Mixer, AI & Visuals

Chapter 07: Mixer Console, Master, Presets & AI

Mixer console, Pattern Lock (PAT), Link ALL, Master FX, Smart Random 2.0 with instrument archetypes, Breed, Presets, ElevenLabs AI, and Artchemy visual bridge.

7.1 Mixer Console (Mixer View)

TOMiC provides a fully equipped Mixer Console (Mixer View) modeled after traditional analogue recording studio consoles. Switch to Mixer View at any time by clicking the [MIXER] button in the Tools Panel.

When activated, the mixer replaces the central voice editing view while keeping the left sidebar, bottom step sequencer, and top transport bar visible.

The Mixer Console is a separate UI surface from the compact MIX/FX panel embedded in the per-channel voice editor: both read and write the same underlying channel parameters (levels, pan, FX), but they are two distinct views, not the same panel shown twice — a change made in one is instantly reflected in the other because both point at the same parameter, not because they share layout code.

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TOMiC Mixer Console

Figure 7.1: Dedicated mixer console with faders, ballistic meters, and FX inspector panel.

The console fills the panel. The mixer lays itself out every frame from the space it actually has: up to eight strips plus the master span the full width, every element (knobs, cells, fonts, pills, FX tiles) scales with the strip up to 2×, and the fader stretches to the panel's height. A ninth or later enabled channel keeps the eight-strip width and scrolls instead of squeezing the others; with fewer channels the strips stop at the cap and centre.

Channel Strip

Each active channel (1 through 16) features a dedicated vertical Channel Strip:

1. Channel Name & Selection: Header indicates channel index or custom label (e.g. CH 1: Kick). Clicking the header highlights the channel strip and opens its FX inspector.

2. Mute / Solo: Mute [M] and Solo [S] buttons.

3. Quick Controls (Pan & Noise Level):

PAN: Stereo panorama adjustment for the channel.

NOISE: Direct volume knob for the noise layer (noise.level) for quick balancing without opening voice details. It is deliberately labelled NOISE rather than "Mix": osc.level and noise.level are independent levels, not two ends of a single balance knob — the label above it doubles as a button that cycles the OSC/Noise combine mode (Crossfade / Equal Power / Ring Mod / Add / Min-Max).

4. Macro 1-4 Grid: The first four per-channel Macro knobs laid out in a 2×2 grid for instant sound sculpting straight from the mixer.

5. Peak Meter & Volume Fader:

PPM Peak Meter: Ballistic precision peak meter with Peak-Hold memory (1.1 seconds hold, 26 dB/s decay rate).

Volume Fader: Long-throw volume fader for gain staging with digital dB readout — it stretches to whatever height the panel offers.

6. Pattern Lock (PAT):

Dedicated PAT button below the fader.

Default — (FOLLOW): Channel follows global pattern bank changes.

Bank A .. L: Locks a single channel to a specific pattern bank (A-L) independent of global changes. The 13th, unlettered FILL slot (see Chapter 6.2) cannot be pinned this way — it is always a global performance override, never a per-channel lock. A queued lock change lands in phase at the boundary of that channel's own cycle, not mid-bar.

7. FX Badges: Visual indicators showing active FX modules on the channel. Clicking an FX badge opens that module in the inspector.

Master Strip

Located on the right side of the mixer console:

Master Fader: Main output volume fader with dual stereo metering.

Master Filter Toggle: Instant master filter bypass switch.

Master FX Inspection: Clicking the Master strip opens master bus FX parameters (master_fx).

Inspector Side Panel

A dedicated right-side panel popping out from the mixer console:

Edit filter chains and DSP FX (distortion, delay, reverb, spectral gate, etc.) for the selected channel or Master bus.

Mix full drum kits and fine-tune channel processing simultaneously without toggling views.

7.2 Master Bus Section

Signals from all drum channels (1 through 16) sum onto the stereo Master Bus:

Master Bus Processing Chain:

1. Master FX Chain (master_fx): Full FX processing chain (identical to channel FX) including distortion, modulation FX (Chorus, Phaser), spectral processing, Delay, and Reverb. Ideal for shared acoustic spaces and bus glue saturation.

2. Master Filter (master_filter): Single master filter acting over the entire mix (e.g. global LowPass sweeps), disabled by default so existing projects load unaffected. Offers the same 12 filter models available on individual channels (Clean SVF, Diode, Moog, Vintage Lowpass, Sallen-Key/MS-20, Formant, Comb, Ladder, ObXd, Cutoff Warp, Resonance Warp, Sample & Hold).

