Run the whole show
from one footswitch.
NOVIQ is the stage rig for bands and solo acts who play to tracks. Backing to the PA, click and guide to the band, a video and lyrics behind you - built once in Backstage, played in Show Mode from a MIDI footswitch. Offline, always.
Windows now, macOS coming soon · No account, no subscription, no internet needed to play · $39 $9.99
Everything that happens between soundcheck and the last encore
Most acts that play to tracks juggle a playback laptop, a splitter for the click, a second laptop for the video and a paper setlist taped to the floor. NOVIQ is one application: build the show in Backstage, play it in Show Mode, and put the picture on the screen behind you.
Build the show once
“Every gig I rebuild the set, re-route the outputs and hope the pedal still works.”
- Drop audio files in - each becomes a song
- As many setlists as you like, one library
- Backing to the PA, click and guide to the band
- Learn a footswitch once; it stays learned
- Carry a whole set to another laptop as one file
Play it, and trust it
“If the laptop does something stupid in front of 300 people, I'm done.”
- One huge song title, readable from three metres
- Everything destructive locked while you play
- The whole set follows your feet
- PANIC one press away
- Back on the right song after a crash
A video behind the band
“Somebody presses Play on the video at the downbeat, and it's drifted by the chorus.”
- A video per song, in step with the track
- Fades in from black and out to it
- Lyrics or translations over the screen
- An idle loop while the room fills
- Out of the HDMI socket, no second laptop
The gig-night problems it was built to solve
Every feature in NOVIQ started as something a musician kept tripping over on the night. Here are the ones you have probably met.
Build the show once. Play it every night.
The set, the levels, the routing and the footswitch - set up in one place, saved as you go, and exactly the same tomorrow.
Drop your files in. That's the setlist.
Drag mp3 or wav files onto the set and each becomes a song, in the order you dropped them. Drag to reorder. There is no Save button - every edit is written to disk the moment you make it.
- As many setlists as you like; songs live once
- Notes and colours per line - “capo 2”, “encore”
- A level per song, so the quiet one isn't quiet
- Duplicate a set, or carry it out as one
.noviqsetfile - Backing to the PA; click and guide to the band's ears
One footswitch. The same thing every night.
Pick a command, press the switch, done. The mapping travels with your library, so the backup laptop already knows your pedalboard. Anything that could reconfigure your rig has no business on a footswitch - so it isn't there.
- Control Change, Note and Program Change
- A controller plugged in mid-soundcheck is picked up
- Every command mappable - on the free version too
- A song never starts by itself, whatever arrives
The screen you read from three metres away
One song, enormous. The countdown, the next song and where you are in the night. Show Mode locks every destructive action, so nothing you press by accident can change what plays next.
Locked while you play
Nothing can be created, deleted, renamed, reordered or rerouted - not from the screen, a shortcut or a pedal.
PANIC, always one press away
Stops all audio at once and sends All Notes Off to every MIDI device. Available at every moment of the show.
Never blinds you
Dark, light or colour everywhere else - but Show Mode is always dark, so it never lights up the front row.
Put a video behind the band - without a second laptop
Give each song its own video and NOVIQ plays it out of the HDMI socket, full screen, held to the backing track's own play head. Add lyrics or a translation on top. Nobody has to press Play on the downbeat again.
One clock: the backing track's
The video never keeps time of its own. Seek and it lands on the right frame; pause and it holds; stop and the screen goes to black. A song's video is warmed up before you press Play, so the first frame is there on the first beat.
- A video per song - best as a square 30 fps MP4
- Fade in from black and out to it, up to ten seconds
- Can loop if it's shorter than the song
- Subtitles from an
.srtor.vtt- or write them in the app - Opens full screen on the screen you choose when the show starts
Ready for show
The idle loop - a video, and a sound if you give it one - plays while the audience comes in, with the first song cued.
Stop & idle
A Panic that leaves the loop up over the stop, with the set still on the song it was on. Play carries on from there.
It comes back by itself
The loop returns when the final song ends, until you take it down. Between songs, the screen is black and the room is silent.
Subtitles, timed by ear
Paste the lyrics, play the song, press Mark as each line begins. Drawn large over the video - or over black.
From rehearsal to the last encore
What the day of a show looks like when one app runs the lot.
Build tonight's set
Duplicate last week's setlist, drop in the two new songs, drag them into place and write “capo 2” on the one that needs it. Nothing to save - it already is.
The backup laptop, sorted
Export the set as one .noviqset file and open it on the spare machine. Songs it already has are reused; the footswitch mapping travels with the library.
