Three bands
A strip is a fixed head, a scrolling middle and a fixed foot. The head is the name and the meter. The foot is the pan, the fader, its dB, the buttons, and the name again. It is exactly the same height on every strip on the desk, so the faders stand in one row whatever page is up.
Only the middle moves, and the middle is the only thing a page decides.
The same strip, every time
Every channel has an EQ, a compressor, and a gate. Not as options, but as the channel. There is nothing to load, nothing to choose, and nothing to compare.
That means your hands learn one layout and keep it. The compressor on channel 40 sits exactly where it sits on channel 3, and a bus is a strip like any other: it says BUS where a track says IN.
In signal order
- TAPE: saturation, first of all. One knob, transparent at zero. Studio
- TRIM and Ø: the input gain and the polarity, ahead of everything that has a detector. The meter reads after the trim, deliberately.
- PRECISION: up to twelve surgical bands, set on the big graph and nowhere else. Studio
- DRUM GATE: with a seat, ahead of the EQ or behind the channel gate. Studio
- FILTERS: an 18 dB/oct low cut and a 12 dB/oct high cut, on top of the EQ. OFF sits at either end of the throw.
- EQ: four bands. HF and LF as shelf or bell, HMF and LMF as bells with a Q knob between them. The throw on the left, the frequency on the right.
- COMP: ratio, threshold, release, and make-up, with RMS/Peak, two attacks, and a make-up switch that steps off, AUTO, and TRUE.
- GATE/EXP: threshold, range, hold, and release, Gate or Exp, two attacks. Range at zero is off. Its gain reduction is drawn on a 40 dB scale, where the compressor's is 20.
- MONO and DIRT: the mono maker and a tube stage, on one row, in the order the signal passes through them. Studio
- SEND: one numbered row per effect channel, tapped after the fader.
- Pan, fader, M, and S. The fader is downstream of everything.
The panels are not always drawn in that order. The gate stands under the compressor on screen, and the EQ's cuts above its bands. The signal still goes through them as listed.
Off, and out of the way
The gate and the compressor have switches, and with them out the signal passes untouched. The tape, the trim and the dirt have none, because zero already is transparent: their knobs are never dimmed, since none of them is ever out of circuit.
A knob that is out of the way goes grey. On a mono strip the mono maker reads – rather than OFF: nothing to fold is not the same as switched out.
The EQ, bigger
Click the small curve on a strip and the EQ opens over the desk, drawn large over a spectrum of what is going into it. The strip's knobs stay the only way to set the channel EQ. The graph shows and does not touch.
The precision bands are the exception, and the only place they live: double-click the field to add a band where you point, drag a node for frequency and gain, ⌥-drag for its Q, double-click a node to take its gain back to zero. Studio
Mute and solo
- Mute the strips you picked
- Solo the strips you picked
- Mute the whole desk, or clear every muteOver the whole desk, anything lit is cleared instead.
- Solo the whole desk, or clear every soloThe press you make when you cannot see what is soloed.
On the strips you picked, the key does the thing. Over the whole desk, anything lit is cleared instead. is the press you make when you cannot see what is soloed.
⌥-click a strip's S for exclusive solo: that strip alone, and press again to put the desk back. A bare click on M or S is always the one strip under the pointer, whatever the selection is doing.
Faders
Every fader starts at the bottom. You are not undoing someone else's balance. You are building your own: pull up the thing the song is about, then pull up what it needs.
Channels that belong together belong on a bus or a VCA.
Stereo strips
A stereo strip meters both sides, in the room one bar took. IN ST in its head opens the channels panel, where you choose which channels of the file that strip takes.