VAREC — User manual

1. Overview

VAREC is a multitrack audio recorder built for sound professionals working in the field: film, documentary, news, live capture and post-production. The application is native to macOS, works through your Mac's CoreAudio audio interface and takes full advantage of both Apple Silicon and Intel x86_64 architectures.

The interface is designed to stay minimal and readable on set, while still exposing the professional features you cannot do without: external timecode, stereo pairs, BWF metadata, an exportable sound report, cloud upload and reusable project files.

Key features

• Multitrack capture of up to 512 channels simultaneously (depending on your CoreAudio interface)
• Formats 16 / 24-bit PCM WAV, 32-bit float WAV and RF64 (files > 4 GB with no splitting)
• Sample rates from 44.1 kHz to 192 kHz
• Timecode sources: LTC, MIDI MTC, Tentacle Sync E (Bluetooth BLE), Time of Day, frame rates up to 60 fps (drop / non-drop)
• Simultaneous multi-disk (true real-time redundancy, not a post-recording copy)
• Complete BWF / iXML metadata (scene, take, notes, engineer, track list)
• Sound Report exportable as PDF / CSV / HTML + email delivery with attachments
• Automatic upload to SwissTransfer, Smash, Dropbox or Cloudflare R2
• Instant Peak / RMS+PPM / True Peak VU meters with configurable peak hold
• Analysis tools: Loudness LUFS (EBU R128 / BS.1770-4), spectrum, spectrogram and phase — in a detachable window
• Live waveforms during recording, with playback and range annotation
• MIDI mapping for transport and faders
• Crash Recovery: WAV headers written continuously, so no file is corrupted if power is cut

2. Installation

System requirements

• macOS 12 Monterey or later
• Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3, M4) or Intel x86_64
• CoreAudio-compatible audio interface (built in or external)
• 4 GB of RAM minimum (8 GB recommended beyond 64 channels)
• Enough free disk space — a fast drive (internal SSD, or external USB 3 / Thunderbolt SSD) is strongly recommended

Installation

1. Download VAREC-1.5.38-arm64.dmg (Apple Silicon) or VAREC-1.5.38.dmg (Intel) from the download page or directly at varec.bernik.io. The DMGs are Developer ID signed and notarised by Apple (Gatekeeper ✓).
2. Double-click the DMG, then drag VAREC.app into your Applications.
3. On first launch, macOS asks for microphone and file system permission. Grant both.
4. Open the PATCH tab and select your audio interface for input, then for output.

Updates

VAREC tells you when a new version is available, and shows how many versions behind the latest you are. If you have skipped several updates, the What's new button opens the detail version by version, newest first — the five most recent are expanded, and a link takes you to the full set of notes beyond that.

The notes are rendered as formatted text: headings, bold and lists display properly rather than showing their raw formatting marks.

3. Quick start

A first recording in six steps:

1. Launch VAREC.
2. Tab PATCH : select your audio interface for input and output. Leave the sample rate set to AUTO to use the native rate.
3. Tab REC : add the channels you need with the T key, or use ⌘+T to create them in bulk (Batch Inputs).
4. Choose the bit depth and the format (recommended: 48 kHz / 32-bit float poly WAV).
5. Choose one or more destination disks in the Disks panel.
6. Press Space or click REC. Stop with a second Space (split) or the STOP button. The WAV file is available immediately.

Guided tour

A guided tour of 17 steps walks through the application: patch and arming, transport, waveform and playback, take notes, disks / split / false take, analysis tools, notifications, sound report and cloud.

• Esc closes the tour, the arrow keys navigate. During a recording, Esc does not trigger the emergency stop.
• Any step whose target is not present in your setup is simply skipped.

4. The interface at a glance

The main window is organised into three areas and three tabs.

Areas

• Transport bar (top): REC/STOP button, false take, panic, timer (TC, TOD or ELA), scene & take selectors, sample rate, audio source.
• Channel area (centre): one strip per channel — number, name, ARM / MUTE / SOLO / LINK controls, gain, VU meter, peak indicator.
• Footer : disk status with live free space, cloud status, licence and version indicators.

