Audio effect

An audio effect is a character a track or the whole mix wears, built from units the sound passes through in nine stages — Level, Voice, Time, Tone, Dynamics, Drive, Movement, Space and Texture. Its Recipe holds Strength first, then each stage's units, each unit's settings under its name.

Give a track a character

Speed and pitch move a sound around. Character effects change what it is — a voice through a telephone, a robot, a room, a broken tape. Open a track's Sound menu and add one; it applies to that track only, so one part can be transformed while the rest of the piece stays clean.

The Sound menu opens on a picture of the track itself — its waveform, or its notes, or, for a group, the clips you arranged — and every effect on it is drawn as a box over the part of the sound it covers. Along the top of the menu sit Add effect and the track's own Pitch, with Keep voice beside it once the track is pitched. Press Add effect and the roster takes over the whole window, with one Back to leave it; pick something and you come straight back to the picture with the new effect sitting on it.

A search stands at the roster's left edge, with All, Starred and Community. The roster opens on your Starred effects, once you have any, and then six groups, all open, so everything is one scroll away: Level & tone (the precise tools, for when you know what you want), Voice (sound like someone, or something, else), Rooms (put it in a space, or through a device), Tape & age (recorded, worn, or off a slower machine), Wobble & spin (something in it moves while it plays), and Break it (tear it up, stall it, or run it backwards).

Every effect in the roster has its own play button, so you can hear it before you add it: it plays a few seconds of this track from the playhead through that effect, and adds nothing. While it plays it becomes a pause button, and hearing it again starts at once. On the Master, you hear the effect on the whole mix.

Every effect is adjustable. The sliders icon on its box opens its Recipe, in the same layout an image or video effect opens in: sections on the left, settings in the middle, and on the right every effect on this track in time order, so you can press another and move straight to it. Hover a setting's row, or hold a finger still on it, and it shows what that setting does — the sentence this page lists for it — with Learn more leading to its section here; the value does not change, and under a finger a slider waits until the finger moves before it drags. Nothing is hidden behind a preset you cannot open. While a Recipe is open, the picture stays above it with that effect's box lit and the others faded, so you can still drag the box, and the window's play button plays just the stretch it covers. Close or Escape returns you to the picture. The boxes on the picture are the whole list: there is no second listing beneath it saying the same thing again.

Every effect is made of the same nine sections, in the order the sound passes through them: Level, Voice, Time, Tone, Dynamics, Drive, Movement, Space and Texture. One effect is a different set of values over the same settings, so a word means the same setting in every effect. The View switch under the sections starts on Applied, what this effect uses; press it for All, which lists every section. A part the effect does not have yet is one row with Add: press it and its settings appear, so you can put a hall on a telephone voice without a second effect. A part's Remove takes it off again, and an effect always keeps at least one part. An effect can only do so much work at once, so when it is full, Add says so and adds nothing.

Once you change something, the effect's name on the right shows +N: how many settings you moved, and how many parts you added or removed. A changed effect also gets a star there to star it as your own, filled while it is starred. Strength comes first, with Turn off under it, which silences an effect without removing it so you can compare the sound with and without it; Turn on brings it back. The last section, More, holds Back to the original, Apply to the whole track (on the Master, the whole song) and Remove effect.

Level & tone includes an Echo: repeats of the sound at a set time, each a little darker than the one before. Time (ms) sets the gap between repeats, Feedback how many come back, Mix how loud they are against the original, and Damping (Hz) how quickly they darken. An echo can follow the beat instead of a set time: press Tempo sync in its settings and the time slider gives way to a Beat division picker — an eighth note to start — that follows the song's tempo; press it again to go back to a set time. The same switch is on every effect with a rate (the tremolo, the auto-pan, the mod filter, the mod delay).

Effects change the level the way they do in any studio tool: an EQ boost makes the track louder, a compressor's makeup raises it, a duck lowers it, and nothing puts the level back afterwards. The one exception is a safety limit — a chain that would make a track more than 24 dB louder than it went in, such as a feedback recipe ringing out of control, is turned down to that — so no effect, yours or one from the community, can hurt someone's ears.

An effect keeps sounding past the end of its box. The box decides what goes INTO the effect; a reverb's decay and an echo's repeats carry on over the sound that follows, and an effect's play button in the roster plays that tail too.

