Effects, Buses and Templates

Effects, Buses and the Master

An effect you ask for goes into the track's effect chain. The chain is applied at render and your source audio is never rewritten, so you can change, switch off or remove an effect later. Effects run in chain order.

• The master bus — every track is summed there, so an effect on it processes the whole mix, including later edits: put a limiter on the master at -1 dB.
• Buses — a shared chain that tracks send into: create a bus called Drums, send tracks to it, then put a low-pass at 8 kHz on the Drums bus. A bus effect is heard only when a track sends to it.
• Hear it first — what would a 1 kHz low-pass sound like on the vocal? plays a few seconds in the chat, on a track, the master or a bus, and changes nothing. Ask again to keep it.
• Five effects work in a chain today — gain, limiter and the low-pass, high-pass and notch filters. Reverb, echo, EQ, the compressor and the rest are separate edits that bake their result into a new version of the track, and the agent says so if you ask for one in a chain.
• Setting names — a gain has db, a limiter ceiling_db and release_ms, the low-pass and high-pass filters cutoff_hz, and the notch center_hz and q. A setting name an effect does not have is refused, with the right names in the message.

A project saved by an older build can hold an effect this build cannot run. Rendering leaves it out rather than failing, and says so: a notice above the timeline names the effect and where it sits, Export Selection notes what the file was written without, and the A/B compare bar lists each side's left-out effects, marked A or B. Remove or bypass the effect and the notice goes.

Session Templates

With no audio loaded, Start from template offers:

• Podcast — Host and Guest tracks, each at −3 dB.
• Music — Lead, Harmony, Bass and Drums tracks, with the harmony panned a little to the left.
• Interview — Interviewer and Subject tracks, panned slightly apart.

A template makes empty tracks with a starting gain and pan, and adds no audio, effects or skills. Each track shows as an empty lane until you put audio on it. Skills switch on when your messages match their triggers, template or not. Change the session freely afterwards.