REC / PATCH / METADATA tabs

Display modes

• Standard — horizontal strips, the default view.
• Fader — vertical strips with virtual faders per channel and per group.
• Compact — a dense view for sessions with very high channel counts.

Switch between Horizontal and Vertical orientation with Tab. The Z key enables adaptive zoom (every channel at the largest possible size).

The W key shows or hides the waveform tracks. They start out disabled both at launch and when opening a project, and are only enabled on request.

Themes & fonts

The View → Theme menu offers five appearances:

• Dark — the default, optimised for night shoots and long reading sessions.
• Light — suited to daytime indoor use.
• Minimal — greyscale only.
• OLED — pure black, to save battery on an OLED display.
• High contrast — maximum legibility in direct sunlight.

Four font families are available under View → Font : System, Monospace, Rounded, Serif.

The interface and contextual help are available in French, English and German (the View → Language).

5. Audio interfaces (PATCH)

The PATCH tab is where you select your audio interfaces. VAREC builds on CoreAudio: any Mac-compatible interface can be used, including Dante Virtual Soundcard, RME MADI, Focusrite Red and others.

Detection

At launch, VAREC automatically scans for available interfaces. The 🔍 Scan button re-runs detection on the fly — after plugging in a USB interface or starting a Dante VSC, for instance.

Selection

• Input interface — the one whose channels you are going to record.
• Output interface — the destination for headphone / control room monitoring.
• Sample rate — AUTO to use the native rate, or force a value. The menus only list the rates the interface actually accepts, read from CoreAudio: on an interface locked to 48 kHz (an Allen & Heath SQ, say), 44.1 and 96 kHz are simply not offered.
• Buffer — 512 / 1024 / 2048 / 4096 / 8192 frames. Increase it if you get xrun (dropouts).

Missing or slow-responding interface

At startup and when switching interface, VAREC waits — retrying several times — instead of giving up on the first refusal. This helps USB, Thunderbolt or Dante interfaces that are slow to lock. Opening is visible on screen, and the error message only appears on a genuine failure.

• The interface is remembered by a stable key, not by its position in the system list — a position that shifts as soon as any device is plugged in or removed. VAREC therefore no longer restores an interface other than yours without saying so.
• If the expected interface is missing, VAREC starts on the first available one and tells you clearly, naming it.
• If the new interface does not respond, VAREC falls back to the previous one keeping the patch and arming intact, instead of clearing everything.
• A project prepared on a large interface opens on a smaller one: the monitoring channel count adjusts to the interface actually in use, as recording already did.

6. Multitrack recording

Arming channels

Click the R button on the strip (or the A key on the selected channel) to arm it. Only armed channels produce an audio file. Hold ⌥ while clicking to arm all or none.

Starting a take

Press Space or click the red REC button. The counter starts, WAV files are opened for every armed channel and written continuously to all active disks.

Split & False Take

• Split — a second Space during recording closes the current files cleanly and opens new ones. The take number increments automatically.
• Stop — the square button, or Recording → Stop. WAV headers are finalised with the real file size.
• False Take (✕ , orange) — marks the current take for exclusion from the sound report. Useful after a mis-trigger or a ruined take.
• Panic (⌥+P) — closes and finalises every file in a critical situation. A last resort.
• Reset Peaks (⌥+R) — clears the hold values on the VU meters.

Pre-roll

A pre-roll of 0, 2, 5 or 10 seconds can be enabled in the preferences. When you start a take, VAREC includes the seconds preceding the trigger (continuously captured in a ring buffer).

Auto Peak Marker

When the option is ticked in the Recording menu, VAREC automatically places a marker in the BWF header whenever a peak exceeds 0 dBFS. Those markers then appear in the Sound Report.

Live waveforms

During recording, VAREC draws the waveform of every armed channel at the source, straight from the incoming audio — the approach Reaper takes. Nothing is read back or decoded from disk during the take, and the capture is never touched.

