Master bus

Every strip, every bus and every effect channel's return ends up here. What leaves the master bus is what leaves MIX, and the column it stands in never scrolls: the sum is what you are always mixing towards.

In order: TRIM, the bus compressor, the bus EQ, FAIRWARMTH, SPREAD, and the master fader last of all. Otherwise you would be mixing against a target that moves.

I is the trim, D the bus compressor, E the bus EQ, and F FairWarmth and the spreader. So the EQ page leaves the tracks and the sum showing nothing but equalisers.

Threshold and make-up are knobs. RATIO, ATT and REL are switches that click on to the next position and wrap around: the positions are all there is, and nothing is interpolated between them.

Its gain reduction is drawn on a 20 dB scale, because a bus compressor that is working sits in the first few dB. It is there to hold the mix together, not to fix it: a little, early, and then left alone.

If you are reaching for a lot of it, the answer is usually further back: a fader, a bus, or a band of EQ on the thing that is too loud.

A different tool from the EQ on a strip, not a variant of it: three sections, stepped frequencies, five knobs. LOW has a boost and an ATTEN beside it, and they are one network rather than two filters, which is why lifting and dipping the bottom at once does something neither does alone. Then a high BOOST with a BAND knob that widens it, and a high ATTEN.

The channel shapes a track. This bends the whole. It is an EQ and nothing else.

One button, and its meaning is a sentence rather than a name, so it carries the explanation under the pointer. Try it last, on a mix you already like.

MONO stands in the master's head and is on no page, because it is about listening and has to be within reach from everywhere. It folds what comes out of the speakers and never touches a file, an export or the saved mix.

The channel strips have a control that says MONO too, and it is a different thing: the mono maker on a strip is in the mix. The one in the master's head is only your ears.

Leave yourself room. The meter holds its peak and lights a clip warning, which you clear by clicking it. Red is the only thing on this desk that raises its voice. Believe it.

The lane under the timeline turns red in any column where the mix clipped, so a run through the song shows you where to look before an export goes hunting for it.

Loud is not a mix decision. It is something that happens after you are done.

Clear every solo with ⇧S and every mute with ⇧M, then listen from the top. A mix bounced with one channel still soloed is the oldest mistake there is.

Then export.