Mixer Board

Mixer Board is an alternative view to the audio tracks in the main tracks window, and is analogous to a hardware mixer board. Each audio track is displayed in a Track Strip. Each Track Strip has its own pair of meters, gain slider, pan slider, and mute/solo buttons, echoing that track's controls in its Track Control Panel.

The Mixer Board... command is enabled whenever there's an audio track - it can even be brought up during playback.

Accessed by: View > Mixer Board...

The Mixer Board... command is enabled whenever there is an audio track - it can even be brought up during playback. When there are no audio tracks it is grayed-out and unavailable.

The Mixer Board window will always remain on top of the Audacity Window if they are superimposed.

Mixer Board controls

All Mixer Board controls update the controls in their respective Track Control Panels and vice versa. For example, muting a track in the Mixer Board also mutes that track in the main tracks window.

As in the Track Control Panels, double-click in either Mixer Board slider to enter an exact gain or pan value in a text box.

The meters are post-fade, like the Meter Toolbars, such that they show the levels as modified by the track's gain/pan sliders and mute/solo buttons. Mono tracks show in both track meters, as in the Meter Toolbar.

You can select a Mixer Board track by clicking its instrument image (or the Audacity logo if no instrument image is available). Selection of a track in Mixer Board is indicated by the blue background. In the example above it is the "Guitar Jimi" track that is selected.

Deselect all tracks by clicking in the white strip at the bottom of the the Mixer Board, note that the shortcut Ctrl + Shift +A to deselect all tracks does not work in Mixer Board.

Similar to Audacity Selection you can also add specific tracks to the selection and remove specific tracks from the selection:

• Holding Ctrl and clicking in a track's Track Strip toggles the selectedness of that track only. So if a track is not selected, Ctrl-clicking its Track Strip selects it, or deselects it if it is already selected.
• If you select a track by clicking on its Track Strip and then use Shift and click in another track's Track Strip, all tracks between and including those two tracks will be selected.

The example in the image

Note the following points in the image above:

1. Jimi's guitar track is both selected and center-panned
2. Noel's bass track is panned left in the mix
3. the horns are taken out of the mix with the gain slider minimum position
4. the keyboards are panned right and have their volume reduced
5. Mitch's drums are center-panned and lowered in volume

Track identification

By default, the image at the top of each Track Strip is the Audacity logo, but if you name the track in the Track Control Panel with an instrument name or abbreviation thereof, Mixer Board automatically shows an appropriate image as listed below. A track name that contains any of the keywords (in bold) will display the image that is associated with those keywords. If the track name contains keywords for more than one instrument, the Mixer Board will display the best match.

acoustic guitar, acoustic gtr = acoustic guitar acoustic piano, acoustic pno = acoustic piano back vocal, back vox, bg = backing vocal clap = handclaps drums, dr = drum kit electric bass, bass, bs = electric bass guitar electric guitar, guitar, gtr = (standard) electric guitar

electric piano, electric pno, key = electronic keyboard kick = kick drum loop = loop track perc = percussion sax = saxophone snare = snare drum string, violin, cello = generic stringed instrument

synth = synthesizer tambourine, tambo = tambourine trumpet, horn = generic brass instrument turntable = record player vibraphone, vibes = vibraphone vocal, vox = lead vocal

Examples:

• "electric b" displays an standard electric guitar ("b" is not a keyword), but "electric bs" displays an electric bass guitar ("bs" is a keyword).
• "electric gtr" will display an electric guitar. Although these keywords are also in the bass guitar list, in the absence of the keywords bass or bs, the Mixer Board sees the (standard) electric guitar as a better match.
• "drums" will display a drum kit as it is a keyword. "drum" will also display a drum kit as it contains dr which is a keyword.