Mix your song

Mixing happens in the mixer, which shows one channel strip per track: fader, pan, sends, and the plugin chain, with the main output on the right.

Levels and pan

Start with faders and nothing else. Get the balance right at this stage and every plugin decision afterwards is easier.

Pan places a track in the stereo field. On a mono track it moves the signal; on a stereo track it balances the two sides.

Plugins on a track

Each strip carries a chain of plugins that process in order, top to bottom. Add one and it opens; drag to reorder; bypass to hear the difference without removing it. The stock Neutral collection covers the everyday work (EQ, compressor, limiter, saturation, reverb, delay, chorus, transient shaper, imager, and metering), and every VST3 and Audio Unit you already own sits beside them.

Plugins run isolated: if one crashes, the session keeps playing and only that plugin goes quiet.

Sends

A send copies a track’s signal to another track. The usual reason is one reverb shared by several tracks instead of a reverb per track.

Where the copy is taken from matters, and both choices are available. A post-fader send follows the fader, so pulling the track down pulls its reverb down with it; this is what you want almost always. A pre-fader send ignores the fader, which is how you build a headphone mix or hold an effect while the dry signal drops away.

Sidechains

A send can feed a specific plugin’s sidechain input rather than the destination’s main signal: a compressor ducking under a kick, for instance. Because the send names the plugin instance, reordering the chain doesn’t break it.

You also choose where in the source track the signal is tapped: before its plugins, after a specific plugin, after a group, or after the whole chain. Tapping before the source’s own processing is the difference between keying off a raw kick and keying off a kick that has already been compressed.

Reading the meters

Track meters show level. The main output meter also measures loudness the way streaming services do (LUFS) and true peak, which catches peaks that sit between samples and would clip on conversion even though no sample exceeds the ceiling.

For a target, streaming platforms normalize around −14 LUFS integrated. Mixing to roughly that with true peak under −1 dBTP travels well. Numbers are a check, not a goal: if it sounds right and the meters agree, it is right.

Automation

Anything on the strip can move over time: volume, pan, send levels, and any plugin parameter. Automation is covered on its own page.