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: right-click / long-press a track and choose Rename Track (in the timeline header or the mixer, clicking the name plate selects the track). In the Edit view's channel-strip inspector, the name plate is an editable field you can type into directly.
• 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 choice affects how it records and monitors and which inputs are offered. Most mics are mono; synths, stereo sub-mixes, and many virtual instruments are stereo.

What a track can hold as input

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

• No Input — a playback-only lane (e.g. an imported file).
• 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). The strip is organized into a fixed, musical signal flow from top to bottom:

INPUT  →  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 (always first in the chain).
• The processing chain — Filter, Gate, EQ, Compressor, De-Esser, and up to six plug-in Inserts. These can be reordered to taste.
• Pan — places the signal in the stereo field.
• Fader — the track's level, with a meter beside it.
• Output — which bus or hardware output the track feeds, plus aux and cue sends for effects and headphone mixes.

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 built-in 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 stays first and the fader/meter stay last; everything between them is yours to arrange. Plug-in inserts can be placed anywhere in that chain too.

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.
• 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.
• 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. 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.

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

Next: The Audio Processors →