In Rooms, the Hall has 8 or 16 Lines: 16 builds a denser, smoother tail and takes a little longer to render. A hall's level stays the same whatever its Decay (s), so a longer decay makes the room bigger, not louder. On the Compressor in Level & tone, Attack (s) runs from 0.1 ms to 1 second and Release (s) from 5 ms to 1 second, finer at the short end where the useful settings sit.

A named effect from the roster remembers which one it was, even after you tune it, so its settings can take you back to the original — and an effect you save from it keeps that memory wherever you use it next.

Many effects — an equalizer, a compressor, an echo, a reverb — play live as the piece plays, so a change to one while it plays is heard straight away, with nothing to prepare. An effect that needs a whole stretch of sound in hand before it can play it — a voice transform, a reverse, a stutter, a freeze, a tape stop — is prepared instead, and so is anything your device cannot keep up with live.

Prepared effects render off to the side, so the editor never freezes while one works — even a heavy voice transform on a three-minute group leaves the controls responsive. Nothing waits on a render, not even playback: when you change an effect while the piece is playing, the piece keeps playing as it was, and the new sound takes over the moment it is ready, at the point you have reached. The same goes for a composition opening or the rest of a piece filling in after you press play. The only sign of a render is on the track itself: a track still being prepared after a second shows N% complete with its bar, or a ring in the middle of its picture when there is nothing to count yet. Changing one effect in a chain re-renders only that effect onward; the ones before it are kept.

Duck one part under another

To let a voice sit on top of a bed of music, add a duck to the music, open its Recipe, and choose the voice under Listens to. The music steps out of the way whenever the voice is talking and comes back when it stops, with controls for how much it drops and how quickly it moves.

It's an effect like any other, which means it can cover just a stretch of the part, and it can be starred and reused. What it listens to is chosen where you apply it, not stored with it — so a duck you starred and used somewhere else waits, visibly, until you pick a source for it there. Near-silence in the source is ignored, so room tone in a gap doesn't pull the music down.

Star, share and ask for effects

An effect you have tuned is worth keeping, so effects are things you can collect:

• Once you have changed an effect's settings, the star beside Close in its Recipe stars it, and it appears under Starred in the roster on every audio piece — where it has a play button too, so you can hear it on a track before you add it. Pressing the filled star takes it off. An effect you have not changed cannot be starred, because the roster already holds it.
• Posting the piece to the community shares the effects on it: other people find them under Community in the roster, each with its play button, and a press adds a copy to their track. A copy someone takes is theirs — your later changes do not reach it.
• Ask AI is the MotherFluxer mark in the roster's search. Press the expand arrows, type what you want — "make it sound like an old radio underwater" — and press the mark: it builds the effect and adds it, and you can then adjust it like any other. With nothing typed, the mark opens Discuss in Smart Edit.

An effect that arrives from AI or from the community gets the same full settings panel as the ones we ship. There is no second-class effect.

Where you can use an audio effect

• Audio — Audio

What you can do with an audio effect you made

Star · Post · Copy

Strength

• Strength — How much of this effect is applied: it scales every mix inside the effect.

Level

Gain

• Gain (dB) — Turns the sound up or down by this many decibels before the parts after it.

Voice

Voice transform

• Pitch — How high or low the voice is: 2 is an octave up, 0.5 an octave down.
• Body — How big the speaker sounds: higher is smaller, like a child; lower is larger.
• Pitch ceiling (Hz) — The highest the voice's pitch may go, so a raised voice stays a person; 0 leaves it off.
• Roughness — How rough the voice sounds, as an aged voice wavers from cycle to cycle.
• Shimmer — How much the voice's loudness flickers from cycle to cycle.
• Waver — How much the voice's pitch wavers unsteadily.
• Waver rate (Hz) — How fast the voice's pitch wavers.
• Breathiness — How breathy the voice is.
• Consonant keep — How much of the original consonants are kept, so a deeply changed voice stays clear.

