Copying effects

The effect that works on the lead vocal usually belongs on the double too. Any effect can be copied from one rack to another with its settings and its automation, and reordered within its own rack, while the song keeps playing. There are three ways in, and all of them land on the same undo step.

When to use it

Use it to match treatments across similar parts, to move an effect you built on the wrong track, or to try a rack’s order a different way without rebuilding anything. For saving a whole chain for other songs, see effect chain presets.

Controls

Drag in the mixer

Each row in a strip’s Effects list can be dragged with the pointer. Inside its own strip the row moves up or down the chain and a line marks where it will land. Over another strip the strip lights up with copy here and the same line marks the position; dropping anywhere else on the strip appends to the end. Strips that cannot take the effect dim. Escape cancels, and a plain click still opens the effect.

Right-click

The rack card header and the mixer row share one menu: Copy, Copy to ▸ listing every track and Master, Paste … after and Delete. Copy to places the copy directly. A frozen or full rack is listed but disabled, with the reason in its tooltip. On touch, a long press on the card title or the row opens the same menu, which is also how to copy and delete on a tablet.

⌘C, ⌘V and Delete

⌘C (Ctrl+C on Windows) copies the effect whose card or row has focus, which is where focus lands after you click one. ⌘V pastes into the rack of the selected track, after the focused card if there is one, otherwise at the end. Pasting on the source track duplicates the effect. The copy lives in the studio for the session, and survives deleting the original. Delete or Backspace removes the focused effect, in one Undo step; with no effect focused, they delete the selected clip as before.

What travels

Settings, the chain’s position, a Convolver’s impulse and the effect’s automation lanes come along, with fresh identities so the two copies move independently from then on. A sidechain source follows when routing allows; a source that would feed back, or that equals the target, is cleared. A Listening Room in Monitor mode becomes an ordinary effect when it leaves Master.

Tips

• Copy first, then adjust: a vocal compressor on the double usually wants the same ratio and a slightly higher threshold.
• Reorder from the mixer while the loop plays and listen for the difference; the other effects keep their tails through the change.
• Racks hold up to 16 effects, and a frozen track’s rack cannot be edited until you unfreeze.