Controls

The controls book consists of five tabs:

  1. Master: this is where you select effects or filters that are applied to the whole sample. Typically you will find detailed effects settings alongside a tickbox that allows you enable or disable the effect. The master filter, reverb and auxiliary effects bus can also be applied to individual slices.

    To apply your own Csound effects, edit the file smasher_fx_aux.csd in your home directory. To revert to the factory preset, simply delete the file you have edited. It will be replaced by a fresh copy of the default auxiliary effect the next time you start the program.

  2. FX: effects fall into the categories special, filters, delay, amplitude and time/pitch. See the presets for examples of how they can be used.

  3. Chain: choose the order in which effects are applied both at the slice level and at the mastering stage. You may wish to apply certain effects more than once to increase their impact by pressing 'clone'. If there is more than one instance of a given effect in a chain you can press 'delete' to remove it.

  4. Presets: the preset pane is divided into two main areas, one for factory presets, the other for community presets. The factory presets introduce some of the patterns, effects and filters available. Visit http://smasher.sourceforge.net to install sample packs containing additional samples and presets.

    In the community preset pane, you can download presets submitted by other users and rate them.

  5. Song: the song mode allows you to save the current pattern two to eight times in a row as a single sample. You can also enable or disable a warp stage that changes the pattern between repetitions.

  6. Audio: if there is a noticeable gap between the end and start of a sample during loop playback, adjust gap compensation. For shorter samples, this is rarely necessary.