Setting Levels

Documentation / Contents - Audio Panel

• Overview of the Audio Panel
  • What It Controls, and What It Does Not
  • Two Faces
  • If There Is No Sound Card
• Anatomy of the Window
  • The Device Area
  • A Strip, Top to Bottom
  • The Control Rows
  • The Message Line
  • Selecting a Strip
• Setting Levels
  • The Faders
  • Group Sliders
  • Mute
  • Monitor
  • Meter
  • Sample Rate
  • What Is Not Persisted
• Meters, Peaks, and Clipping
  • Turning Them On
  • The dB Ladder
  • How They Move
  • When There Is No Signal
• Devices and Backends
  • Backends
  • The Default Input and Output
  • Choosing What Is Shown
  • Pinning a Device
  • Input Source and Output Destination
• The Menus
  • File
  • Selected
  • View
  • Options
  • Default
  • Help
  • The Button 3 Menu
• Dialogs
  • Open and Save As
  • Device Preferences
  • About
• Keys and the Command Line
  • Keys
  • The Headless Command Line
  • Diagnostics
    • Finding the Right Mixer Stage
• Settings and Files
  • The Configuration File
  • What Is Deliberately Not Saved
  • Environment Variables
• The Canonical Face
  • What Is Different
  • What Works
  • What Is Inert
  • Honest About Its Own Evidence
• The Audio Panel and Desktop Sounds
  • The Difference
  • Which One Do I Want

Other cards

• Copyright Information

Setting Levels

The Faders

Each channel of each device has a fader. Moving it writes a gain value to the hardware immediately. There is no Apply.

The printed scale beside the faders runs 0 to 10. On an input strip the faders set input attenuation, which is to say the recording level. On an output strip they set the playback level.

Left and right have separate faders. By default they move together, because Group Sliders is on; see below.

Group Sliders

Selected > Group Sliders, on by default. While it is on, dragging one channel of a device drags the other with it and writes both to the hardware. Turn it off to set an imbalance deliberately, for instance to correct a channel that runs hot.

Mute

Output strips carry a Mute checkbox. Ticking it sets the hardware mute, greys that strip's meters and maps a MUTED banner into the strip.

The faders stay live while a device is muted, so you can set a level before you unmute.

If the backend cannot read the device's mute state, the checkbox is insensitive rather than lying about it.

Monitor

Input strips carry a Monitor checkbox. It routes that input straight to the output so you can hear what is being recorded.

Use headphones. On speakers this feeds back.

Turning Monitor on writes the level it remembers, or half scale if it has none, then reads the value back to confirm the card took it, stepping the level up until something sticks. Turning it off writes a hard zero.

The checkbox is insensitive when the panel does not know which control on your codec carries playthrough. In that case the message line says:

Monitor: cymix has not identified the playthrough control on this codec (cymix --probe-chain)

and Keys and the Command Line explains how to find it.

Meter

Input strips carry a Meter checkbox, off by default. It does two things: it lights the LED column, and it is what starts and stops the capture process that feeds it. Unticking Meter stops that process. See Meters, Peaks, and Clipping.

Sample Rate

Each strip shows its sample rate, for example 48 kHz, or "-- kHz" when it is not known.

Selected > Sample Rate changes the LABEL only. It does not yet set the rate on the hardware, and the seven rates it offers are a fixed list which your card may not actually support. Treat it as unfinished.

What Is Not Persisted

Gain, mute and sample rate are deliberately NOT saved to the configuration file. The hardware holds them. Saving them would make the panel fight the mixer it is supposed to report. See Settings and Files.

Next

• Meters, Peaks, and Clipping
• Devices and Backends