The gain is twofold: scrolling becomes smooth across every track and load goes down. On a 32-track session:

A multi-resolution cache keeps long takes light.

• The « 〜 » button (next to the view selectors), or the W key, shows one waveform track per armed channel: below the VU meter in horizontal mode, beside it in vertical mode. In vertical view the waveform is drawn vertically (time on the Y axis), with the most recent samples at the top, and a translucent VU meter overlaid — both stay readable.
• The stereo pairs behave like mono channels. In horizontal waveform view, each VU bar takes half the track height, overlaid on its own side of the trace.
• Channels that are patched but not armed show their live level on a greyed-out meter.
• In the solo panel, the interactive waveform is drawn from the start of the take, below the analysis tools (spectrum / spectrogram). Select a passage to play it back through the monitor (the live signal is attenuated): the selected in/out range is written as a timestamped note in the WAV file's iXML <NOTE> field. Playback respects the state of the monitor output : if it is disabled, nothing is heard and VAREC says so. While you select, the waveform freezes to make spotting easier (a single click resumes live); the click point stays accurate even at an enlarged font size (zoom).

Audio formats

File mode

• MONO — one WAV file per armed channel (a stereo pair gives one stereo file).
• POLY — a single multichannel file holding every armed channel. This is the recommended mode for film and post.

File naming

In the METADATA tab you define a naming template using tokens:

BWF / iXML metadata

Every file automatically includes:

• BWF timestamp (OriginationTime, OriginationDate)
• Start timecode and frame rate (TimeReference) — pre-roll is accounted for, so nothing drifts when conforming in post
• Scene, take, notes
• The name of each track in iXML/TRACK_LIST — both channels of a stereo pair and of the MAIN MIX are declared there
• EBU 3285-compliant bext loudness fields ("not supplied" rather than 0 LUFS when no measurement is available)
• TC-stamped markers

Automatic splitting

To avoid oversized files, VAREC can split each take automatically, using per-format thresholds:

The thresholds are set under Preferences → Record → Automatic split.

7. Stereo links & groups

Stereo links

Two consecutive channels can be linked into a stereo pair. VAREC even offers automatic detection of stereo pairs, by analysing the correlation between adjacent channels.

1. Click the link icon on the left-hand channel.
2. The next channel automatically becomes the right side.
3. The VU meters now show L (green) and R (cyan) side by side.
4. The resulting WAV file is interleaved stereo L[0], R[0], L[1], R[1]… with the _STEREO.

Groups

To group several channels together (every track of a drum kit, say, or every track of one actor):

1. Select several channels (click + ⇧).
2. Press ⌘+G.
3. Give the group a name.

In Fader mode, each group gets a master fader plus MUTE / SOLO buttons applied to all of its channels. Groups also appear in the Sound Report.

Per-channel controls

✕ MUTE and ✕ SOLO (at the top of the channel area) clear every mute or every solo in one click. ✕ SOLO also releases the spectrum analyser, which no longer keeps running in the background on the previously soloed channel.

Solo & monitoring

Solo is a temporary listening state. It is not stored in the session file: a session never opens with a channel soloed.

• The S button, the S key and double-clicking a stereo pair all act on what you actually hear, in every view — button and monitoring stay in agreement.
• Pairing a soloed channel into stereo moves the solo onto the left channel, rather than leaving a soloed channel invisible in the list.
• Leaving fader mode releases group solos, whose buttons are hidden outside that mode.
• The ⊕ Phase tool solos its reference channel — with a visible indicator — and releases it however the panel is closed. The Clear delay action does not touch solos.

8. Take notes

During a recording, press N or click the 📝 icon in the transport bar to open the NOTES — CURRENT TAKE.

• ↵ Enter — saves the note and closes the panel.
• ⇧+↵ Enter — inserts a line break without closing.
• The note history for the current take is listed above the input field, TC-stamped.

Notes are attached to the take in the project file and appear in the Sound Report. A TC-stamped marker is also written into the BWF header of every file involved.

