Understanding Studio One’s signal flow

Signal flow refers to the path that audio signals take through the mixer and its components, including the plugin effects we discussed in the previous chapter. Typical signal flow paths in today’s music production programs are highly flexible, allowing producers to implement creative and innovative mixing techniques, but this also brings more complexity. It is important to understand the topography of signal flow in order to make the most of the potential presented by this versatile technology, and that’s what we will cover in this section.

The anatomy of a mixer channel

Let’s start by exploring a channel on the Mix Console. Every track in the Arrange window has a corresponding channel in the Mix window that looks like this:

Figure 13.1: A channel on the Mix Console

Let’s break it down:

• The top part of this channel hosts two sections titled Inserts and Sends. In Studio...