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Ballast gives every part of a bassline one gain that brings it to the target loudness, with no compression inside a part. Parts start at note starts, detected from the audio or taken from MIDI, or on the host's beat grid, so a patch change on the same note counts too. - Loudness is K-weighted over each part's first 100 ms, in 10 ms blocks with a relative gate, and every part is weighted from rest so the last part does not ring into it. - The audio path is delayed by the tracker's lookahead, the window and a 5 ms glide, so each gain is in place on its part's first sample. - Learn takes the next part's loudness as the target. Amount, Range, Measure from (leave the sub out), Gate, Output, Bypass. - Editor shows the last 32 parts in and out, the target, and the spread of the last 16 parts. - Registered in the catalog, workflows, editor-check, README, chain and development docs, and the website copy.
3.7 KiB
Signal chain
The order of the Bass Foundry plugins in a chain matters. Anvil, Lathe, Temper, Knurl, Planish, Braze and Ballast 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
bass track: synth → Lathe → Temper → Planish → Braze → Knurl → 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.
- 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.
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. 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.