Effects and the rack

What the rack is

The Effects Rack is the right-side panel of the DAW. It holds a chain of audio effects that process whatever the rack target is set to:

• Master Bus (default) - effects apply to the whole mix on the way out
• A specific track - effects apply only to that track

Click any channel strip in the mixer to point the rack at that track. The strip highlights and the chain shown updates to match. (The old target dropdown is gone.)

Adding an effect

1. Click + Add Effect at the top of the rack
2. The menu lists effects grouped by category: Dynamics, EQ and Filters, Time, Modulation, Distortion, Spatial, Utility
3. Free effects open immediately. Pro effects are marked with a PRO badge and require an upgrade.
4. The effect appears in the rack with default parameters and is active right away

Effects process in order from top to bottom. Drag them to reorder.

Per-effect controls

Every effect card has:

• A bypass toggle (eye icon) - turns the effect off without removing it. Useful for A/B comparison.
• A remove button (X) - removes the effect from the chain
• Knobs and sliders for each parameter

Right-click an effect for a context menu (reset, copy settings, paste settings).

Whole-chain controls

Once a channel has inserts, two controls sit in the rack title row:

• ACTIVE / BYPASSED - switches the entire chain off in one click, so you can A/B the processed channel against the dry signal. Switching it back on restores exactly what was on before: if you had deliberately bypassed a single insert, it stays bypassed.
• CLEAR CHAIN - removes every insert on the channel. It always asks first, and Ctrl+Z brings the whole chain back with every dialled parameter intact.

Neither appears on an empty channel.

Starter Chains

The Starter Chain button loads a ready-made chain. The menu has two parts:

• My Chains - anything you saved yourself with Save this channel's chain
• Starter Chains - the factory chains that ship with the DAW

Factory chains cover eight genres (Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop, Electronic, R&B, Acoustic, Metal, Podcast) across nine instrument roles, and are identical for every user on every plan - "Rock Bass" is the same known-good starting point on any account.

The menu reads your track name and shows only what fits. A track called Bass, Bass Gtr, 808 or Sub gets the eight bass chains; Lead Vocals gets the eight vocal chains. Each entry leads with what it sounds like, with the chain underneath in short codes:

Hip-Hop Vocals - Cut low, compressed hard, right up front - Flt-EQ-Cmp-Rev-Dly

Recognised roles: vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano, keys, synth, strings, fx. A track whose name matches none of them (Track 1, Audio 3) shows no starter chains, and neither does the Master Bus - rename the track to turn them on. You can always add effects by hand either way.

Saving a chain under a genre's name keeps the factory version intact underneath, so customising "Rock" never overwrites the original.

Everything in the rack is undoable

Ctrl+Z works on the whole rack. Adding an effect, removing one, bypassing one, and every knob move all go on the same undo stack as the rest of your edits, so you can push a sound somewhere strange and walk it straight back.

Two details worth knowing:

• One undo step per knob gesture. Dragging a knob from 20 to 80 is a single undoable move, not one step per pixel, so a couple of Ctrl+Z presses will not leave you halfway through a sweep. Undoing a knob move restores just that parameter and disturbs nothing else in the rack.
• Undo restores the exact chain order. Remove a reverb from the middle of a chain, undo, and it comes back where it was, not appended to the end. Order matters to the sound, so the undo preserves it.

Rack changes also count as unsaved work, so they mark the project dirty, get picked up by auto-save, and trigger the save prompt if you try to leave with them unsaved.

The free lineup

These effects are available on all plans and are exported correctly when you render the mix:

The Pro lineup

These require a paid plan. They appear with a PRO badge in the menu and produce no sound on render unless your account is on a qualifying tier.

• Limiter - hard cap on output level, used at the master bus to prevent clipping
• Multiband Compressor - independent compression on three frequency bands
• De-Esser - reduces harsh "s" sounds on vocals
• 8-Band Parametric EQ - surgical frequency control
• Gate - silences audio below a threshold (cleans up bleed)
• Tape Saturation - warm analog character
• Convolution Reverb - real-room impulse responses
• Vocoder - turn instrumental into a robotic voice
• Pitch Correction - tune vocals to a key
• Stereo Width - widen or narrow the stereo image
• Glitch - rhythmic stutter and chop

For the full menu and what each does, browse the Effects Store (the store icon in the rack header).

Master bus vs track effects

A typical mix uses a mix of both. Most tracks get one or two per-track effects (compressor, EQ), and the master bus gets a final compressor or limiter to glue everything together.

Effects and export

When you click Export, the renderer rebuilds the same effect chains in an offline audio context and processes the mix faster than realtime. Free effects render exactly as you hear them. Pro effects are skipped if your plan does not include them.

A 2-second tail is added to the export so reverb and delay can decay naturally.

Browse the Effects Store

Click the store icon (top-right of the rack) to open the Effects Store. You can browse the full Free and Premium lineups, see thumbnails and descriptions, and tap Back to DAW to return.

The Store is a discovery surface today. Premium effects unlock automatically with the matching plan - there is nothing to install.

Add effects by asking

You can also add an effect to a track or the master bus by asking the AI-Engineer: "add a compressor to the drums", "put a reverb on the vocals". It is undoable like any effect you add by hand.

Where to go next

• Mixing - balance the tracks the effects sit on
• Mastering - the master-bus chain
• Export and render - render the final mix with effects baked in