# Signal chain

The order of the Bass Foundry plugins in a chain matters. Anvil, Lathe, Temper,
Knurl and Planish each detect the pitch from the audio they receive. If a plugin earlier
in the chain changes the audio, the pitch detection after it can go wrong.

## Recommended order

```text
bass track:   synth → Lathe → Temper → Planish → Knurl → Patina → Weld
bass bus:     Anvil → (bus compression, clipping) → Crucible
```

- **Lathe and Temper before Knurl.** They hear the plain synth, where the pitch
  is clear.
- **Planish after the distortion, before Knurl.** OTT usually comes after
  distortion. Planish's band edges follow the tracked note, so it also needs a
  clear pitch: after Knurl, use MIDI.
- **Knurl last among the tracked plugins.** See below.
- **Patina after the tracked plugins.** It does not detect pitch, so the order
  does not change its result.
- **Weld after every plugin with latency on its track.** Weld can delay its own
  layer but cannot move it earlier. If FL Studio does not compensate the
  sidechain route, any latency added after Weld's input on the main layer makes
  that layer late.
- **Anvil on the bus, in MIDI mode when Knurl is in the chain.**
- **Crucible at the end of the chain you want to resample.**

## Knurl and pitch detection

Knurl's patterns make every second (or third) cycle quieter. That is a real
sub-octave in the signal, so a pitch detector after Knurl hears the note one
octave low, or with Triple an octave and a fifth low. Measured with the suite's
tracker on a saw bass:

- From C2 (65 Hz) upwards, Double, Fry (the default), Triple and Gallop make
  the detector read the wrong octave for about 85 % of the note.
- Below C2 the false sub-octave is under 30 Hz, out of the detection range, so
  low notes are tracked correctly.
- Level and time jitter add 5–25 false note starts per second. Anvil restarts
  its phase on each, Lathe, Temper and Planish retune on each.

When a tracked plugin must come after Knurl, select **MIDI** as its pitch source
and route the bass's MIDI notes to it.

## Latency

Each tracked plugin adds its own lookahead: Anvil 80 ms, Lathe, Temper and
Planish about 67 ms, Knurl about 71 ms, Patina about 45 ms. A full chain is
about 400 ms. FL
Studio compensates this for playback and rendering, but playing a MIDI keyboard
through the full chain is not practical. Write with a shorter chain and add the
rest for the mix.