Beyond text notes, you can drop quick markers at any time with a single key, without opening a panel. Peak markers (when the Auto Peak Marker option is on) are added to that same list automatically.

9. Simultaneous multi-disk

VAREC can write the same WAV file to several disks at once. This is true real-time redundancy — not a copy made afterwards.

• Every active disk gets its own independent write stream.
• If a disk is disconnected or fails during recording, the others carry on uninterrupted.
• Write throughput is shown per disk in real time.
• A context menu on each disk: reveal in Finder, unmount, exclude from the next recording.
• At the end of a take, the file summary groups redundant copies ("× N disks") instead of listing each file twice.

Choosing disks

In the Disks panel (to the left of the channel area), tick each target disk. Free space is displayed and kept up to date while recording. An alert appears as soon as a disk drops below the safety threshold (configurable in the preferences).

Unplugging the recording disk is detected even when the disk card points at a subfolder of the volume. Paths written as ~/… are resolved both for free-space reporting and for revealing in Finder.

On-disk layout

Each session creates a VAREC/{projet}/{scene}/ folder on every active disk, holding the WAV files and a .varec.json project file. The structure is identical across all redundant disks.

10. Timecode

The timer at the top of the window shows one of three counting modes:

• TC — external timecode (analogue LTC, MIDI MTC or Tentacle Sync E over Bluetooth).
• TOD — Time Of Day, the system clock.
• ELA — Elapsed Time, counted from the start of the take.

The unified Timecode card

Since 1.5.24, every timecode setting lives in a single TC card. Clicking the timer (or the fps badge) opens its full panel:

• Current TC and detailed status (the age of the last frame received).
• Source : Time of Day / Tentacle / LTC.
• Frame rate, LTC input ( Auto detection, or pick the channel manually).
• Devices Tentacle : on-demand Bluetooth connection and scanning.

With the card closed, a status LED (internal / connected / detected / no signal) sits beside the live TC, with a "source · fps" sub-line. The settings are still mirrored under Settings → Timecode. Source and frame rate are locked while recording.

LTC (Linear Timecode)

Receives LTC on a dedicated audio input channel. VAREC uses zero-crossing hysteresis with a PLL for a stable read even in the presence of noise or hum. Automatic jam sync when signal is lost and then returns. LTC is decoded even when the channel is not armed — timecode stays locked throughout the recording.

Two ways to designate the LTC input, in the TC card or under Preferences → Timecode → LTC input :

• Auto — VAREC automatically finds which of the patched channels carries an LTC signal and locks onto it, with no manual setup.
• Manual — you pick the source audio channel yourself.

Tentacle Sync E (Bluetooth)

Pair the Tentacle Sync E module with your Mac over Bluetooth. VAREC detects it automatically and reads TC with no cable. Latency is compensated for. This is the most practical option on a light shoot.

To keep startup light, the Bluetooth scan no longer runs at startup : it starts on your first action (arming, monitoring, recording) when the TC source is Tentacle, or as soon as you explicitly choose that source. The macOS Bluetooth permission prompt then appears at a moment that makes sense, rather than at launch.

Time of Day (TOD)

Uses the system clock as the TC source. Ideal for documentary and news work, where syncing to wall-clock time simplifies post-production.

TC status

An LED beside the timer shows the state:

• Green — TC received and locked.
• Amber — discovery or jam sync in progress.
• Red — signal lost.

Frame rate

The frame rate (23.976 / 24 / 25 / 29.97 / 30 / 50 / 59.94 / 60 fps, drop-frame or non-drop) is set in the TC card or under Preferences → Timecode. The selected frame rate is written into the BWF header (TimeReference) and into the iXML block, guaranteeing compatibility with every professional NLE (Pro Tools, Avid, DaVinci Resolve, Reaper).

11. PDF Sound Report

The Sound Report is generated on demand from the session metadata. It gathers everything post-production needs to know.

