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Concepts: projects, tracks, regions and clips

Understanding four ideas makes everything else in Audionaut predictable.

Projects

A project is a .audium package: a folder containing the project file and a Media/Audio/ directory with all audio files. Copy the package and you have copied the whole project. The same package is read and written by the desktop app and the command-line tool.

Audionaut autosaves after edits, and reloads automatically when the project changes on disk — so external tools (like audionaut-cli or an AI agent) can edit a project while it is open.

Tracks and channels

A track is a group of channels that play in lockstep — for example the eight stems of a mix, imported together. Each channel has its own gain, pan, mute/solo and record arm, but clips on the timeline always move all of a track's channels together.

Regions

A region is a named slice of a track's source material — a start and end within the audio, plus a name. Regions live in a per-track pool (the Regions list in the right panel) and are created by you (Create Region…, splitting) or by the analysis features (segmentation).

Regions don't occupy the timeline by themselves; they are the vocabulary an arrangement is built from.

Clips

A clip is a placement of a region on the timeline: this region, at this bar. Key consequences:

  • A clip has no length of its own — it is exactly as long as its region. Trimming a region retrims every clip that uses it.
  • The same region can be placed many times without duplicating audio.
  • Per-clip properties are the dynamics: clip gain (per channel) and fades. Two clips of the same region can sound different.
  • To trim just one clip independently, split it first — splitting mints fresh regions for the pieces.

Deleting a clip never deletes audio; deleting a region (Edit → Delete Unused Regions) only removes pool entries no clip uses, and the audio files always stay in the package.

Musical time

Positions are musical: bars and beats at the project tempo (4/4). Bar 1 is the start of the timeline. Changing the tempo changes where every bar falls in real time.