Pitch snap

• Root — The key the notes snap to, in semitones above C.
• Mode — Whether the pitch snaps to a scale or holds one flat note.
  • scale · monotone
• Scale — Which notes the pitch may snap to.
  • major · minor · chromatic

Harmonizer

• Consonant gate (ms) — How long a consonant must last before the harmonies drop out for it.
• Interval ratio — How far above or below the lead this part sings: 2 is an octave up.
• Detune (cents) — How far this part is tuned away from its interval.
• Body — How big this part's singer sounds.
• Level (dB) — How loud this part is.
• Pan — Where this part sits from left to right.
• Timing from (ms) — The earliest this part may come in after the lead.
• Timing to (ms) — The latest this part may come in after the lead.
• Drift (cents) — How far this part's tuning drifts, as a real singer's would.

Ring mod

• Carrier ratio — The pitch of the tone the voice is multiplied by, against the voice's own pitch.
• Mix — How loud the metallic ring is against the original.

Whisper

• Comb smoothing (Hz) — How much the sound is smoothed so no pitch is left: more makes it a purer whisper.
• Air (dB) — How much airy treble is added to the whisper.

Vocoder

• Bands — How many bands the voice is split into: more is clearer, fewer is more robotic.
• Low band (Hz) — The lowest band the vocoder hears.
• High band (Hz) — The highest band the vocoder hears.
• Carrier (Hz) — The pitch of the built-in tone that does the talking.
• Sibilance noise — How much noise fills the top bands, so the s and t sounds come through.
• Carrier — Whether a built-in tone does the talking or another track you choose.
  • saw · track

Talkbox

• Breath — How much breath sits under the instrument, so hissing sounds still speak.
• Carrier — Whether a built-in chord does the talking or another track you choose.
  • chord · track
• Note — The notes of the built-in chord that does the talking.

Time

Speed

• Rate — How fast the sound plays, like a tape run faster or slower: pitch and length change together.

Stutter

• Repeats — How many times each slice is repeated.
• Repeat decay — How much quieter each repeat is than the one before: 1 keeps them all at one level.
• Edge fade (ms) — How softly each repeat starts and ends, so the cuts do not click.
• Division — How long each repeated slice is, as a note value of the song's tempo.
  • 1/1 · 1/2 · 1/4 · 1/8 · 1/16 · 1/32

Freeze

• Voices — How many held copies make up the drone: more makes it smoother.
• Spray (ms) — How far the held copies are scattered from each other.
• Loop (ms) — The length of the held moment that loops.

Granular

• Grains — How many grains play at once.
• Min grain (ms) — The shortest a grain can be.
• Max grain (ms) — The longest a grain can be.
• Capture window (s) — How far back the grains are taken from.
• Pitch set — Whether the grains land on musical intervals or all at the original pitch.
  • musical · unison

Bubbles

• Rate (per s) — How many bubbles rise each second.
• Smallest (mm) — The size of the smallest bubbles: smaller is higher pitched.
• Largest (mm) — The size of the largest bubbles: larger is lower pitched.
• Level (dB) — How loud the bubbles are.

Wobble

• Wow rate (Hz) — How fast the slow wow of a stretched tape drifts.
• Wow depth (ms) — How far the slow wow bends the pitch.
• Flutter rate (Hz) — How fast the quick flutter of a tape transport shivers.
• Flutter depth (ms) — How far the quick flutter bends the pitch.
• Stereo skew — How differently the left and right sides wobble, for an unsteady stereo picture.

Tone

Filter

• Frequency (Hz) — Where the filter acts in the sound, from the deepest bass to the highest treble.
• Resonance — How narrow the filter is around its frequency: higher focuses it on a thinner slice and makes it ring.
• Gain (dB) — How much a peak or shelf filter lifts or cuts at its frequency; the other types ignore it.
• Slope (stages) — How many filters are stacked in a row: each one makes the cut steeper.
• Type — What the filter does: keep the lows or the highs, keep or remove a band, or lift or cut a peak or shelf.
  • Low pass · High pass · Band pass · Notch · Peak · Low shelf · High shelf

Equalizer

• Output (dB) — Turns the whole equalized sound up or down, so a boosted curve can be brought back to level.
• Type — What this band does: lift or cut a peak or a shelf, keep the lows or the highs, or keep or remove a band.
  • Peak · Low shelf · High shelf · Low pass · High pass · Band pass · Notch
• Frequency (Hz) — Where the filter acts in the sound, from the deepest bass to the highest treble.
• Resonance — How narrow the filter is around its frequency: higher focuses it on a thinner slice and makes it ring.
• Gain (dB) — How much a peak or shelf filter lifts or cuts at its frequency; the other types ignore it.

