CHANNEL SETTINGS
The Miscellaneous Channel Settings page contains various generator settings. These settings appear in all generators (including third party ones).
This section contains four wheels that control the volume (VOL), panning (PAN), cutoff (CUT) and resonance (RES) levels of the channel. They duplicate, more or less, the functionality of other controls found in the Channel Settings window. However, they are still useful for some reasons:
Easier automation - You can, for example, create a fade in/out effects for a channel using the volume adjustment wheel instead of the channel volume control. This allows you to independently set the overall volume level using the channel volume wheel, without needing to recreate the automation data. Another example is to use the pan adjustment wheel in this section to create panning LFO without automating the channel pan wheel - so you can adjust the overall panning without recreating any automation data.
Wider range - The volume adjustment wheel has a range of 0% to 200% as a difference from the channel volume wheel (0%-100%). This way you can preamp the volume up to twice louder the original level without using additional effects for that purpose.
Using Cut/Cut By you can set triggering of a note in one channel to cut notes in another one. To do this you set the Cut value (the LCD on the left) to some number in the channel that will cut notes and then set the Cut By value (the LCD on the right) to the same number in another channel (that will be cut from the first one). FL Studio will not detect if the Cut value is set to the same number in several channels, so you may freely create any combination to suit your needs. You can also make a channel to cut itself - just set its Cut/Cut By values to the same number. FL Studio will do this automatically (finding unique numbers, not used in other channels) if you check the Cut Itself button.
Please note that cutting just sets all notes' envelopes to release state. So if release you set is long, you will still hear a note fading out after it was cut.
This section will not appear in the TS404 generator, because it uses different approach for generating its sound.
Drag up and down in the Max Polyphony LCD (MAX) to reduce the maximum number of voices this channel will play simultaneously. Setting this property to lower number reduces the amount of CPU used to play the song. If the LCD displays dashes, this means that polyphony is not restricted to any number.
Turning on the Mono button sets the generator to monophonic mode (maximum one note played at a time). In this mode, when two notes overlap (the overlap amount does not matter) they will "slide" one to another (including their properties - cutoff, resonance and panning). You can set the transition length with the Portamento Time wheel.
Turning on the Porta button enables the portamento feature for this channel (sliding the pitch from note to note). In FL Studio the portamento transition includes also all other properties of the note (cutoff, resonance and panning).
Portamento Time wheel (SLIDE) is used to set the slide length when portamento is turned one. This setting is also used for overlapping notes in Monophonic mode. The more you turn the wheel to right, the longer the slide.
This section will not appear in a TS404 channel, because it works only in monophonic mode.
NOTE: Portamento and sliding of overlapping notes is not supported by DXi and VSTi generators. It may also not be supported by some Fruity Plugin generators (those that do not support pitch bending).
The preview keyboard lets you preview (left-click a key) the generator, sets the root key (right-click a key), and set key region of the channel (drag the gray ruler to define the region).
Root Key - The orange rectangle in the ruler above the piano keys shows the root key of the channel. Since each sample has particular pitch (except probably noise samples), FL Studio has to know how to interpret it - when you set the root key to C6, FL Studio maps pitches considering that when played at its original speed, sample has pitch of C6. All other notes are generated by changing sample's speed (and thus changing its pitch). So actually setting the root key higher makes all notes sound lower. For example if a sample has pitch C5, and you map it to C6, FL Studio will consider that C5 sample as C6, thus shifting all notes one octave down. To set the root key right-click a key on the preview keyboard.
Key Region - When you set key region for a channel, all note events outside the region will be ignored (not played). This feature is not useful when using a channel by itself. However, when using a channel as a layer in a Layer channel to create complex instruments, you might want some of the layers to play only in their specified region, for example, having different sample for each octave (each sample is placed in a separate channel). Drag the ruler above the piano keys to define key region for this channel. Once created, you can edit the limits of the region by dragging its end points.
The panel above the preview keyboard contains some additional options: