11. Sound

The Sound pane

Every track sounds through a chain: what plays it (the guitar synth, the Synth, a kit or an instrument), then the devices it goes through (an amp, an EQ, a delay…), then the mixer. The Sound pane shows one channel’s chain and lets you change it: add a device, turn its knobs, reorder, split into parallel lanes, or save the whole thing as a preset. Every change is one undo step, a whole knob drag included, and it’s saved with the song.

The Sound pane

Available on every platform.

Which channel it shows

A Sound pane follows the track the caret is on. To show another, use the chip beside the pane’s name in its bar: it lists All Channels, every track with a sound, the song’s buses and Master. You can also choose Show Sound from a track’s menu (right-click its header), or click a bus’s or the master’s chain in the Mixer: every Sound pane of the song goes to it.

A track that plays through the SoundFont has a chain like any other: an EQ, a compressor or a room after its Source shapes its General MIDI sound. Its Mixer strip’s sound button switches it to Stab Strings or Stab Synth.

The bar

Rack mode

The chain reads as a rack, top to bottom or left to right: the Source band (the track’s name, and what plays it), each device, then the output (To the mixer, or Speakers for the master). Each device has its name, a power button that bypasses it, and the controls a player reaches for.

• Turn a knob by dragging it; a slider jumps to where you press. Double-click a control to put it back where it starts.
• Open a device’s full face with ⌄ at the right of its name: every control it has opens in place, in the rack, and ⌃ folds it again.
• Select a device by its name: it takes the focus ring. With an Inspector pane open, the device’s full face shows there too, until you select something else.
• Add a device where nothing has been added yet: an empty rack says Straight to the mixer, with Add Device and Presets.
• Add a device with a + between two devices (or at the end): Amp, Impulse Response, Drive, Wah, EQ, Delay, Chorus, Room, Bus Compressor, or one of Electronic: Phaser, Flanger, Tremolo, Auto Filter, Bitcrusher, Widener, Hall, Duck, Dynamic EQ, Tape, Vinyl and Clipper. On the Mac and Windows, the + opens the device browser: these and your plugins in one list, searched together; a right-click keeps this short menu.
• Move a device by dragging it by its name to another +.
• Remove a device with Remove in its menu, or select it and press Delete. What fed it then feeds what came after.

A device’s menu (right-click it) has Bypass, Split, Remove, and, on an amp, its Presets.

What each device does is in Effects, Amps and cabinets and Impulse responses.

Parallel lanes

Split on a device starts a split there: the signal goes down two lanes side by side, each with its own devices and its own level at its foot, and they meet again after. A split’s frame has its own menu:

• Add Lane, up to 16.
• Unsplit, Keeping, then a lane (named by its devices, such as “Lane 1: Amp · EQ”): back to one chain, that lane’s.

A device inside a lane also has Unsplit, Keep This Lane in its menu.

A drum kit’s stems

A drum track’s Source band has Show Stems: the kit splits into a lane per stem, so each can have its own devices (a compressor on the snare, a room on the overheads) and its own level. Nothing you hear changes until you add something. Stems on the Source sets how many: Grouped (kick, snare, toms, hi-hat, cymbals, percussion, overheads and room) or Detailed, which parts the toms, the ride and the crashes; a group’s devices go onto each of its stems. When a kit has many lanes, each shows as a row; click one to open it out.

All Channels

All Channels, from the ⚙ or the channel’s menu in Rack mode, shows every channel at once: each track with a sound, each bus and the master, as a row (or a column) of its devices in small, a + at its end, and its sends as chips. A device’s power button bypasses it from here. Click a device and that channel opens out into its full rack in place, the device selected; a send chip shows its bus.

The Amp’s and the Synth’s editors

Two devices have an editor of their own, laid out as the instrument:

• The Amp: Open Amp Editor, at the foot of its full face (⌄), opens a sheet over the pane: the voicing and the knobs, the cabinet drawn with its mics, its response, and the gate. See Amps and cabinets.
• The Synth: Open Editor on a Synth track’s Source band opens the whole voice: oscillators, filter, envelopes and LFOs drawn, to drag, the voice moving through them as it plays. See The Synth.

Patch mode

Patch shows the same chain as nodes and wires on a canvas, for what a rack can’t: a chain that branches and meets in other ways, a Mix node blending several inputs, one effect feeding two others.

• Connect by dragging from a node’s output to another’s input. Drag a wire off an input to move it elsewhere.
• Disconnect a wire with Disconnect in its menu, or select it and press Delete.
• Add a node from the canvas’s menu (right-click or double-click the empty canvas): the devices above, and Add Mix.
• Move a node by dragging it, and the canvas by dragging where it’s empty. Fit to Pane in the ⚙ brings the whole patch into view.
• Select a node, and its full face shows in a panel on the right.
• Open an editor by double-clicking an Amp or a Synth’s Source.

A patch a rack can’t show stays in Patch mode, and Rack mode says “This patch branches in a way a rack can’t show.”

Presets

Presets in the bar (the pane’s bar) lists the built-in chains for what the channel is (a guitar’s, a Synth’s, a kit’s), and the other instrument’s under its own heading: a Synth track can go through the Guitar Chains, a guitar or keys track can become a Stab Synth sound. Your own presets follow. Choosing one replaces the channel’s chain, in one undo step.