Utility

In the desktop app. Utility is a device of the desktop app, arriving in its beta; the web studio does not have it. The examples on this page are made with a reference version of the effect, applied to sound from the studio’s engine: they show what each control does, and the device itself may differ a little in character.

What it is for

Utility makes the small, plain corrections every mix needs: louder or quieter, more to one side, wider or narrower, and turned upside down. It adds no colour of its own. Because it is a device, it can sit anywhere in the chain, which is what makes it useful: the track’s fader changes the level at the very end, and Utility changes it wherever you need.

Reach for it when a sound arrives too loud for the device after it, when a stereo sound is too wide or should be mono, or when two recordings of the same thing sound thin together.

Gain

Turns the sound up or down by a number of decibels, at this point in the chain. Typical uses: bringing a quiet recording up before it reaches a Compressor, or setting the level going into a Drive, which reacts very differently to a quiet and a loud sound.

Pan

Moves the sound between the left and right speakers at this point in the chain, before the devices that follow. The pan knob of the track does the same at the end.

Width

How different the left and right sides are. At zero the sound is mono: a point in the middle, exactly what the Mono switch gives. At 100 % it is as it was. Higher exaggerates the difference, which sounds wider, at the cost of the middle becoming weaker.

Mono

A switch that makes the sound identical in both speakers: the same as Width at zero, as one click, and switching it off brings back the Width you had set. Two reasons to use it. Low sounds (bass, kick) are stronger and clearer in mono. And much music is heard in mono, from a phone or a single speaker in a shop: switching to mono for a moment shows what those listeners get. If a part disappears in mono, its two sides were cancelling each other; see Phase below.

Mono below

Under More. Everything below the chosen note, from 20 to 500 Hz, is made the same on both sides, while the rest stays wide. Low notes spread left and right sound weak on one speaker and smear on club systems; kept in the middle they stay solid. At its lowest it is off.

Flip phase

A switch that turns the wave upside down, on the left and the right side together. On one sound alone this changes nothing you can hear. It matters when two tracks carry nearly the same sound, such as two microphones on one drum or a bass recorded both directly and through an amplifier: if one is upside down relative to the other, what they share cancels, and together they sound thinner and quieter than either alone. Flip one, and listen for which way has more low end.