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MIXING & EFFECTS
Levels and Mixing 
This section describes how to accurately monitor the level of
your final mix.
Clipping
A major role of the mixer is to adjust the volume/levels of your
track and to avoid clipping. Clipping occurs when
a sound wave carried inside audio equipment (analog or digital)
becomes louder than the maximum volume that can be represented.
Under these circumstances the peaks of the wave are squashed flat
so it appears as if the wave peaks have been ‘clipped’ off.
Clipping often produces unpleasant distortion or popping
sounds.
- No Clipping
- Clipping
- .
If peak meters flash red in traditional mixing hardware, it
probably means the track is clipping. Fortunately FL Studio uses
’32-bit floating point’ numbers to internally represent volume,
allowing almost any amplitude to be carried internally without
clipping. The peak meters in the mixer then, are merely a guide to
the relative volume in each track, and while it’s good practice to
keep the track levels sensible, you don’t need to worry about red
flashes in Mixer track peak meters (11).
Clipping can be an issue, when audio is passed
from FL Studio to hardware, such as your soundcard or when
rendering 16-bit WAV and MP3 files. In light of this, the following
steps describe how to set and monitor the final levels in your mix
accurately.
How to adjust levels of the final mix
FL studio has a Main volume, in the
menu bar AND a Master Track
Volume (14). To
ensure you are in control of the final output -
- Leave the Main volume in the
default position. Use this only as an easy volume control when
listening to projects, not mixing them.
- Adjust Mixer Track Faders and or
Channel volume
knobs to obtain the relative instrument levels you
desire in the mix.
- Use the Master Volume (left most track in the
Mixer) to adjust the final level. Consider also, putting a ‘Fruity
Compressor’, with a ‘Complete Mix’ setting, in the last FX bank of
the master track. Compression is a form of automatic volume
control.
This configuration will ensure both the Master track peak meter
(5 & 11), and the
Main volume meter, in the
menu bar, show the same levels. Red peaks (above 0 dB), under these
settings, does indicate clipping in the final output or mix, as is
the case 2 in the picture above.
- Mixer Menu - Contains view, recording, Track
linking, renaming and coloring options, click here to learn more about
the options.
- Mixer Track Scroll Bar - This will slide the
visible range tracks within the mixer window.
- Mixer Insert Tracks - The output of all audio
instruments in FL Studio is routed to one of the 64 available
insert tracks. In the default Mixer setup, once the audio signal is
processed with the integrated filters (equalizer, volume and
panning - 9) it is then sent
to the master mixer track (10). It is also possible to route the
audio of a mixer track to any ASIO output (7 - for users with ASIO enabled sound
cards) or even another insert track (18). This internal re-routing is a very
powerful feature allowing you to create advanced mixer setups with
groups and subgroups of insert tracks.
The labels can be right-clicked (or press F2) to rename the
track or recolor it. Quick linking of channel/s:
From the Channel window use the
Channel selector to select the channel/s you want to route to the
mixer track, then select the desired destination mixer track and
click Ctrl+L. There is also an option to
sequentially link Channels to tracks starting from the selected
track. Shift+Ctrl+L.
- Send Tracks - there are 4 mixer tracks
dedicated to send functions, although any track can serve as a
send, (18). The send tracks
do not receive a direct audio input from the instruments, but they
can receive audio from one or more of the 64 insert tracks (you can
adjust the amount of signal sent by each insert track with the Send
Level knobs (15). The purpose
of send tracks is the ability to setup common effects (for ex.
reverb and delay) once in a send track and then being able to route
multiple insert tracks audio to it, as opposed to adding the same
effect in each insert track, wasting CPU power.
- Big Peak Meter - Can be hidden using the Mixer
menu (1) > View >
Options. Output is in dB. See Levels and Mixing to
learn more about using peak meters in FL Studio.
- External mixer input - ASIO hardware inputs
and some VSTi inputs can be selected here.
- External mixer output - ASIO hardware outputs
can be selected here. Typical uses include live-use where one
channel is sent to headphones for monitoring previewed
samples/mixes while the main mix goes to the PA OR
to create a surround sound sub-mix by sending several mixer tracks
to the relevant surround channels of your soundcard.
- FX slots - Up to 8 independent FX may be added
to each mixer track. To load an Effect: Left-click
on pop-up menu arrow at the left end of the slot and use the
'select' option. If you need more than 8 Effects, use the 'Send'
feature (18) to route the
output of one mixer track to another. To open an Effect GUI
interface: Left-click on the name of a loaded Effect, a
loaded Effect is displayed in FX slot 7 above.
- Mixer Track Properties - For more detail
click here.
Parametric EQ, Stereo Separation
 , Pan  , Swap Stereo Channels , Invert Phase  . The All these features are automatable.
Panel (A) is
the graph for the Parametric EQ, left-click to control center
frequency (left-right)/amplitude(up/down) or right-click to control
bandwidth (left-right)/amplitude(up/down). Panel
(B) can be left or right
clicked to gain simultaneous X/Y control over Pan and Volume.
Panel (C)
holds the controls for Plugin Delay
Compensation.
- Master Mixer Track - All audio output of FL
Studio is routed through the master mixer track for final
processing before the final output (unless an insert track is
routed out of the mixer to an ASIO output - 7). In light of this, the Master track
isn't a good place to record external ASIO inputs (6) as the external and internal audio
will be mixed together and recorded to disk.
- Small Peak Meter - See Levels and Mixing to
learn more about using peak meters in FL Studio.
- Mute Switch - left-click to
mute/un-mute the individual track, right-click to
solo/un-solo the individual track.
- Pan Knob - this function is also duplicated in
the Mixer Track Properties area.
- Level Fader - Can be automated right-clicked
and linked to controllers. This function is also duplicated in the
Mixer Track Properties area.
- Send Knobs - When the 'Send' switch is
activated (18) this knob (on
the destination track) controls the signal level received from the
source track.
- FX Enable/Disable Switch - When deselected
this disables all the FX in the FX slots (8). This only becomes active once an FX
is added to a FX slot.
- Track Recording Switch - When selected
(orange) the track is armed and any audio (internal or external
(6)) will be recorded to
disk.
- Track Send Enable Switch -
Left-click to enable audio to be passed from one
track to another, turns orange. Right-click to
route to a specific track, master routing disabled.
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