3. Master Bus Compressor: Stereo bus glue compressor with Threshold, Ratio, Attack, Release, and Makeup Gain controls, toggled on/off independently.

4. Limiter: A single peak limiter (Ceiling + Release controls) preventing digital clipping, toggled on/off independently of the compressor. There is no separate soft-clip stage — the signal chain ends with the limiter, then master gain, then a fixed, always-on safety clamp at +12 dBFS that only engages if both the compressor and limiter are switched off or a feedback loop overshoots.

5. Master Gain: Final output volume control (-60 dB to +24 dB).

7.3 Global Macros

Four Global Macro knobs (gmacro1 - gmacro4) on the transport bar control global parameters. Unlike channel macros:

Always visible and active.

Can route modulation to any parameter across any channel simultaneously.

Link ALL — Relative Knob Ganging Across Channels

A chain-link button (Link ALL) in OSC 1's Mix Mode / dice / copy / paste row gangs every channel while it is on:

Dragging any knob of the selected channel — OSC, Noise, filter, every FX unit, the compressor, modulators, and the mixer's fader and mini knobs — moves the same knob on every enabled channel by the same relative amount. The delta is measured from the gesture's start, so nothing drifts on a long drag, and a sibling pinned at its minimum or maximum comes back the moment you reverse.

Double-click reset sends each sibling to its own default; a typed-in value is copied as an absolute; the R random gesture deliberately stays per knob.

Effect enables are copied too — Clouds, Beat Repeat and its filter, and adding/removing filter slots.

Hosted CLAP/Omni knob banks, the channel enable flag and the Master bus are never ganged; combos and checkboxes are not linked. One ganged gesture is one undo step.

The toggle is session-only — it is never saved into a song.

7.4 Preset System & Smart Random 2.0

TOMiC offers complete patch management and a sophisticated archetype-driven synthesis engine — Smart Random 2.0:

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Preset Browser & Smart Randomizer

Figure 7.2: Preset browser bank management and archetype smart randomizer window.

Factory Banks & User Presets:

Save / Load Patch: Save and load individual voice patches (Voice Params + FX).

Save / Load Song: Save complete multi-channel sessions with all 16 channels, mixer state, patterns, Master FX, and Song Mode.

100+ Re-Synthesized Factory Presets: Expanded factory library synthesized using pristine baseline models.

Smart Random 2.0 — Archetype Recipes & Sonic Profiles:

Unlike blind chaotic parameter scrambling, Smart Random 2.0 uses authentic sound design recipes tailored to 10 instrument archetypes:

Kick: Sub-heavy kick patches with tuned pitch envelopes, punchy transients, and clean lowpass filtering.

Snare: Balanced synthetic-tone-to-noise ratio, dual-mode body, and velvet snap resonances.

HiHat: 6-partial metallic clusters, crisp highpass filtering, and tight envelope damping.

Clap: Multi-burst noise bursts with exponential decay tail.

Tom: Pitched resonant tom voicings scaled across the kit's tom range.

Cymbal: Long-decay metallic textures with shimmering modal modes for crashes and rides.

Percussion: General acoustic/electronic hand-percussion patches distinct from standard kit staples.

Bass: Sub- and mid-register basslines locked to root keys and musical scales.

Drone: Evolving ambient textures pairing the Clouds granular FX with slow strange attractors (Lorenz, Chladni, Tidal).

FX: Exotic FM, ring modulation, and experimental glitch textures.

5 Sonic Profiles:

Every archetype can be synthesized through 5 distinct sonic profiles:

Clean: Pristine state-variable filters, transparent dynamics, and uncolored signal paths.

Analog: Warm Moog/Diode ladder filtering, tube saturation, and vintage tape warmth.

Digital: Sharp transients, S&H stepped filters, and crisp bitcrush accents.

Industrial: Heavy wavefolding, diode clipping, and aggressive punchy compression.

Chaos: Non-linear feedback loops, extreme modulation depth, and unpredictable modal drift.

Morph-Compatible Layer B Sibling Generation:

When generating a sound, Layer B is no longer synthesized as an unrelated random patch. Instead, Smart Random 2.0 creates Layer B as a musically aligned sibling of Layer A (sharing core topology with intentional parameter offsets), turning the Morph knob into an expressive, seamless timbre sweep.

