MIXING & EFFECTS

Plugin Effects

This section covers the Mixer functionality and interface.

Each mixer track can have up to 8 external (plugin) effects hosted in its effects bank (10). For a list of supported plugin standards, see Supported Effects Standards.

To open a new effect in the effects bank, select a free slot in the bank and open it's pop-up menu (A). In the Select submenu, select a plugin to insert, or click More... to see a full list of effects available to FL Studio (for more information see the menu description below). NOTE: To remove an effect, simply select "None" in the Select submenu.

Once you insert the effect, you will see the plugin's editor window (a window where you can adjust all settings of the plugin). You can click the effect's label (B) to show/hide this window.

While working on your project, you may want to bypass some of the filters while adjusting your mix. You can use the mute switch (C) to disable an effect temporarily (this switch is automatable as well). You can also fine tune the mix levels ("wet" and "dry" signal) of each effect with the Effect Mix Level knob (D). Turn this wheel maximum to left to effectively mute the effect. Turn it maximum to right to mix the effect at 100%.

Effect Pop-up Menu (A) :

• Select - Contains a list of all effects selected as favorites. Selecting an effect from this menu will assign it to the corresponding plugin slot. Click More... to open the Select plugin window, which contains a list of all effects available to FL Studio. Double-click a plugin name to assign it to the effect slot. Click the check box preceding each plugin to mark it as a favorite (all effects preceded by a check mark will appear in the favorites list). NOTE: To see newly installed plugins, click Refresh in the bottom of the Select plugin window and select Fast Scan (it is recommended that you use Fast Scan instead of Scan & Verify, because the latter may crash FL Studio with some badly programmed plugins).
• Presets - Contains a submenu with a list of presets for the effect. In the bottom of the list you can see the Randomize and Hybridize commands. Randomize gives random values to the published (i.e. known to FL Studio) effect settings. Hybridize is a switch. When enabled, selecting a preset will load a random 50% of the settings in a preset, so you can quickly mix different presets and create new effects. The Presets menu is disabled if there is no effect assigned to the plugin slot.
• Browse Presets - Opens the plugin's presets folder in the Browser panel. The Browser has better capability of displaying large number of presets.
• Save Preset as - Allows you to save custom presets for the plugin assigned to the plugin slot. Presets are saved as FST files. It is recommended that you save preset files in the default location FL Studio chooses, so they can be properly detected and added to the Presets menu.
• Last Tweaked Parameter - Displays the standard popup menu for the last parameter tweaked on the plugin's interface (applies only to automatable parameters). This option is useful for VST effects that have their own interface (as you can not open the FL Studio property menu by right-clicking a control in them).
• Browse Parameters - Opens the plugin's parameters folder in the Browser panel. The Browser will list all automatable properties defined by the plugin, even if they are not automated in the current project.
• Link to MIDI Controller - Allows you to link the effect to a MIDI controller, so its settings can be remotely controlled. For more information, see Live Recording Using MIDI Controller.
• View Editor - Shows/hides the effect's editor window.
• Set Name - Opens a box where you can edit the name of the plugin.
• Smart Disable - If this option is checked, FL Studio will pause the effect if the mixer track it belongs to receives 4 seconds of audio silence. The plugin will resume again at the moment any sound is received in the track. This feature works smoothly, without clicks, pops or other artifacts while enabling/disabling the effect, but it will not work correctly with plugins that apply "long effects", such as reverb that has more than 4 seconds long decay, delay lines and similar effects. However, it will work fine with all kinds of equalizers, flangers, phasers, compressors etc. Using Smart Disable may significantly lower the CPU usage of your songs.
• Move Up - Moves the effect one slot up.
• Move Down - Moves the effect one slot down.

Note that you can access the same pop-up menu from the effect's editor window: