Question

Hi there!  Thanks for your time and I truly apologize if this has been asked.  I do not know the correct words to find what I need in the manual or in the search.

I am totally new to DAW's in general and I have Studio One 4.6 Artist installed.  I am unable to preview the changes I am making to effects before recording.  In other words I am plugging my Bass guitar in input 1 directly.  I can record just fine and I can apply effects as well and listen to the changes I make to the effect settings once I have recorded a bass line.  However I would like to hear the effects before I record if that's possible?  It seems that if I apply effects before I have recorded anything and play with the settings the playback in my ear of the instrument is not changed in real time?

In other words if I was plugged into effect pedals outside of a DAW I could change settings, hit a few notes and listen to the changes.  I could keep tweaking and changing and then record.  I am unable to find a button that when plugged in direct to my Presonus box that I listen to changes if I mess with the compressor or effects?  I would rather not have to record something and loop it just to then mess with the effects/eq to listen to the changes it would make to my tone?

Thanks everyone!

Answer 1

What you are describing is called Input Monitoring.  It differs from hardware monitoring in that you route your input signal through the computer (and the plugins) in order to hear the effects WHILE recording.

The button to the right of the one used to ARM your track is the Monitor button.

In order for this to work well, you'll want to mute the source in your hardware mixer and lower the buffer size (latency).

I hope this gets you headed in the right direction.