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-layout: default
-title: Muting and Soloing
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-
-<p>
- Each track and bus has two buttons which have important implications
- for signal flow: <dfn>mute</dfn> and <dfn>solo</dfn>. The behaviour
- of these buttons is configurable in Ardour, to suit different studio
- set-ups.
-</p>
-
-<h2>Without a monitor bus</h2>
-<p>
- If you are using Ardour without a monitor bus, there is only one way
- in which mute and solo will work:</p>
-<ul>
- <li>
- Mute on a track or bus will mute that track on the master bus,
- so that it will not be heard.
- </li>
- <li>
- Solo on a track or bus will solo that track or bus and mute all
- others. Soloing a bus will also solo any tracks or
- busses which feed that bus.
- </li>
-</ul>
-
-<h2>With a monitor bus</h2>
-<p>
- For setups with a monitor bus, you have more options, mostly
- governed by the setting of the
- <kbd class="option">Solo controls are Listen controls</kbd> option
- in <kbd class="menu">Edit > Preferences > Solo / mute.
-</p>
-<p>
- With <kbd class="optoff">Solo controls are Listen controls</kbd>
- unticked, behaviour is almost exactly the same as the situation
- without a monitor bus. Mute and solo behave the same, and the monitor
- bus is fed from the master bus, so it sees the same thing.
-</p>
-<p>
- With <kbc class="option">Solo controls are Listen controls</kbd>
- ticked, the master and monitor busses behave differently. In this
- mode, solo controls are more properly called <dfn>listen</dfn>
- controls, and Ardour's solo buttons will change their legend from
- <samp>S</samp> to either <samp>A</samp> or <samp>P</samp> to
- reflect this.
-</p>
-<p>
- Now, without any mute or listen, the monitor bus remains fed by
- the master bus. Also:
-</p>
-<ul>
- <li>
- Mute will mute the track or bus, so that it will not be heard
- anywhere (neither on the master nor monitor busses), much as before.
- </li>
- <li>
- Listen will disconnect the monitor bus from the master bus, so
- that the monitor bus now only receives things that are "listened to".
- Listen will not perform any muting, and hence the master bus will
- not be affected by a listened track or bus.
- </li>
-</ul>
-<p>
- When solo controls are listen controls, the listening point can be set
- to either After-Fade Listen (AFL) or Pre-Fade Listen (PFL). The precise
- point to get the signal from can further be configured using the
- <kbd class="menu">PFL signals come from</kbd> and
- <kbd class="menu">AFL signals come from</kbd> options.
-</p>
-<p>
- The solo-mute arrangement with a monitor bus is shown below:
-</p>
-<img src="/diagrams/solo-mute.png" alt="mute/solo signal flow" />
-<p>
- Here we have a number of tracks or busses (in orange). Each one has an
- output which feeds the master bus. In addition, each has PFL and AFL
- outputs; we have a choice of which to use. PFL/AFL from each track or
- bus are mixed. Then, whenever anything is set to AFL/PFL, the monitor out
- becomes just those AFL/PFL feeds; the rest of the time, the monitor out is
- fed from the master bus.
-</p>
-<p>
- In this scheme Solo has no effect other than to mute other non-soloed tracks;
- with solo (rather then listen), the monitor out is fed from the master bus.
-</p>
-
-<h2>Other solo options</h2>
-<p>
- <kbd class="menu">Edit > Preferences > Solo / Mute</kbd> has some
- more solo options:
-</p>
-
-<h3>Solo-in-place mute cut</h3>
-<p>
- When using solo-in-place (SiP), in other words when soloed tracks are being
- listened to on the master bus, this fader specifies the gain that will be
- applied to other tracks in order to mute them. Setting this level to
- -∞&nbdp;dB will mean that other tracks will not be heard at all; setting to
- some higher value less than 0dB means that other non-soloed tracks will be h
- eard, just reduced in volume compared to the soloed tracks. Using a value
- larger than -∞dB is sometimes called "Solo-In-Front" by other DAWs, because
- the listener has the sense that soloed material is "in front" of other
- material. In Ardour, this is not a distinct mode, but instead the mute cut
- control offers any level of "in-front-ness" that you might want to use.
-</p>
-<h3>Exclusive solo</h3>
-<p>
- If this is enabled, only one track or bus will ever be soloed at once; soloing
- track B while track A is currently soloed will un-solo track A before soloing
- track B.
-</p>
-<h3>Show solo muting</h3>
-<p>
- If this is enabled, the mute button of tracks and busses will be drawn
- outlined to indicate that the track or bus is muted because something else
- is soloed. This is enabled by default, and we recommend that you leave it
- that way unless you are extremely comfortable with Ardour's mute/solo
- behaviour.
-</p>
-<h3>Soloing overrides muting</h3>
-<p>
- If this is enabled, a track or bus that is both soloed and muted will behave
- as if it is soloed.
-</p>
-<h3>Mute affects…</h3>
-<p>
- These options dictate whether muting the track will affect various routes out
- of the track; through the sends, through the control outputs (to the monitor
- bus) and to the main outputs.
-</p>
-
projects / ardour-manual-diverged / blobdiff