Contents

• Production header — title, director, sound engineer, location, date, contact.
• Take table — scene (or "NO SCENE"), take, TC IN, TC OUT, duration, notes (on a dedicated full-width row), engineer, and false take where applicable.
• Peak per channel — the true maximum reached during the take (not the meter's instantaneous value), with no duplication for stereo pairs.
• Peak markers per take (when Auto Peak Marker is on), with True Peak values de-duplicated.
• Session statistics — number of takes, total duration, space used, target disk or disks.
• Cloud link per take (when upload is enabled).

Available exports

Available under File → Export Sound Report or ⌘+R.

12. VU meters & analysis tools

The VU meters are live from the moment the application opens : you do not need to arm a channel to check its inputs. Channels that are patched but not armed show their live level greyed out.

Metering modes

• Instant Peak — sample-by-sample level, ideal for catching the slightest transient.
• RMS + PPM — a wide RMS bar with a fine PPM needle overlaid. The classic broadcast mode.
• True Peak — inter-sample peak detection (4× oversampling). Essential for broadcast mastering to EBU R128.

The red clip indicator latches at 0 dBFS — the red peak bar stays until you reset it (click the strip, or ⌥+R). The stereo VU meters are accurate to ±0.5 dB (EBU R128): smoothing in the linear amplitude domain for fast convergence, and peak hold accumulated across chunks so no short peak is lost (a clap, a percussion hit). The L and R sides of a stereo pair measure identically — zero deviation on an identical signal, verified.

Settings

All of these are reachable under View → VU Meter… and can be saved as user presets.

Analysis tools (solo mode)

Solo a channel to open the analysis suite. The four tools — Spectrum, Spectrogram, Peak and Phase — plus the Loudness tool — share a unified parameter rail : settings panel on the left, canvas on the right. Shared settings: frequency axis Lin / Log, spectrogram palette (Classic / Magma / Viridis / Grey / Heat), and a peak hold that can be switched off. On a stereo pair, the analysis source can be L / R / L+R.

Detachable analysis window

The analysis panel detaches into an independent window, resizable and always on top ; it then disappears from the main window (one click brings it back). A tool selector fills its top bar, with a choice of analysed channel (mono / stereo) and a "follow solo"checkbox. Rendering goes through a zero-copy MessagePort transport: Loudness and Spectrum are rendered natively (vector text and grid, low latency), the other tools as a fast image mirror (~30 fps).

Spectrum & spectrogram

The real-time FFT analyser shows a spectrum (transparent fill, log axis, memory peak hold) and a scrolling spectrogram in the chosen palette. Useful for quickly spotting hiss, an unwanted frequency or a tonal imbalance.

• Channel comparison : overlay another channel's curve ("+ channel" selector, translucent orange trace with a legend) to compare two sources.
• Click to audition : click the spectrum to hear the frequency exactly under the cursor; the scroll wheel adjusts the filter's Q , and dragging follows the frequency. Cursor position, dB tooltip and filter marker line up exactly.

Phase analyser

The Phase tool computes the GCC-PHAT offset between two channels. It runs a 5-second capture, then analyses automatically (no click needed), with a live waveform preview while it captures. It reports the correlation coefficient and the estimated delay in milliseconds. The delay can be applied to monitoring (without touching the recorded file) and is noted in the iXML metadata.

A typical case: aligning a lavalier and a boom mic to avoid phase cancellation.

Loudness tool (LUFS)

The Loudness tool measures perceived level to BS.1770-4 / EBU R128 and displays, Youlean style, the figures on the left and a large full-height graph on the right (0 → −40 LUFS scale, target line and tolerance band, a short-term curve coloured by deviation, and the integrated level line):

• Momentary (400 ms), Short-term (3 s), Integrated (gated), LRA (loudness range) and True-Peak.
• Deviation Δ vs target is colour-coded, with 16 standards preset (EBU R128, ATSC A/85, Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, Netflix…) or a custom target.

13. Cloud sharing

VAREC can upload each take to a cloud service automatically as soon as recording stops, without leaving the application.

