Using effects

One chain per pad

Every pad has its own effects chain.

On a phone, the chain is behind f(x), then FX. On desktop it has its own panel beside the pads. Either way, it edits the selected pad.

There is a second set of effects that looks the same and is not. The mixer, behind FX in sequence mode, sits on the beat, so it shapes a whole pattern at once. These change one pad wherever it plays, including inside a beat you have already saved. Reach for a pad when one sound needs fixing, and the mixer when the whole beat does.

What is in the chain

• EQ. Ten bands. Use it to make room, such as cutting the low end of a hat so it stops competing with the kick.
• Filter. High-pass, low-pass or band-pass, with cutoff and resonance.
• Amp envelope. Attack, decay, sustain and release, applied to the pad’s level. Turn a sample into a short stab or a slow swell without re-recording it.
• Reverb. Convolution reverb, based on real spaces.
• Delay. Feedback delay, for echoes or to thicken a thin sound.
• Chorus. A detuned copy mixed with the original, which widens a mono sound.
• Distortion. Saturation, from slight warmth to heavy damage.
• Lo-fi. A bitcrusher that reduces bit depth and sample rate, for the sound of older, cheaper machines.

Wet and dry

Reverb, delay, chorus, distortion and lo-fi each have a wet/dry mix, so you blend the treated signal with the original instead of replacing it. A pad can be ten percent distorted. Most useful settings are subtle ones.

Presets

You can save any effect’s settings as a named preset and apply it to another pad. Presets belong to your account, not to a kit, so they are available in every sampler you open.

This is the fastest way to make sixteen slices sound like one kit: shape one pad, save the preset, apply it to the rest, then adjust any that need it.

The order they run in

Effects run in a fixed order: filter, EQ, distortion, lo-fi, chorus, reverb, delay, amp envelope, then the pad’s volume and pan. Reverb and delay come late in the chain, so they process the already shaped sound.