The recorder
Continuo
The recorder you point at the downbeat and trust.
The mission-critical multitrack recorder for classical music. Deterministic by design, stable by proof, built on one belief: the take is sacred.
The prime directive
Nothing may ever compromise the recording.
Not a plugin. Not a meter. Not a mixer move or a crash in the interface. On the real-time audio path there is no allocation, no locking, no blocking, no logging.
Machine enforced
An automated allocation gate polices the real-time code, and it must first prove it can detect a violation before any pass is believed.
Monitoring, isolated
Every meter and monitor feature is isolated, so the recorded take is byte-for-byte identical whether it was on or off.
Capture integrity
One performance, one chance.
Capture is the heart of Continuo, and none of it is taken on faith. Every behavior here is enforced by tests built to break it.
Kill the power. Keep the take.
Every take is written beside an ordered checkpoint journal, and audio is durable on disk before the journal ever claims it.
If power dies mid-take, the file rebuilds from its journal to the exact last durable frame. We prove it by destroying files on purpose and requiring byte-identical rebuilds.
A lock-free capture path
Audio moves from the interface through a lock-free ring buffer to a dedicated writer thread. The real-time thread never waits on anything.
Split takes with zero gap
One key closes the current take and opens the next between two samples. The device never stops. Nothing is missed.
Honest failure reporting
A device change, a dropped buffer, a finalize error: every fault is reported, and the journal records the truth. A degraded take can never masquerade as clean.
The crash sentinel
An unclean shutdown is detected on the next launch, and recovery is offered before anything else happens.
Sleep is forbidden while rolling
The machine cannot suspend mid-take. Continuo forbids it for as long as the transport rolls.
192
Tracks, maximum
24-bit
Capture depth
44.1 to 192 kHz
Sample rates
Every professional sample rate your interface supports.
Interchange
Files other tools love.
A recorder earns its place by what it hands to the rest of the chain. Continuo writes Broadcast Wave files the way downstream tools expect them.
Beyond the 4 GB limit
RF64/BWF polywave carries a long take straight past the 4 GB WAV limit. No broken files, no special handling.
TimeReference on every take
A full bext chunk is written on every take, splits included, so a DAW places each file on its timeline automatically.
iXML, verified against Pyramix
Written the way Pyramix writes it: same encoding, same track-name convention, checked against Pyramix's own exports. Continuo takes drop into a Pyramix session and just work.
Metadata ahead of the audio
Headers, bext, and iXML live in a fixed region at the head of the file, where readers expect them. Never appended after gigabytes of audio.
Take names that travel
An optional session label folds into every filename (001 Gary Levinson.wav), validated against a cross-platform name grammar. A name typed on one OS never breaks on another.
Signal path
Route with certainty, listen without risk.
Patching without surprises
Automatic mode patches input 1 to track 1, in order: set your track count and record. Individual mode patches any input to any track, from a menu right on the channel strip.
In-use inputs show the track that owns them, and a conflict is refused, never silently resolved. Unpatched tracks are omitted from the file entirely: it contains exactly what was armed.
The recorded patch is logged with every take.
A mixer for your ears only
Constant-power pan, locked fader groups with caps that stretch elastically and snap back, peak-hold meters with professional ballistics and latched clip indicators, on a two-segment scale that gives the top 24 dB most of the travel, where classical dynamics actually live. Every move shapes what you hear, never the recorded file.
A monitor-only mode runs the input path with no disk writing at all, and a live waveform scrolls while you record.
Audiomovers Listento is built in: send your monitor mix to a producer across the world, straight from the MASTER strip.
Takes and projects
The session, kept in order.
Everything Continuo captures stays reviewable, portable, and accounted for.
The take library
- Session timeline
- Every take of the session on one strip, laid end to end. Click anywhere to locate.
- Gapless review
- Playback continues take to take without a hiccup, exactly as the session ran.
- Clipped peaks, marked
- A waveform overview marks clipped peaks in red.
- Protected Reset
- Clearing takes is a two-step, typed confirmation. Even then, files move to the system Trash, never to oblivion.
Projects
- A project is a folder
- Takes, journals, settings: one folder you can copy, archive, or hand to a colleague.
- A portable project file
- Open it on any platform Continuo runs on and it is the same project. Same tracks, names, colors, groups, faders, routing.
- Sample-rate lock
- A folder that holds takes locks its rate. No mixed-rate sessions, ever.
- A per-project black box
- Every record start, stop, split, patch, and reset is logged with timestamps. What happened at 14:32 last Tuesday is written down.
- Preflight checklist
- Input device present, recording folder writable, disk space as hours remaining at your byte rate, AC power, thermal state.
- Live health readout
- CPU, disk write rate, and space remaining in the title bar. Always visible, never in the way.
Every platform, natively
Native on every platform. Ported to none.
Parity means the experience, never the code. An engineer who knows Continuo on one OS sits down at another and finds the same screens, the same behavior, down to the wording of the dialogs.
Interface
SwiftUI and Metal-accelerated drawing on macOS. Qt on Linux and Windows. Each in its own idiom.
Audio
CoreAudio on macOS. Direct ALSA hardware access on Linux. WASAPI on Windows. No abstraction layer between your interface and the disk.
Reliability core
One body of C, byte-identical on every platform. For that layer, the code itself is the contract.
Parity is not a promise, it is a test suite: hundreds of conformance cases, from file formats to fader laws to recovery behavior, run on every platform and compared to the byte. A project folder recorded on a Mac opens on Linux, records new takes there, and comes home intact.
Availability
Where things stand.
Continuo for macOS
Shipping. Apple Silicon native.
Continuo for Linux
In final verification, with feature parity nearly complete. The .deb installer configures real-time privileges itself.
Continuo for Windows
In development.
Continuo and Concertus open each other’s projects. Sessions move freely between platforms.
The store
Own the recorder.
Continuo is $85, sold right here when the store opens. Your serial number will arrive by email moments after purchase, and the demo will be free to download.
Inside Concertus
The same recorder, at the mix.
Concertus contains this exact recorder: the identical code, not a copy. The recorder you trust at the downbeat is the one inside the DAW when you edit, mix, and master.