Ableton/Live/UG/18 Mixing/01 The Live Mixer
- The mixer appears in both views: below the scenes in Session View, and as the Arrangement mixer or each track's Track Controls in Arrangement View.
- The mixer view control at the bottom right shows or hides the mixer; the menu next to it picks which parts show.
- Meter — peak and RMS output level, or input level while monitoring. Peak shows sudden changes; RMS is closer to perceived loudness.
- Volume — the track's output level.
- Pan — Stereo Pan (default) turns one side up and the other down; Split Stereo Pan places left and right channels separately. Switch modes in the context menu. Double-click, or click the triangle above it, to reset. Panning changes the audio; see Ableton/Live/UG/39 Audio Fact Sheet.
- Track Activator — mutes the track when off.
- Solo (
S) — mutes all other tracks, or cues when set up for it. Only one track solos at a time unless you hold Cmd (Mac) / Ctrl (Windows) or turn off Exclusive Solo. - Arm — record-enables the track, again one at a time unless you hold the modifier or turn off Exclusive Arm. With Exclusive Arm on, adding an instrument to an empty MIDI track arms it.
- With several tracks selected, changing any of these on one changes it on all.
- Drag the top of the mixer up to get taller meters with tick marks, a numeric volume field and resettable peak indicators; widen the track to add a decibel scale.
- Live's 32-bit floating-point engine has so much headroom that tracks can go well above 0 dB without clipping. Levels over 0 dB only matter where audio leaves Live: physical inputs and outputs, the Main track, and files you save or export.
