4 · Tracks & the Channel Strip

A track is the basic building block of a session. Each track has:

• a lane on the timeline where its audio clips live, and
• a channel strip in the mixer that shapes and routes its sound.

This chapter explains tracks and gives an overview of the channel strip. The individual processors are covered in detail in The Audio Processors, and the other kinds of strips (buses, master, etc.) in Channel Strip Types.

Adding and managing tracks

• Add a track: main menu ☰ ▸ Add Track.
• Rename: click a track's title to open the Rename dialog. This works on the timeline track header (its name), and on the channel strip — both the colored name plate at the top of the strip and the name under the fader. Renaming always opens a dialog; there is no inline typing on the strip. You can also right-click / long-press a track and choose Rename Track. In the mixer, the colored name plate at the top of the strip is the strip's selection target (click to select, ⌘-click to add or remove, ⇧-click to range-select), so rename that strip from the name under the fader or from Rename Track in its menu.
• Color: give a track a color to keep your session readable — clips, meters, and the minimap all pick up the color. Choose Automatic to let AnalogDAW assign a color, or pick one of eight colors (red, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, purple, pink).
• Reorder: drag track headers to change their order.
• Remove: from the channel strip's options.

A track can be mono or stereo (the MO / ST toggle on the strip). The choice affects how it records and monitors, which inputs are offered, and how its clips play back: a mono track sums its audio to a single channel, so a stereo clip on a mono track is folded to mono (then placed by the pan control), while a stereo track keeps left and right separate. The fader's meter follows suit — one bar for mono, side-by-side L/R bars for stereo. Most mics are mono; synths, stereo sub-mixes, and many virtual instruments are stereo. When you import an audio file, the new track's mode is set to match the file (stereo file → stereo track, mono file → mono track).

What a track can hold as input

A track's input source is where new recordings come from:

• No Input — normally a playback-only lane (e.g. an imported file). It can also receive and record a network/generator plug-in such as SonoBus when that insert is placed before Record Point.
• Hardware Input — a physical input channel (or stereo pair) on your audio interface or built-in mic. See Recording Audio.
• Instrument — a hosted virtual instrument you play live and record as audio. See Recording Instruments.

Audio file clips sit on the track's lane independently of the input source, so a track can both play back existing clips and record new ones.

The channel strip at a glance

Open a track's channel strip by selecting the track (in the mixer, or by selecting its header in the timeline). Selecting more than one strip makes them edit together — see Ganged editing. The strip is organized into a fixed, musical signal flow from top to bottom:

INPUT  →  [ RECORD POINT → PREAMP / COLOR → FILTER → GATE → EQ → COMPRESSOR → DE-ESSER → INSERTS ]  →  PAN  →  FADER  →  OUTPUT
            └──────────────────────── reorderable processing chain ────────────────────────────────┘

• Input — pick the hardware input or instrument, set mono/stereo, arm for recording, and enable input monitoring.
• Preamp / Color — analog-style gain staging and harmonic color. It leads the chain by default, but is reorderable like everything else — so you can place an insert (e.g. an amp-sim) ahead of it and still color the result with the built-in preamp.
• The processing chain — Record Point, Preamp/Color, Filter, Gate, EQ, Compressor, De-Esser, and up to six plug-in Inserts. These can be reordered to taste. Audio above Record Point is printed into new takes; processors below it remain editable.
• Pan — places the signal in the stereo field.
• Fader — the track's level, with a meter beside it. The same fader appears as a horizontal control in the timeline track header and as the tall fader on the mixer channel strip; both share one dB value and one Logic-style taper, so they always match. Hold ⇧ (Shift) while dragging for fine control, and double-click the cap to reset to 0 dB.
• Output — which bus or hardware output the track feeds, plus aux and cue sends for effects and headphone mixes. If you give a mix bus a color, every strip routed to it tints its Output button that color, so you can scan the console and see the routing at a glance. Strips feeding the master, or feeding a bus you have not colored, keep the neutral yellow.

Strip sections in the mixer

To keep strips compact, the mixer shows one section at a time. Tap the section tabs to switch a strip between:

In the timeline's inline inspector you get the same sections for the selected track and, alongside it, the strip of the bus or master it routes to.

Reordering the processing chain

The order of the processors is not fixed. Open the chain-order control on the strip and drag stages to rearrange them — for example, EQ before the compressor versus after, or gate before EQ. The Preamp/Color stage is draggable too, so you can run a plug-in insert in front of it (a common trick: an amp-sim first, then the built-in preamp for coloration). Only the pan/fader/meter stay fixed at the end; everything ahead of them — the preamp and Record Point included — is yours to arrange. Plug-in inserts can be placed anywhere in that chain. Record Point cannot be removed: move it above everything for dry recording, or below only the processors you want committed to the new audio file.

Mute, Solo, Arm, and Monitor

Each track has these core controls (the M and S buttons sit by the fader; the R and I buttons sit in the input/inserts section):

• Mute — the "M" button — silences the track. Lights blue when engaged.
• Solo — the "S" button — silences everything except soloed tracks, so you can isolate what you're working on. Soloing is smart about buses and groups. Lights yellow when engaged.
• Arm — the "R" button — enables the track for recording. Only armed tracks record when you press Record. It's disabled until the track has an input assigned. Lights red when engaged. See Recording Audio.
• Input Monitor — the "I" button — routes the live input through the track's processing so you can hear it while you set up and record. Lights green when engaged.

You can also arm, disarm, mute, and solo from a track's right-click / long-press menu. When tracks are joined in a track group, clip editing, arm, mute, and solo propagate to all members at once — see Mixing.

Next: The Audio Processors →