LiveSet · effects & master
The effects and the master bus
The effects you reach for on stage are built in, in stereo, with typed parameters, and the master bus is working the whole time underneath them. So what you play comes out loud and safe without a mastering session, and a rough idea tried out in the room already sits like a record.
Thirty effects, built in
Thirty stereo effect units. Here is the spread, grouped by what you use them for: every one of them named.
EQ & filter
A three-band EQ, plus a multi-mode filter with a 4-pole, 24 dB-per-octave low-pass in the 303 mould for the sweeps techno lives on.
Dynamics
Compressor, gate, transient shaper and de-esser, pull a sound forward, hold it back or tame the top.
Delay & reverb
Delay, grain delay, a plate-and-room reverb and a convolution reverb for real spaces and impulse responses.
Dirt
Saturator, bitcrusher, sub-harmonic and vinyl noise, for warmth, grit and the weight underneath a kick.
Movement
Phaser, chorus, flanger, tremolo, vibrato, auto-pan and an auto-filter that moves on its own.
Rhythmic
Beat-repeat, stutter, tape-stop and freeze, glitch and stall the signal in time.
Stereo & tone
Stereo widener, mid-side and a resonator for placing a sound in the field and tuning its body.
Voice & loop
Vocoder and a looper, for talking pads and layers you build up on the spot.
Thirty is the count of effects, and a chain holds more than effects. It also takes a gain-and-pan utility, a bus-sidechain node for ducking one track against another, and a slot that hosts your own VST3 or CLAP. That slot is a plugin host, so we do not count what goes in it as ours.
The saturator and the bitcrusher run through FIR oversampling. So the harmonics they add stay where they belong instead of folding back into the mix as harshness.
Where effects sit
Where a chain can go
An effect chain can live at three scopes, and they run in order. Per voice shapes a single instrument. Per pattern processes what that pattern plays. Per slot treats the whole thing as it goes out.
Each unit has its own bypass, so you can build up a heavy chain and drop parts of it in and out while the track runs. Sidechain lets one track duck to another: feed the kick into a compressor on the bass and you get the pump without touching a fader.
The master bus
This makes a fresh set sound mastered. It is always running, and most of it you never have to think about.
The always-on chain
A 25 Hz low-cut, a glue compressor, tape saturation and a trim. It holds the low end and pulls the mix together.
True-peak limiter
A brickwall true-peak limiter with a −0.3 dB ceiling sits at the end. It is always on, so nothing you do clips the output.
DC blocker
A DC blocker cleans up any offset before the signal leaves, so none of your headroom is spent on an offset you cannot hear.
Multiband compression
Multiband compression is on the bus for control across the spectrum, so one band cannot pump the rest.
LUFS & true-peak metering
LUFS and true-peak meters tell you how loud you really are, in the terms a mastering engineer would use.
Mastered by default
Put together, what you play is already loud and safe, and it sounds like a finished track without a separate mastering step.
Signal flow
How the master is built
The order is fixed and the surface is deliberately small, so it is hard to get wrong. You keep a light touch on it, and the loudness and the safety are handled underneath.
The master path, roughly
mix sum → master gain → EQ
↳ your master effects
↳ master chain · 25 Hz low-cut → glue comp → tape sat → trim
↳ multiband compression
↳ true-peak limiter · −0.3 dB ceiling
↳ DC blocker → out
↳ LUFS + true-peak metering
Where it stands
Per track and per scope
The effects, the three chain scopes, sidechain and the whole master bus are built and running today. One piece is not: a shared return bus, the kind you would send several tracks into for one reverb, is in the file format but not fully wired in the engine. Routing is per-track and per-scope effects are what you have now.