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MIXING & EFFECTS
Plugin Effects
This section covers the Mixer FX functions and interface.
A. Effect Pop-up Menu
B. Effect Name (Label) - Left-click to open
plugin, Right-click to rename slot.
C. Effect Mute
D. Effect Mix Level
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Each mixer track can have up to 8 external (plugin) effects
hosted in its effects bank (8), see bottom of this page. For a list
of supported plugin standards, see Supported Effects Standards.
To open a new effect in the effects bank, select a free slot in
the bank and open it's pop-up menu (A). In the Select
submenu, select a plugin to insert, or click
More... to see a full list of effects available in FL
Studio (for more information see the menu description below).
NOTE: To remove an effect, simply select "None" in
the Select submenu.
Once you insert the effect, you will see the plugin's editor
window (a window where you can adjust all settings of the plugin).
You can click the effect's label (B) to show/hide this window.
While working on your project, you may want to bypass some of
the filters while adjusting your mix. You can use the mute
switch (C) to
disable an effect temporarily (this switch is automatable as well).
You can also fine tune the mix levels ("wet" and "dry" signal) of
each effect with the Effect Mix Level knob
(D). Turn this knob maximum
to left to effectively mute the effect. Turn it maximum to right to
mix the effect at 100%.
Effect Pop-up Menu (A)
:
- Select - Contains a list of all effects
selected as favorites. Selecting an effect from this menu will
assign it to the corresponding plugin slot. Click
More... to open the Select plugin
window, which contains a list of all effects available to FL
Studio. Double-click a plugin name to assign it to the effect slot.
Click the check box preceding each plugin to mark it as a favorite
(all effects preceded by a check mark will appear in the favorites
list). NOTE: To see newly installed plugins, click
Refresh in the bottom of the Select plugin window
and select Fast Scan (it is recommended that you
use Fast Scan instead of Scan & Verify, because the latter may
crash FL Studio with some badly programmed plugins).
- Presets - Contains a submenu with a list of
presets for the effect. In the bottom of the list you can see the
Randomize and Hybridize commands.
Randomize gives random values to the published
(i.e. known to FL Studio) effect settings.
Hybridize is a switch. When enabled, selecting a
preset will load a random 50% of the settings in a preset, so you
can quickly mix different presets and create new effects. The
Presets menu is disabled if there is no effect
assigned to the plugin slot.
- Browse Presets - Opens the plugin's presets
folder in the Browser panel. The Browser
has better capability of displaying large number of presets.
- Save Preset as - Allows you to save custom
presets for the plugin assigned to the plugin slot. Presets are
saved as FST files. It is
recommended that you save preset files in the default location FL
Studio chooses, so they can be properly detected and added to the
Presets menu.
- Last Tweaked Parameter - Displays the standard
popup menu for the last parameter tweaked on the plugin's interface
(applies only to automatable parameters). This option is useful for
VST effects that have their own interface (as you can not open the
FL Studio property menu by right-clicking a control in them).
- Browse Parameters - Opens the plugin's
parameters folder in the Browser panel.
The Browser will list all automatable properties defined by the
plugin, even if they are not automated in the current project.
- Link to MIDI Controller - Allows you to link
the effect to a MIDI controller, so its settings can be remotely
controlled. For more information, see Live Recording Using MIDI
Controller.
- View Editor - Shows/hides the effect's editor
window.
- Set Name - Opens a box where you can edit the
name of the plugin.
- Smart Disable - If this option is checked, FL
Studio will pause the effect if the mixer track it belongs to
receives 4 seconds of audio silence. The plugin will resume again
at the moment any sound is received in the track. This feature
works smoothly, without clicks, pops or other artifacts while
enabling/disabling the effect, but it will not work correctly with
plugins that apply "long effects", such as reverb that has more
than 4 seconds long decay, delay lines and similar effects.
However, it will work fine with all kinds of equalizers, flangers,
phasers, compressors etc. Using Smart Disable may
significantly lower the CPU usage of your songs.
- Move Up - Moves the effect one slot up.
- Move Down - Moves the effect one slot
down.
Note that you can access the same pop-up menu from the effect's
editor window:
Mixer reference diagram
- 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.
NOTE: Most controls are automatable
(right-click and select 'Create automation clip').
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