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Utility Plugins

Waveform includes three utility plugins available to all editions that handle routing and CPU management tasks. To add one, drag the Plugin Object to a track (or right-click an existing plugin and choose Add new plugin) and pick it from the Utility category of the built-in Waveform plugins. See Using Plugins for more on inserting plugins.

Insert (Hardware Insert)

The Insert plugin routes a track's signal out through a physical output, through an external device, and back in through a physical input — effectively patching outboard gear inline in your plugin chain. The send and return can be either audio or MIDI devices, so it works equally well for outboard effects and external MIDI hardware.

Setting Up an Insert

After adding the plugin, open its properties to configure the routing:

  • Name — an optional label shown in the plugin slot.
  • Send Device — the output that feeds your external device. If no output is selected, the slot shows a warning: "You must select an output device to use an insert plugin."
  • Return Device — the input that receives the processed signal back from your hardware.
  • Time Adjust — a latency compensation offset (−300 ms to +300 ms, default 0). Positive values label the reading "Late"; negative values label it "Early". Use this to align the returned signal with the rest of your mix.
  • Auto-Detect — runs a Device Latency Test that plays a test signal, measures the round-trip delay, and offers to apply the result as the Time Adjust value. (Auto-detection requires an audio return signal.)
  • Refresh Devices — rescans your device list if you've plugged in or switched hardware after Waveform started.

Rendering with an Insert

Because the signal must travel through real hardware in real time, rendering at faster-than-real-time speed will produce silence or incorrect results on any track using an Insert. When you render or export, enable the Render at 1X Play-Speed option in the render dialog. See Mixing Down for details on that option.

Freeze Point

The Freeze Point plugin is a marker you place inside a track's plugin chain. Everything in the chain before the Freeze Point can be rendered (frozen) to an audio file by Waveform, freeing up the CPU resources those plugins were consuming. Everything after the Freeze Point continues to run live.

Using a Freeze Point

Once it is in the chain (its slot is labelled Freeze and always shows a snowflake icon, which brightens when the track is frozen):

  • The plugin slot shows a Freeze Track button. Click it to render everything before the Freeze Point and replace it with static audio playback.
  • While a track is frozen the button changes to Unfreeze Track. Clicking it discards the rendered file and restores the original processing.

A Freeze Point cannot be added to clips, plugin racks, or master tracks, and it cannot be disabled with the plugin's enable/bypass switch — it is always active when present in a chain.

Freeze Point Settings

The behaviour of the Freeze Point is influenced by two settings on the Settings → General page, under Mixing Defaults:

  • Auto freeze — controls when freezing happens: either Manually (only when you click Freeze Track) or Freeze track when a freeze point is created or copied (automatic).
  • Freeze point — controls where the Freeze Point is inserted when a track is frozen: Before plugins, Pre-fader, or Post-fader.

See Reference: Settings — General for the full description of those options.

Patch Bay

The Patch Bay plugin is a flexible audio routing matrix. Each wire in the matrix routes one source channel to one destination channel at a specific gain level (in dB). Multiple wires can fan out from the same source and sum into the same destination.

The Patch Bay is an audio routing matrix. It is different from the MIDI Patch Bay, which is a MIDI-routing plugin covered in the MIDI Effects chapter.

Patch Bay Controls

A new Patch Bay defaults to a stereo pass-through: input 1 → output 1 and input 2 → output 2, both at 0 dB. The plugin slot in the mixer draws a live mini-diagram — input and output channels as dots, with arrows for each wire — so you can read the routing at a glance.

Open the Patch Bay's properties to edit the wiring in its graphical editor. The input channels are listed down one side and the output channels down the other:

  • Make a connection by dragging from an input connector onto an output connector (or vice versa). A new wire starts at 0 dB.
  • Adjust a wire's gain by selecting it and using the Gain slider, which reads out in dB.
  • Wires can fan out and sum, so a single source can feed several destinations and several sources can be mixed into one destination.

Typical uses include folding stereo down to mono, duplicating a channel for parallel processing, or swapping left and right. Like the Freeze Point, a Patch Bay cannot be added to clips or plugin racks and cannot be bypassed.

Aux Send and Aux Return

You will also find the Aux Send and Aux Return plugins in the Utility folder. These are the building blocks of an effects bus: an Aux Send taps a portion of a track's signal and routes it to a numbered bus, and an Aux Return receives that bus on another track so a single effect can be shared by many tracks. Because they are really part of the bus-routing workflow rather than standalone effects, they are covered in their own chapter — see Effects Bus Tracks.

Spectrum

The Spectrum plugin is a real-time spectrum analyser. It doesn't change the audio at all — it simply shows you a live graph of the signal's frequency content as it passes through, so you can see where the energy sits in a mix. Insert it anywhere in a chain to check a track's tonal balance, spot a resonant build-up, or confirm that a high-pass filter is doing what you expect.

Mid Side

The Mid Side plugin converts a stereo signal between standard left/right and mid/side form. It has a single Mode control:

  • Encode turns a left/right signal into mid (the mono centre) and side (the stereo difference).
  • Decode turns a mid/side signal back into normal left/right.

Insert a Mid Side in Encode mode, then process the centre and sides separately with other plugins, and finally insert another Mid Side in Decode mode to return to a normal stereo signal. It's a classic trick for widening a mix or for EQ'ing the centre and sides independently.

AB Switch

The AB Switch plugin routes the incoming signal to one of two outputs, A or B, chosen with its Mode control. By feeding A and B into different processing chains you can flip between two treatments of the same source and compare them instantly — useful for A/B'ing effect settings while you work.

Mono Switch

The Mono Switch is a mono-compatibility and stereo-troubleshooting tool. Its controls let you collapse a stereo signal to mono and check how the mix holds up:

  • Mono switches mono summing on or off.
  • Mode sets how the two channels are combined when summing — at −6 dB, −3 dB, or 0 dB, or listening to the L Only or R Only channel on its own.
  • Swap L/R exchanges the left and right channels.
  • L Polarity and R Polarity flip the polarity (phase) of each channel independently, which helps track down phase-cancellation problems.

It's the quick way to confirm a mix still sounds right when played back in mono — on a phone speaker, a club PA, or anywhere the stereo image gets folded down.