Master Bus Strip

The Master strip in the mixer

The Master strip in Ardour is very similar to the other busses mixer strips. There are nevertheless a few differences due to the nature of the Master strip, that is being the last point of treatment before the output or rendering:

  • There is no color affected to the master strip

  • There is exactly one and only one Master Bus Strip for a session, so it cannot be saved as a template, duplicated or removed in the context menu, although it can be renamed.

  • The master strip cannot be hidden or disabled, so there is not X in the top right, nor an Active checkbox in the context menu.

  • It is by definition always solo, so there is no Solo button, and Iso and Lock are disabled.

  • If the Master bus output gain control is enabled, two controls are visible:

    • a LAN button, to start the Loudness Analyzer & Normalizer,

    • a volume slider to that can be controlled manually or set by the Normalizer.

  • If the session has a Monitoring section, two buttons are visible:

    • Mute to mute the Master bus while the monitoring is still active,

    • Mon to show/hide the monitoring section in the Mixer view.

  • It cannot belong to a mix group, so the Grp button is missing.

The Master bus strip is always fixed, at the right end of the mixer, regardless of the scrolling position.