Overview

The Overview is the first thing you see when a file loads — a clean summary of the whole programme before you drop into detailed QC. It combines a session-wide waveform, a per-element activity grid, and a live 3D scene, backed by a sidebar that switches between file inspection, track management, and monitoring controls.

Session Overview

The Session Overview waveform gives you the whole file at a glance, with a picker in the top-right to switch how it's drawn:

• Spatial — a single waveform of the whole rendered 7.1.4 mix, its speaker groups stacked together and coloured by left/right pan position, so width and movement are visible at a glance. See Spatial Waveform.
• Multichannel — one row per 7.1.4 bus channel (L, R, C, LFE, surrounds and heights). See Multichannel Waveform. Per-bed and per-object rows live in the Timeline View's All Tracks mode (Pro).

Rendered through the same bus as everything else

The Spatial waveform isn't a separate analysis path — it's rendered from Orbit's internal 7.1.4 bus, the same reference bus used for Binaural and Apple Spatial monitoring and for loudness measurement. What you see here is what you'll hear and measure everywhere else in Orbit. See Monitoring Modes for more on the shared bus.

Activity

The Activity grid gives every bed channel and object its own tile, so you can see what's live in the file without hunting through the sidebar list. Bed channels and objects are colour-coded separately, and a tile lights up when its element carries signal — dark tiles are silent or unused for the current selection. A Hex / Grid picker in the section header switches between a hexagon honeycomb that scales to fill the section and a numbered dot matrix in rows of ten. It's also a shortcut into deeper inspection: click a tile to select that element.

Selection is synced everywhere: clicking a tile rings the matching point in the Scene and highlights the element in the Inspect sidebar, so you can jump straight from a live tile to its metadata and position.

Scene

The Scene panel is a compact live view of the same 3D visualization documented in full on the 3D Visualizer page — object positions and Ambisonics activity moving in real time as the file plays. The header controls let you expand the Scene to fill the row (hiding Activity), switch the room shape, or hide the visualizer with the eye button. The front indicator is set in Preferences → Appearance.

Sidebar

The left sidebar has two tabs in Orbit Standard — Inspect and Monitoring — and three in Orbit Pro, which adds Tracks:

Inspect

The default tab. Shows the relevant ADM or IAMF content information for the loaded file — programme, content groups, beds, and objects — along with solo and mute controls for every element (IAMF) or source (ADM). This is the same solo/mute state reflected in the Activity grid, the Timeline View row gutters, and the footer's Solos & Mutes panel.

Tracks

Orbit Pro

The Tracks tab requires Orbit Pro. Without an open Session it shows an empty No Tracks state.

Shows every track available in the current session when more than one has been imported. Click a track to load it — playback, markers, loops, and view state switch to that track while the rest of the session's state is preserved.

Right-click a track for more options:

• Show in Finder — reveal the track's audio file on disk.
• Remove from Playlist — drop the track from the current playback order without deleting it from the session.
• Remove from Project… — delete the track from the session bundle entirely (prompts for confirmation).

See Sessions for how the Tracks sidebar's playlist is built and persisted.

Monitoring

Switches monitoring mode — Multichannel, Binaural, Stereo, or Apple Spatial — without leaving the Overview, plus whichever settings are relevant to the active mode (for example, output device selection or Spatial Options).

See Monitoring Modes for what each mode does and when to use it.

Footer

Beneath the main view, the footer surfaces the same Solos & Mutes, Output Meters, spectral view, and Integrated LUFS panel available elsewhere in Orbit, so you can keep an eye on levels and loudness while you work the Overview. The chevron at the right-hand edge switches to a compact footer — a slim strip of meters, spectrum and loudness without the solo / mute controls — and back. See Meters & Levels and Loudness for details on those panels.

See also

• Overview Waveform View — more on the Spatial and Multichannel waveforms shown in the Session Overview.
• Timeline View — the Pro All Tracks / Inspect timeline with per-element rows.
• 3D Visualizer — the full-size version of the Scene panel.
• Sessions — multi-track sessions and the Tracks sidebar.
• Monitoring Modes — the four monitoring modes and the shared 7.1.4 reference bus.
• Meters & Levels and Loudness — the footer panels shown alongside the Overview.