This chapter is a tour of the controls that are always on screen: the transport bar, the navigator, and the two main views.
The transport bar runs across the top of the window in both Edit and Mix views. From left to right (on a Mac or iPad) it contains:
Switches between the timeline and the mixing console.
⏮) — jump the playhead to the beginning.Space) — start or stop playback. The button shows a stop
icon while playing.R) — start recording on all armed tracks. Turns red while
recording, orange while counting in. It's disabled until at least one track
is armed.Shows the playhead's current location. Tap it to switch between:
Changing tempo or meter while the metronome is running re-locks the click to the new grid instantly.
L) — turn loop playback on/off (see Loop below).A small status pill showing IDLE / MON / REC plus an estimate of your monitoring latency in milliseconds. The dot is green for low latency, orange for moderate, red for high — a quick glance tells you whether your buffer settings are tight enough for comfortable recording. On a Mac, hovering it shows how many tracks are armed and monitored. (Latency is configured in Audio Settings.)
The home for session commands: Undo/Redo, New/Open, the full Save group, Add Track / Add Bus / Add Marker, Import Audio, Export, Snapshots, Templates, Session Settings, Audio Settings, and exporting a diagnostic bundle. On iPhone, some transport extras (loop, count-in, metronome, meter, return-to-start) live in an overflow (•••) menu next to the tempo.
Just below the transport bar is the navigator — a zoomed-out map of the entire session. It shows a miniature of every track's clips, color-coded to match the tracks.
By default the timeline extends comfortably to fit your content. Use Set Timeline Length… to fix an explicit length in bars — useful for arranging to a known song length. The timeline never shrinks below what's needed to hold all your clips, markers, and the loop.
Markers are named, colored flags at points in time — use them for song sections (Verse, Chorus, Drop) or edit points.
M, or ☰ ▸ Add Marker, or
right-click the navigator.The loop plays a region over and over. Turn it on with the Loop button
or L.
The Edit view is where you arrange and edit. It has:
The timeline toolbar (top-right of the ruler) holds the edit tools, ripple edit, snap, follow playhead, and zoom — all covered in Editing Clips.
The Mix view shows your whole session as a mixing console: a row of vertical channel strips. Track strips, then mix buses, aux returns, cue buses, VCA groups, and the master on the right. Each strip can show its Dynamics, EQ, Inserts, or Sends section. See Mixing and The Audio Processors.