Supported providers

• SwissTransfer (Infomaniak) — free, anonymous and hosted in Switzerland, with no sign-up required. Up to 50 GB per transfer, configurable lifetime (1 / 7 / 15 / 30 days), up to 250 downloads per link, optional message and sender email.
• Smash — temporary sharing by direct link, with a configurable expiry. Ideal for getting a take to post quickly.
• Dropbox — sync to a folder of your choice via OAuth (direct download link).
• Cloudflare R2 — S3-compatible storage with an HTML sharing page, configured per profile.

Setup

1. Open Preferences → Cloud.
2. Select the provider and authenticate (OAuth for Dropbox, an API key for R2, instant for Smash).
3. Tick Automatic upload.

Status

The cloud card at the bottom of the window always shows one of the following states:

14. Crash Recovery

VAREC is built so that no interruption ever costs you a file. That robustness rests on several complementary mechanisms.

Mechanisms

• The WAV headers (the size of the data chunks) are updated continuously while recording — not only at the end.
• The project file .varec.json is written atomically (into a temporary file, then renamed).
• A watchdog monitors write latency per disk and warns if one slows down abnormally (a sign of a disk saturating or dropping off).
• The project auto-save runs every 5 seconds.
• On an emergency stop (interface disconnection, PortAudio error, unhandled exception), the files in progress are finalised properly — metadata written, files closed — and recording cannot silently continue in the background.
• An alert appears if free disk space drops below 10 GB during recording.
• Native crashes (audio, CoreAudio, Bluetooth) are logged to logs/crash-native.log ; a renderer crash triggers exactly one automatic reload.
• The writing mode is fixed when the take starts and the processing instance is pinned. If it disappears mid-take, VAREC triggers a emergency stop rather than letting the take continue with nowhere to write.
• The disk fallback genuinely works: if the project folder becomes unreachable (disk ejected, folder protected), writing does actually switch to the Desktop. Disk errors are explained in plain language rather than shown as a raw system message.
• The VU meters stay live in fallback mode : their source follows where the signal actually goes.

If the power goes

Power cut, kernel panic, a disk unplugged: the WAV files already on disk stay perfectly readable up to the last block written. No recovery tool is needed.

15. MIDI control

VAREC accepts MIDI control of the transport and the faders. Ideal for wiring VAREC into a control surface, a footswitch or a pedalboard in the control room.

Setup

1. Open Preferences → MIDI.
2. Select the MIDI input port (USB, Bluetooth or virtual).
3. For each action (REC, STOP, PLAY, SPLIT, Marker, Take +1), click Learn then send the Note or CC from your controller. The mapping is stored immediately.
4. For the faders : pick the MIDI channel and the base CC. VAREC's channels are assigned in ascending order from that CC.

16. Project files (.varec)

A .varec file holds a project's entire configuration: it is portable, shareable and reusable.

Contents

• Channel list, names, stereo pairs, groups
• File mode, format, sample rate, buffer size
• Project metadata (title, engineer, location), naming template
• Cloud credentials (encrypted locally)
• TC-stamped markers and take notes

Operations

Templates

Templates are stored in ~/Library/Application Support/VAREC/templates/ and can be reused to start a pre-configured project ("8 radio mics + 1 boom + 1 ambience", "16 drum tracks", and so on). A template is now picked from a drop-down menu right in the "new project" form.

17. Preferences

Reachable through ⌘+, or the ⚙ button in the transport bar. The preferences are grouped into seven tabs.

General

• Fader mode — virtual faders per channel and per group.
• Compact mode — maximum display density.
• Eco mode — cuts CPU use at very high channel counts (worth it beyond 128 ch). Hides the analysis tools; waveform and playback remain available.
• Pre-roll — 0 / 2 / 5 / 10 s.

The window size and position are kept from one launch to the next, falling back automatically to a visible position if the display in question has been unplugged.