Dynamics

Compressor

• Attack (s) — How quickly the compressor turns a loud moment down once it starts.
• Release (s) — How quickly the level comes back up once the sound falls below the threshold.
• Threshold (dB) — The level above which the compressor starts turning the sound down.
• Ratio — How hard it turns down what goes over the threshold: 1 leaves it alone, 20 nearly flattens it.
• Knee (dB) — How gently the compression begins around the threshold: 0 starts it all at once.
• Makeup (dB) — Turns the compressed sound back up afterwards.

Duck

• Mix — How far this track drops while the track it listens to is sounding: all the way is silent.
• Attack (s) — How quickly this track drops once the other track starts sounding.
• Release (s) — How quickly this track comes back once the other track stops.

Limiter

• Ceiling (dB) — The loudest the sound may reach: no peak gets past it.
• Look-ahead (ms) — How long before a peak the limiter starts turning down, so the peak is caught cleanly.
• Release (ms) — How quickly the level comes back up after a peak: short values pump.

Level flatten

• Mix — How much of the change in loudness is evened out: all the way makes every syllable the same level.
• Max boost (dB) — The most a quiet syllable may be turned up.
• Silence floor (dB) — Below this the sound is left alone, so silence stays silent.

Drive

Drive

• Drive — How hard the sound is pushed into saturation: more gives a rougher, louder grit.
• Asymmetry — How lopsided the saturation is: higher adds the growl of even harmonics.
• Trim (dB) — Turns the driven sound up or down afterwards.

Bitcrush

• Sample hold (Hz) — How often the sound is sampled: lower makes it grainier and adds a metallic fizz.
• Bits — How many steps of loudness are kept: fewer makes it harsher and noisier.
• Drive — How hard the sound is pushed into the crusher.

Movement

Swept filter

• Sweep low (Hz) — The lowest point the swept filter reaches.
• Sweep high (Hz) — The highest point the swept filter reaches.
• Rate (Hz) — How many times a second the filter sweeps up and down.
• Resonance — How sharp the swept filter is: higher makes it whistle.
• Muffle floor (dB) — How far the muffled sound may drop: higher keeps more of it, like a voice through a wall.

Mod delay

• Time (ms) — The delay's resting time: short is a chorus, longer a doubling.
• Depth (ms) — How far the delay time swings: more wobbles the pitch further.
• Rate (Hz) — How many times a second the delay time swings.
• Feedback — How much of the delayed sound is fed back in: more turns it glassy and metallic.
• Damping (Hz) — How dark the fed-back sound gets.
• Mix — How loud the moving copy is against the original.

Tremolo

• Rate (Hz) — How many times a second the level pulses.
• Mix — How deep the pulse is: all the way drops to silence at each dip.
• Shape — Whether the pulse is a steady wave or an unsteady drift, like a shaking hand.
  • sine · drift

Auto-pan

• Rate (Hz) — How many times a second the sound moves from side to side.
• Mix — How far the sound moves: all the way reaches each side.

Rotary

• Slow speed (Hz) — How fast the speaker spins at its slow setting.
• Fast speed (Hz) — How fast the speaker spins at its fast setting.
• Crossover (Hz) — Where the sound splits between the spinning horn and the bass rotor.
• Mix — How loud the spinning speaker is against the original.
• Speed — Whether the speaker spins slow, fast, or speeds up from one to the other.
  • slow · fast · ramp

Orbit

• Orbit rate (Hz) — How many times a second the sound circles around your head.
• Room — How much of the room is heard around the circling sound.

Tempo sync

• Tempo sync — Locks this effect's timing to the song's tempo instead of a set time.
• Beat division — The note value the effect locks to, against the song's tempo.
  • 1/1 · 1/2 · 1/4 · 1/8 · 1/16 · 1/32

Space

Doubler

• Dry (dB) — How loud the original performance is under its doubles.
• Delay (ms) — How late this take lands after the original.
• Detune (cents) — How far this take is tuned away from the original.
• Wander rate (Hz) — How quickly this take's timing wanders.
• Wander depth (ms) — How far this take's timing wanders.
• Walk (ms) — How far this take drifts slowly in time, as a second performance would.
• Pan — Where this take sits from left to right.
• Level (dB) — How loud this take is.
• Tone tilt (dB) — Whether this take sounds darker or brighter than the original.

