Looking at the Channel View

Let's take a moment to check out the channel view and find out what it lets you do.

The Channel View Areas

We'll start with the five areas of the channel view.

NOTE

Some audio channels do not have all five of the areas discussed below. For example, the Master channel has only a Fader Area, while Bus channels lack Send slots.

The EQ Area Double-clicking the gray box directly below the word EQ reveals an equalizer with spectrum analyzer. With the exception of a Master channel, each channel may have its very own dedicated EQ to boost or attenuate specific frequency ranges in the channel's sound.

The Inserts Area The Inserts area assigns DSP effects such as dynamic range compression and delay to a channel's sound.

The Sends Area The Sends area sends the channel's sound to a system bus, which transports the sound to a different channel in Logic.

The Input/Output Area The I/O area sets the channel's input and output path. Depending on the type of channel assigned to the Audio Object, the input can be an audio interface input, a bus, or one of Logic's software instruments.

The Fader Area The Fader area sets the channel's volume and pan position and also has Mute and Solo buttons. The Mute button turns off the channel's sound, while the Solo button turns off the sound of all channels other than the one being soloed (you will also hear other channels whose Solo function is enabled).

Setting Audio Object Parameters

Now, let's zoom in on the box to the left of the channel view that shows the settings for the Audio Object parameters.

NOTE

Logic Express users do not have Channel Display Options.

Device (Audio Driver and Interface) The Device parameter selects a driver and, in turn, an audio interface for the audio channel to use. Unless you changed this driver in the exercise at the beginning of this lesson, this parameter will say Core Audio.

Channel (Audio Channel) The Channel parameter sets the Audio Object's channel. By default, new Objects are assigned to the first unused track channel, but you can use this setting to assign the Object to any channel that Logic has available.

MIDI Chann (MIDI Channel) Back in the good old days of Logic, before we had such awesome track automation built into the program, to automate Audio Objects you had to use MIDI. And you can still do so. The MIDI Chann setting determines from which MIDI channel the Object receives controller information such as volume or pan.

Fader Scale (Value as) Value as changes the scale of the Object's fader between decibels (dB) or numbers similar to the volume settings on a MIDI synthesizer (0127).

Channel Display Options (Logic Pro only) Channel display options show or hide the selected channel's EQ, Insert, Send, and I/O slots.