlled by a control track, including external software supporting OSC, although the most common application is mixer gain automation, where the value controlled is the fader level in the mixer.
The time and tempo maps (rulers) affect where and how many bar/beat lines are drawn. During playback they affect the time/tempo of the JACK transport so that other programs, like the Non Sequencer, can follow along in sync.
Navigation is made easy with the pan/zoom control which displays thumbnail of the entire timeline.
Have some old song projects in Ardour format that you want to bring into the future with Non Timeline? No problem, Non Timeline can import basic tempo information, sources, tracks, audio sources, and region placement from a existing Ardour version 1, 2 and 3 sessions. It even can import session versions that Ardour no longer supports, or cannot open without crashing. No installation of Ardour is required.
The following libraries are required to build Non Timeline.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License