Audio

• Default input and output interfaces
• Latency compensation (Auto, or a manual offset in ms)
• Sample rate policy (AUTO or forced)

Record

• Automatic split per format (see §6)
• Logging of xrun to a log file
• Recording reliability test
• Auto Peak Marker (configurable dBFS threshold)

Timecode

• Frame rate (23.976 → 60 fps, drop / non-drop)
• TC source (LTC / MIDI MTC / Tentacle BLE / TOD)
• Tentacle Bluetooth scanning and pairing
• LTC zero-crossing hysteresis

Meters

• VU style (Instant Peak / RMS+PPM / True Peak)
• Units (dBFS or dBu)
• Attack and release constants
• User presets

Notifications

12 families of notifications can be silenced individually — cloud, timecode, notes, updates, TP Clip and so on.

Five critical alerts are always on and cannot be disabled, because missing one would compromise the take:

• Disk error
• File not finalised
• Emergency stop
• Audio interface error
• Sample rate

A silenced notification is still recorded in the log (Help → Show log): silencing it removes it from the screen, not from the history.

Cloud & MIDI

See §13 Cloud sharing and §15 MIDI control.

Themes & fonts

See §4 The interface at a glance.

18. Keyboard shortcuts

Every useful shortcut, grouped by purpose.

Transport

Navigation

Channels

Project

Display

19. FAQ & Troubleshooting

No input channel detected

• Check the microphone permission under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone.
• Click 🔍 Scan in the PATCH tab after connecting the interface.
• For Dante VSC / SoundGrid interfaces: make sure the host service is running before VAREC.

Dropouts or xruns while recording

• Increase the buffer size (1024 → 2048 → 4096 frames).
• Use a fast disk: internal SSD, or external USB 3 / Thunderbolt SSD. Avoid mechanical drives beyond 16 channels.
• Disable real-time antivirus scanning on the capture folder.
• Turn on Eco mode if you are recording a lot of channels (> 128).
• Close heavy background applications (Slack, Chrome and the like).

No timecode received

• Check that the frame rate is the same on the camera and in VAREC.
• For Tentacle: make sure Bluetooth is on for the Mac and the module is in BLE mode (not BLE+audio).
• For LTC: check the signal level on the assigned audio input. Too low or clipped and it will not decode.
• A permanently amber LED means jam sync cannot complete: restart the TC source.

Licence activation refused

• Open the activation link you received by email on the machine where VAREC is installed. An expired or already-used link can be resent from the email or through support.
• A beta licence may have expired — contact support to renew it.
• Try again after deleting the licence file stored in ~/Library/Application Support/VAREC/licence.json.

How do I activate my licence?

After subscribing you receive an activation link by email: open it on the machine where VAREC is installed and your licence activates automatically — there is no serial number to type in. Your licence is tied to your email address. The Licence menu always shows the current mode (Free / Trial, N days left / Licence active).

Can I record more than 64 channels without a licence?

No — without a licence you are limited to 64 channels. The Pro licence unlocks up to 512 channels and enables every advanced feature (Sound Report, Cloud, MIDI and so on).

Does VAREC work with Dante / AVB / MADI?

Yes, as long as the interface is exposed through CoreAudio. That covers Dante Virtual Soundcard, RME MADI cards, Focusrite Red, Universal Audio Apollo and others.

Why 32-bit float?

32-bit float gives you a practically unlimited dynamic range (~1500 dB). You can no longer clip digitally: a transient at +20 dBFS is still perfectly recoverable in post, undistorted.

What happens if my Mac fails?

The WAV files on disk stay readable up to the last block written, thanks to the continuously updated headers. See §14 Crash Recovery.

Where are sessions stored?

Each session creates a VAREC/{projet}/{scene}/ folder on every active disk, holding the WAV files and a .varec.json.

Sending a crash report

Menu Help → Send crash report. Attach the output of Help → Show logs for a faster diagnosis.

Technical support

• Website : varec.bernik.io
• Contact : contact@bernik.io (attach the logs if you are reporting a bug)
• Explainer videos : Videos page
• Release notes : GitHub Releases