Sessions

Pro

Sessions is an Orbit Pro feature.

Sessions let you build a working session of multiple tracks rather than opening a single file at a time. Use Sessions when you're QC'ing across an album or project where context and continuity matter — switching between tracks without losing playback state, view configuration, or marker lists.

For opening a single file the standard way, see Preview Mode.

Sessions vs Preview Mode

The two modes serve different jobs:

Preview Mode is the default — open a single file, listen, close, move on. Nothing is persisted between launches; the next file you open replaces the current one. State doesn't accumulate. This is the right mode for one-off QC passes.

Sessions is for the case where you have a body of work to step through — an album, a film reel, a TV episode batch — and you want all the context that goes with it (markers, loops, channel routing, monitoring config, view layout) to follow you through the whole project rather than reset when you switch files.

A session bundles its tracks together so you can:

• Switch between tracks without losing playback state — markers, loops, solo / mute, monitoring mode, output routing all persist per-session, not per-file.
• Auto-advance through the playlist, audition tracks in order, or jump around at will.
• Reopen tomorrow and pick up exactly where you left off, with the same view and the same marker positions.
• Share the bundle with another QC engineer — the .orbsession is self-contained.

Creating a session

There are three paths to a new session, all under the File menu (Pro only):

• File → New Session… (⌘N) — opens a save dialog. Pick a name and location for the new bundle, then start adding tracks.
• File → Create Session from Preview… — when you've got a file open in Preview Mode and want to promote it to a full session. Copies the loaded audio file (and its waveform cache, if one exists, to save a re-render) into a new bundle.
• Welcome screen → New Session — same as the menu item, available before you've loaded anything.

Sessions can also be opened from:

• File → Open Session… (⇧⌘O)
• File → Open Recent → Sessions — recent sessions are listed separately from preview-mode files.
• Welcome screen → Recent — .orbsession entries appear alongside preview-mode files.

Anatomy of a session

A .orbsession is a macOS directory bundle — Finder shows it as a single document, but it's actually a folder with a known structure:

MyAlbum.orbsession/
├── session.json         — playlist, markers, loops, routing, view state
├── AudioFiles/          — imported ADM / IAMF tracks (copies, not references)
├── VideoSources/        — imported video files
├── VideoSources/Proxies/ — half-resolution proxy renders for fast scrub
├── Waveforms/           — cached waveform renders (.orbwave)
└── .orbit-lock          — present only when the session is open in a live Orbit instance

Audio and video files are copied into the bundle when you import them. Moving the bundle to another machine doesn't break references — the bundle is self-contained. The trade-off is disk space: a session with five 7.1.4 ADM masters will take roughly the size of those five files plus their waveform caches.

What's persisted

When you save a session (or rely on auto-save), the following state lives in session.json and survives close/reopen:

• Playlist — the ordered list of tracks
• Per-track markers — position, label, colour
• Loop regions — start / end / enabled state, persisted per track
• Output routing — channel mappings, output format choice, stereo routing pair
• Solo / mute state — both at the channel level and the object level
• Monitoring config — selected mode (7.1.4 / Binaural / Stereo / Apple Spatial), HRTF profile, head-tracking enabled state
• View layout — sidebar width, scene visualizer on/off, scene size, layout mode
• Video edit list — when video is attached, the cuts and offsets

Things that don't live in the session:

• App preferences (theme, meter scale, frame rate, etc.) — those live in AppSettings and apply across every session.
• Headphone EQ profile selection — also app-level, not per-session.
• Audio source files outside the bundle — once imported into a session, the bundle has its own copy; the original on disk is untouched and not tracked.

Working in a session

With a session open, the Tracks sidebar shows the playlist. Each row is one ADM or IAMF file, with its name, duration, and a thumbnail of the spatial waveform.

To add a track: drag an audio file onto the sidebar, or use File → Import Audio… (or the + button at the top of the Tracks sidebar). The file is copied into AudioFiles/ and added to the playlist.

To switch tracks: click a row in the sidebar. Playback transports to the start of the new track; markers, loops, and view state for that track come back into view.

To advance automatically when a track ends: toggle the Auto pill at the top of the Tracks sidebar. Off by default — turn on for unattended audition runs.

Saving and closing

Save commands sit under the File menu:

• Save Session (⌘S) — overwrite the current bundle.
• Save Session As… (⇧⌘S) — save to a new name / location.
• Close Session (⇧⌘W) — close the current session. Prompts to save if there are unsaved changes; if you've never saved (untitled session), it offers a Save As dialog.

If Auto-Save is on (the default — set in Sessions preferences), Orbit writes to the bundle 2.5 seconds after every meaningful edit, so manual saves are rarely necessary. The save is atomic — a crash mid-save can't corrupt the bundle.

When you quit the app, untitled sessions auto-save to a temp bundle for crash recovery regardless of the auto-save toggle.

Session locks

The first Orbit instance to open a session writes a .orbit-lock file inside the bundle. If you (or another user, on a shared volume) try to open the same session from a second instance, Orbit detects the lock and prompts you with three options:

• Cancel — leave the session in the original instance, don't open here.
• Force unlock and open — claim the session for the new instance. Use this when the original instance crashed and left a stale lock behind, or when you've moved between machines.
• Bring the other window forward — switch focus to the existing instance instead of opening a duplicate.

The lock file is removed when the session is closed cleanly, or on app quit.

Untitled sessions

Behind the scenes, every preview-mode file load creates a temporary "untitled" session in Orbit's temp directory. You don't see it in the UI — it's a crash-recovery scaffold that auto-saves regardless of the Auto-Save toggle. When you load a different file in preview mode, the previous untitled session is left behind on disk; over time these accumulate.

You can clean them up via Preferences → Sessions → Clear All (see Sessions preferences).

When you use Create Session from Preview…, the untitled scaffold gets promoted in place — the audio file you've already loaded and any waveform render Orbit has done for it move into the new bundle without re-importing.

See also

• Preview Mode — the single-file path; the right choice when you don't need session state to persist.
• Sessions preferences — the auto-save toggle and temporary-bundle cleanup.
• Workspace Tour — the Tracks sidebar and how it changes when a session is open.