Dedicated hardware that
happens to run on a laptop.
NOVIQ plays backing, click and guide tracks to separate outputs, is driven entirely from a MIDI footswitch, works offline, and recovers from a crash without asking a single question.
Windows now, macOS coming soon · No account, no subscription, no internet required · $39 $9.99
The screen you look at from three metres away
One song, enormous. The time left in the set, the set itself, and where in the night you are. Show Mode locks every destructive action, so nothing you can press by accident can change what plays next.
Built for a dark stage, not a desk
The title fills the screen and the countdown is monospaced, so the digits don't jitter as they change. Everything else gets out of the way.
- Time remaining in the whole set, not just the song
- The next song is always on screen
- Per-song notes — capo 2, half-time feel, encore
- PANIC is always one press away
One footswitch. The same thing every night.
Learn a switch once and it stays learned. Every command a controller can trigger is in one list — and nothing else is, because anything that could reconfigure your rig has no business on a footswitch.
MIDI learn, then forget about it
Pick a command, press the switch, done. The mapping travels with your library, so the same folder on the backup laptop already knows your pedalboard.
- Control Change, Note and Program Change
- Every command mappable — on the free version too
- A song never starts by itself, whatever arrives
- Panic stops everything and resets the MIDI port
What it does, and what it refuses to do
NOVIQ is not a DAW, not a recorder and not a general-purpose sequencer. It does one job, and the list of things it will not do is as deliberate as the list of things it will.
Separate outputs
Backing to the PA, click and guide to the band's ears. Set once for the rig — every song plays through the same sockets, including songs added later.
Drag and drop
Drop mp3 or wav files onto the setlist and each becomes a song, in the order you dropped them. No import wizard, no library to rescan.
Crash recovery
If the laptop dies mid-set, NOVIQ comes back where it was — stopped, on the right song, waiting for you. It never restarts a song by itself.
Sample-accurate seek
Jump anywhere and backing, click and guide stay locked to each other, to the sample. No drift, no re-sync.
Many setlists, one library
Friday's set, the acoustic set, next month's tour. Songs live once and appear in as many sets as you like, in any order.
Show Mode lock
Entering Show Mode makes the whole application read-only. Nothing you press by accident at 8 p.m. can delete a song or reroute an output.
The engineering is the product
A backing-track player is only worth anything if it does not fail. These are the constraints the code is actually held to — and you can read every line of it.
Reliability beats features
A capability that can fail on stage is worse than no capability. Features get cut for this reason.
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 network. 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.
The audio callback allocates nothing
It locks nothing and blocks nothing either. That is the rule that keeps a dropout from ever being NOVIQ's fault.
Written in Rust, with unsafe denied
The whole workspace forbids unsafe code at compile time. Whole categories of crash simply cannot be written.
Open source, MIT
Read it, audit it, build it yourself. Buying a licence pays for the packaged, supported application — not for secrecy.
27 decision records
Every significant architectural choice is written down with the alternatives that were rejected, and why.
Nothing leaves your laptop
Not a claim about a setting you can turn on — a property of how it is built. NOVIQ makes no network requests during normal use at all.
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 is why it works in a venue with no signal.
Your library is a folder
Your songs and setlists are plain files on a disk you own. Back them up, copy them, move them. No lock-in and no database.
Try it on tonight's set
The free version is a real copy of NOVIQ — one setlist of five songs, and every other thing on this page. Not a trial, no countdown, no card.