User guide

Tracktion 4 Reference Manual
190
The Handy Wrap / Unwrap Tool — Using Racks As Channel Strips
If you right-click on a lter in the lter section, you will see that the pop-up menu contains an option
wrap this lter in a rack lter. This option can be used to create a new rack lter containing one or
more lters contained on the current track. One handy feature of this method of creating racks is that all
internal wiring is done automatically by Tracktion.
You can use this technique to create a channel strip of frequently used lters. Here’s how you do it:
• Add the desired lters to a track.
• Set their ideal default values.
• Select them all by
CTRL + clicking them one
at a time (CMD + click for Mac users).
• Right-click on one of them and select
wrap
these lters in a new rack lter (Fig. 9.3.5).
• Ensure that the rack has a suitable name.
• Save the rack as a pre-set.
Now, whenever you wish to use these lters on a
track, simply:
• Drag the new lter icon to your track.
• Select the rack from the list of rack pre-sets.
• Once the rack lter has been added to the track, right-click on it, and select replace rack with l
-
ters.
Your lters will be added to the track ready for use, exactly as they were when you wrapped them in
the rack.
9.4 : Racks, Tracks, Inputs, And Outputs
Earlier parts of this chapter have referred to the possibility of racks featuring more than two input or
output channels. Let’s now look at how this works, and how you would use such a rack.
You may recall that in Tracktion all tracks are natively stereo in nature. Given this, how can a rack
with more than two audio inputs receive any input on the extra inputs? To answer this question we
need to look at the properties panel for a rack lter that has been placed in a track, such as that shown
in Figure 9.4.1. The four options on the left-hand side of the image are where you select which of the
rack’s inputs and outputs to connect to the current track. Clicking on one of the values will display a
pop-up similar to the one pictured below. The pop-up menu shows the choice of available inputs offered
by the rack.
Because the track itself is a xed stereo track, you can only connect the track to two of the rack’s in-
puts and outputs at any one time. However, there are no restrictions on which pins you connect to. For
example, there is no reason why you couldn’t send both the left and right channels of a track to just input
four on the rack.
Figure 9.3.5
Figure 9.4.1