Comb

• Time (ms) — The length of the short delay: it sets the pitch the comb rings at.
• Feedback — How much of the delay comes back around: more rings longer; below zero flips its color.
• Damping (Hz) — Where the filter inside the loop acts, so the ring loses its top or narrows to a band.
• Damping resonance — How narrow the filter inside the loop is.
• Mix — How loud the comb's ring is against the original.
• Topology — Whether the delay is added once, for a color, or fed back, for a ring.
  • feedforward · feedback
• Damping type — Whether the filter inside the loop removes the top or keeps a band.
  • Low pass · Band pass

Echo

• Time (ms) — The gap between repeats.
• Feedback — How much of each repeat comes back as the next one: more gives more repeats.
• Mix — How loud the repeats are against the original.
• Damping (Hz) — How quickly the repeats darken: lower loses the treble sooner.

Hall

• Lines — How dense the hall's tail is: 16 is smoother and takes a little longer to render.
• Decay (s) — How long the hall rings before it dies away; its level stays the same, so longer makes it bigger.
• Damping (Hz) — How quickly the hall's tail loses its treble.
• Pre-delay (ms) — How long before the hall answers the sound.
• Size — How big the hall sounds.
• Mix — How loud the hall is against the original.

Space

• Decay (s) — How long the space rings before it dies away.
• Pre-delay (ms) — How long before the space answers the sound: longer feels like a bigger room.
• IR low cut (Hz) — Below this the space's ring is cut, so it does not boom.
• IR high cut (Hz) — Above this the space's ring is cut, so it sounds softer.
• Low shelf (Hz) — Where the low tilt of the space's ring starts.
• Low shelf (dB) — How much the lows of the space's ring are lifted or cut.
• High shelf (Hz) — Where the high tilt of the space's ring starts.
• High shelf (dB) — How much the highs of the space's ring are lifted or cut.
• Air start (Hz) — Where the ring's treble starts as it begins to fade, as air soaks up the highs; 0 leaves it off.
• Air end (Hz) — Where the ring's treble ends up once the air has soaked it up.
• Air fall (s) — How quickly the air soaks up the ring's treble.
• Mix — How loud the space is against the original.
• Width — How wide the space spreads across the left and right.
• Dry low cut (Hz) — Cuts the lows of the original too, as a small box would; 0 leaves it off.
• Dry high cut (Hz) — Cuts the highs of the original too, as a small box would; 0 leaves it off.
• At (ms) — When this early reflection arrives after the sound.
• Length (ms) — How long this early reflection lasts.
• Gain — How loud this early reflection is.
• Time (ms) — The length of this flutter echo: short is a pipe, longer a hard corridor.
• Feedback — How long this flutter echo keeps bouncing.
• Damping (Hz) — How dark this flutter echo gets as it bounces.
• Frequency (Hz) — The pitch this resonance rings at, like a metal or glass object.
• Resonance — How pure and long the resonance rings.
• Gain — How loud this resonance is.
• Frequency (Hz) — Where this color is added to the space's ring.
• Resonance — How narrow this color is.
• Gain (dB) — How much this color lifts or cuts the space's ring.
• Frequency (Hz) — Where this color is added to the original sound.
• Resonance — How narrow this color is.
• Gain (dB) — How much this color lifts or cuts the original sound.

Texture

Hiss

• Low edge (Hz) — The lowest frequency the hiss reaches.
• High edge (Hz) — The highest frequency the hiss reaches.
• Level — How loud the hiss is under the sound.

Crackle

• Ticks per second — How many crackles land each second.
• Level — How loud the crackles are.
• Band centre (Hz) — Where in the range the crackles sit: low is a thump, high is a tick.

Hum

• Mains (Hz) — The hum's pitch: the mains frequency, 50 or 60 in most places.
• Harmonics — How many overtones of the hum are added above it.
• Level — How loud the hum is.

Squelch

• Key-up burst (s) — How long the burst of noise is when the radio keys up.
• Un-key tail (s) — How long the noise tail is when the radio lets go.
• Burst level (dB) — How loud the key-up burst is against the speech.
• Hiss level (dB) — How loud the radio hiss is.