Editing Busses
Think of busses like pipes that your audio flows through. You use busses to change the volume of sounds that pass through them. They have a hierarchy, with all busses eventually joining at the highest level, or the "master bus," before they reach your device speakers. Busses group sounds together and let you control the relative volume of things in a refined way.
- New Bus" creates a new bus. You can drag and drop busses to move them, and double-click them to edit them.
- From the editor box, you can change the gain (volume) of the bus or DELETE them.
dB, or deciBels, are a unit of measurement for loudness that many sound designers are more accustomed to working with. They work on a logarithmic scale. A sound that is turned down -6dB is played at 50% volume, and a sound that is -12dB is played at 25% volume. Working in decibels gives you a lot of refined control on the balance of sounds in quieter ranges, which is very useful for perfecting your audio mix.
Note that sounds CANNOT BE LOUDER than however they were imported; they can ONLY be turned down. It's good practice to import sounds that are loud and then use busses to turn them down.
Just like with nested container gain settings, bus settings also stack, so if you play a sound from a -6dB/-50% bus that’s inside another -6dB/-50% bus, the resulting audio output should be at -12dB/25% gain.
- EFFECTS: (Added 2022/12/12) - this opens up an Effects Panel and lets you add or edit effects on the given bus. You can learn more about the Effects Panel here.