Mixer

Mixer

If you are familiar with real mixer consoles, the mixer in Renoise will look familiar to you. It provides you a quick overview of all used tracks, track DSPs and all tracks output levels. This is especially useful in the last production step, when you finished with the main song structure, the composing, and now want to concentrate on polishing the sounds of all the tracks.

The Mixer in Renoise also allows you to show a sub set of track FX parameters, which you can customize by your own. This way you can prepare your songs for live performances, showing only parameters you would like to concentrate on in the performance in order to get a better overview.

Pre/Post Volume Concept

Volume and panning controls in Renoises mixer can be set up to show two different levels:

• Pre: Volume and panning levels which are applied after the sample and plugin instrument playback, but before track FX are applied.
• Post: Volume and panning levels which are applied after all track FX are applied, so they do control the final result, the sound that is leaving the tracks feeding the master signal.

To choose whether to control the pre or post levels, watch out for the Pre/Post icons on the top right of the mixer as shown in the image above.

The idea behind the Pre/Post level separation is that you should use the Pre levels while composing the song. Automation, like fade ins or outs of tracks should be done here or by using Gainer FX devices. Post levels should only be used and applied in the final mixing stage to polish and weight all track levels, after all automation is applied. That's also why the POST volume and pans can not be automated: To make sure that you can always use them at the end of the song to balance all sounds, without having to touch and rescale all the existing volume and panning automation in the song.

Customizing The Mixer Layout

On the right of the mixer, you will notice a set of buttons which do enable or disable some of the mixers components.

• File:Vvoois renoise mixer labels.png - Show/hide parameter labels above the DSPs in the mixer (“Cutoff”, “Q” etc. in the example above).
• File:Vvoois renoise mixer mute.png - Show/hide mute / solo track controls in the track strips.
• File:Vvoois renoise mixer pan.png - Show/hide Panning sliders.
• File:Vvoois renoise mixer meter.png - Show/hide level VU meters and the main volume faders.
• File:Vvoois renoise mixer vol.png - Show/hide volume edit box on the bottom of the large meters.
• File:Vvoois renoise mixer del.png - Show/hide custom track delays: Track delays let you “shift” tracks against each other in time. Entering a negative value will make it play before other tracks, a positive value will lay it back. This is only available for sampler tracks, that's a track you play instruments on and thus not available for the send or master tracks. This is especially useful to compensate small latency problems with for example MIDI and plugin based tracks, or to simply lay dow track to give them them a better “groove”.
• File:Vvoois renoise mixer out.png - Show/Hide audio routing control. Audio routing in the mixer defines where the tracks final output will be send to: Selecting “Master Track” will send the output through the master tracks DSP chain. Selecting a dedicated output of your sound-card will bypass master FX and also allow you to separate and mix Renoise tracks with an external mixer console. This is only possible when your sound cards allows the use of multiple channels. On Windows you have to use ASIO to use this feature. On Linux Jack Audio.

Track colors can be shown or hidden in the mixer as well. Right click anywhere in the mixer DSP chain section, then select “Show Track Colors”.

Send Devices/Tracks and the Post Mixer

To rout a sound from any track into a another track (a Send Track), you do insert a “#Send Device” into the track DSPs you want to send the signal from. A“#Send Device” will then appear in the mixer as shown in the image below. The shown slider controls the amount of audio that is send to the send track.

Send tracks are used to group tracks, to apply the same set of DSPs on multiple tracks at once.

By stacking them, and being able to add multiple “#Send Devices” into a track, you can create complex routing and track FX layouts.

When using a “Send Device” you do have the choice between:

• Sending the tracks signal to a send track, but also keeping the signal in the original track (Keep Source)
• Sending the tracks signal to a send track, and muting the signal from the original track (Mute Source)

When using Send Devices with a “Mute Source” option, the post volume and panning levels will have no effect. That's because the signal is sent “away” from the track to the send tracks before the signal reaches the tracks output. To change the tracks levels, you then either have to use the send tracks volume and pan levels or have to adjust the “Send Device” amount.

To visualize this in the mixer, track levels which do not reach then POST volume and paning are shown in a different color. That's white by default instead of green, but may vary depending on which color theme you are using in Renoise:

(Track with a Send Device with Mute Source)

File:Vvoois renoise mute keep source.png

(Send Device Routing in The Mixer)

Adjusting Level Meters

Volume level meters display volume on one in four available scales: −24dB to 0dB, −48dB to 0dB −96dB to 0dB dB and a linear scaling. To change the scaling for all meters you can right click on any level meter in the mixer. The meters can this way also be disabled.

A small tip: The master level meter on top of the interface can be adjusted and disabled as well this way.

Controlling the Mixer with a MIDI controller

You can attach MIDI controllers to the pre- AND post-mixer, Mute/Solo controls to be able to comfortably do mix the a MIDI controller. To do so select View → Midi Mapping… in the main menu, or click on the MIDI Mapping button on top of the interface next to the main VU meter.

Please have a look for a more detailed description of the MIDI Mapping feature.

Working with DSP FX and chains

Track DSP devices are shown in the mixer-rack above the track levels and the other channel strip controls. Right clicking an effect gives you a set of options for the selected FX and for the whole chain. For example to initialize, cut, copy paste a device or to set up which parameters you would like to see in the mixer for every DSP.

Drag and Drop, Copy and Paste

To copy a DSP from one track to the another, simply click on it with the mouse and move it to its new place while still holding down the mouse button. Pressing CONTROL while dropping the DSP will create a copy of the device. This and more can also be done with the standard copy/paste key commands (CONTROL-c, CONTROL-x and CONTROL-v).

Please note: Copying or moving an effect from one track to another, will not move also the automation for the device. When moving a device the original automation will be removed.