Everything is where you left it
Outputs are already routed - backing to the PA, click and guide to the in-ears - and the footswitch already knows its job. A missing output is flagged now, not at 9.
Ready for show
The idle loop plays on the screen behind the stage as the room fills, with its own sound through the PA and the first song cued.
Enter Show Mode, then play
Step on the pedal: songs, videos and lyrics follow the footswitch all night. Everything that could change the set is locked.
The loop comes back
The final song ends and the idle loop returns by itself while you take a bow. Nobody has to walk to the laptop.
The engineering is the product
Every decision in NOVIQ was measured against one question: would a touring musician trust this during a show? These are the rules the code is actually held to.
Reliability beats features
A capability that can fail on stage is worse than no capability. That is why the practice tools moved out into an application of their own.
Simplicity beats flexibility
Every option is a way to be set up wrong at 8 p.m. There are far fewer settings than you expect.
Offline beats cloud
No account, no login, no internet needed to play. Nothing to be down, nothing to expire, nothing to leak.
Predictability beats customisation
The same footswitch does the same thing every night, on every machine, in every version.
Sample-accurate, drift-free
Backing, click and guide stay locked to each other to the sample, through every seek. The audio callback allocates, locks and blocks nothing.
Crash recovery
If the laptop dies mid-set, NOVIQ comes back on the same song, at the same place, stopped - and tells you why.
Written in Rust, unsafe denied
The whole workspace forbids unsafe code at compile time, so whole categories of crash simply cannot be written.
Every decision written down
Sixty-two architecture decision records, each with the alternatives that were rejected and why. Nothing in NOVIQ is there by accident.
Your show stays on your laptop
Not a setting you turn on - a property of how it is built. Building a set and running a show never need the internet.
No telemetry, no analytics
No usage data, no crash reports phoned home, no product analytics. There is no collection to opt out of.
Licence checks are local
Your key is verified on your machine with cryptography, not against a server. That's why it works in a venue with no signal.
Your library is a folder
Songs, setlists, videos and mappings are plain files on a disk you own. Back them up, copy them, move them. No lock-in.
NOVIQ never needs the internet to play - not at start-up, not on any screen. You need a connection to download the installer and to buy your licence. After that, the laptop can stay offline for good. When it does happen to be online, NOVIQ quietly checks in the background that your licence is active on this computer - it sends your key and a scrambled computer ID, nothing else, and nothing waits for it. See the privacy policy.
NOVIQ Practice: the practice room, in an app of its own
Learning the songs is a different job from playing them, so it is getting a different application - built from the same engine, kept off the laptop you take on stage.
Get the part under your fingers
Loop any bar and slow it down without changing the pitch, take the guitar or the vocals out of the record, and play along through a real amp capture - with a tuner, a metronome and a practice plan a click away.
- Loop, slow down, keep the pitch
- Guitar and vocal separation
- Tuner, metronome, fretboard and licks
- A guitar rig with amp captures and cab IRs
Every feature. One payment. Forever.
The free version is the whole application - Backstage, Show Mode, outputs, footswitch and stage video - with room for one setlist of five songs. Unlock the limits once, and keep them.
Free
Forever. Not a trial - no countdown, no card.
- Show Mode, outputs and every footswitch command
- Stage video, subtitles and the idle loop
- One setlist of up to five songs
NOVIQ
Perpetual licence. One computer. Never expires.
- Unlimited setlists and songs
- One computer - moved for you if you replace it
- Every update to version 1, free
Quick questions
Who is it for?
Any band or solo act that plays to tracks: backing to the PA, a click and a guide in the band's ears, and - if you want one - a video and lyrics on the screen behind you. It is not a DAW, a recorder or a sequencer; it is the playback rig, and nothing else.
Which audio and video files does it take?
Audio: wav, mp3, flac, ogg and aiff. Video: MP4, ideally square, 30 frames a second and H.264 - anything else still plays, and NOVIQ tells you why it might not look right. Subtitles: .srt or .vtt, or write them in the app.
Do I need an audio interface?
Not to try it - your laptop's own output plays everything. On stage, an interface with four or more outputs lets the backing go to the PA and the click and guide to the band, on separate sockets.
What happened to the practice room?
It is becoming an application of its own, NOVIQ Practice, so the laptop you take on stage carries nothing it does not need for the show. It is not available yet - the page shows what is coming.
Can I try it on a real gig before paying?
Yes. The free version is a real copy with every feature: one setlist of five songs is enough to play a short set start to finish. And the paid version has a 14-day no-questions refund.
Build it tonight. Play it on Friday.
Download the free version and try it on the set you're playing next. No trial clock, no card, no account.