# Signal chain

The order of the Bass Foundry plugins in a chain matters. Anvil, Lathe, Temper,
Knurl, Planish, Braze, Ballast and Forge 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 → Braze → Knurl → Patina → Ballast → Weld
  or:         synth → Forge (Lathe, Temper, Knurl) → Planish → Braze → Patina → Ballast → Weld
bass bus:     Anvil → (bus compression) → Quench → Crucible
master:       … → Quench (last, or before a true-peak limiter)
```

- **Lathe and Temper before Knurl.** They hear the plain synth, where the pitch
  is clear.
- **Or Forge in their place.** Forge runs Lathe, Temper and Knurl behind one
  tracker that reads its input, so the order inside it does not upset the pitch
  detection, and the three cost one lookahead (about 72 ms) instead of three.
  Planish and Braze then come after Knurl: run them from MIDI.
- **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.
- **Braze after Planish.** Its copy beats against the bass, so a pitch
  detector after it is less sure: Knurl after Braze works best in MIDI mode.
  Weld after Braze sees the beating as a looser match between the layers; if
  it reads Loose, move Braze to the bus after Anvil, with Low cut at or above
  Anvil's Split. There it reads the pitch from Anvil's clean sub, and the sub
  stays out of the beating.
- **Ballast after the sound design.** It levels what the patch finally sounds
  like, so it comes after the distortion, OTT and Patina. It finds note starts
  like the other tracked plugins: after Knurl, use MIDI or Grid. Weld and Anvil
  come after it. On the bus with Anvil, set Measure from to Anvil's Split.
- **Knurl last among the pitch-tracked plugins.** See below. Ballast only
  needs note starts; after Knurl, run it from MIDI or the grid.
- **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.** For Kick
  lock, send the kick's track to Anvil as a sidechain.
- **Quench last on the bus or the master.** It clips the top and leaves the sub
  alone, so put it where you would put a clipper. On the bass bus after Anvil,
  set its Split at or a little above Anvil's Split: Anvil's sub then passes
  Quench untouched. Quench does not detect pitch, so it can sit after Knurl.
- **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. Inside Forge this does not apply: its one
tracker reads the input before Knurl.

## Latency

Each tracked plugin adds its own lookahead: Anvil 80 ms, Lathe, Temper,
Planish and Braze about 67 ms, Knurl about 71 ms, Patina about 45 ms, Ballast
about 172 ms, Quench under 1 ms. Forge holds Lathe, Temper and Knurl in about
72 ms, against about 206 ms for the three plugins in a row. 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.