One-Click "🎲 All" Kit Randomization:

The Tools panel features a dedicated "All" button that randomizes every active channel according to its assigned archetype in a single click — automatically applying mix staging, channel renaming, and creating a full Ctrl+Z Undo snapshot.

Breed — Interactive Evolution of a Channel's Sound

The Breed tab of the channel editor's SEQUENCER tile (🧬 icon, next to the step grid) breeds sounds instead of drawing them: you say which of a few candidates you like, TOMiC works out which knobs that implies.

Parent A is always the channel you are editing, on the layer you are editing (A or B). Parent B is optional: another channel, the other layer of the same channel, a .tomic-drum preset file, or none (mutations only).

Every generation is six children. A child inherits each section of the sound (OSC, OSC2, NOISE, NOISE2, filter, each FX unit, each modulator, mix) whole from one parent — so the synthesis topology is never a mosaic of two incompatible halves — and, where both parents share a section's topology, its knobs are blended (log-scaled for Hz and ms values) so children land between the parents. Mutation (the mut slider) then nudges knobs within each parameter's real range; enums never mutate, and the same safety rules as Smart Random keep every child playable.

Click a child to hear it: it is applied to the channel, so it plays in the running sequencer through the channel's own FX and mixer. Every apply is an undo step (Ctrl+Z), and the A: button restores the sound the session started from. The hover tooltip lists the biggest differences to parent A; the colored bar under each child shows which parent each section came from (cyan = A, orange = B, bright = changed).

♥ a child to make it a parent of the next generation and keep it on the Shelf. Next ▶▶ breeds from the hearted children (one heart = mutations of it, two or more = crosses); with nothing hearted it breeds from the child that is playing, else from parent A. ◀ ▶ step through the generations; breeding from an earlier one discards the later ones.

The Shelf is your library of bred sounds: saved with the project (DAW session and .tomic file) and left alone by New Song. Click an entry to play it on the current channel; right-click to send it to any channel, use it as parent B, save it as a .tomic-drum preset, or remove it. Up to 64 entries.

Bred sounds never touch a channel's wiring: choke group, sidechain source, macro mappings, sample slots and hosted CLAP/Omni plugins stay as they are.

Breed works in the plugin as well as in Standalone (only the Samples tab is Standalone-only).

7.5 ElevenLabs AI Integration (Text-to-Sound-Effect)

TOMiC features native integration with the ElevenLabs Sound Generation API (text-to-sound-effect, not full text-to-music). All network calls run on a dedicated background thread — never on the audio thread or inside the UI's own frame loop — so a slow request never causes an audio dropout or a frozen interface.

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ElevenLabs AI Integration

Figure 7.3: ElevenLabs AI sound generation dialog window.

Using ElevenLabs AI:

1. Click [ AI Sound Gen ] in the top bar to open the Sound FX tab.

2. Pick the target: which channel, which Layer (A/B), and which of the 4 round-robin Variant slots (A-D) the result should be written to.

3. Type a natural-language prompt describing the sound (e.g. "punchy kick drum with sub rumble").

4. Adjust Duration (0.5-22.0 seconds), Prompt Influence (0.0-1.0 — higher follows the prompt more literally), and optionally check Loop Sound for a seamless looping result.

5. Click Generate Sound. TOMiC calls the ElevenLabs API, writes the returned audio to your local samples folder, decodes it, computes a waveform thumbnail, and loads it straight into the chosen channel/layer/variant slot as a NoiseType::Sample — all without leaving the plugin.

6. A Settings tab holds the ElevenLabs API key, base URL, preferred output format, samples directory, and a Test Connection button that reports your account plan.

Generated samples are embedded in the plugin's own sample store, so a saved project stays self-contained and reopens correctly even on a machine that never had the original audio file.

7.6 Artchemy Generative Visual Bridge (Real-Time Visual Art)

Artchemy is a real-time, audio-reactive generative visual art bridge integrated directly inside TOMiC Drum Synth. Built to visualize drum hits and rhythmic patterns in real time, it connects audio and sequencer events with a dedicated web visual renderer (artchemy-web) via a local WebSocket bridge (127.0.0.1).

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Artchemy Visual Bridge

Figure 7.4: Artchemy generative visual configuration panel and per-channel brush routing.

Access & Display Modes

Embedded UI Panel: Openable inside TOMiC's main interface by clicking the [Artchemy] button in the Tools panel.

External Web Browser: The [Open in Browser] button launches the live canvas in your system web browser — ideal for multi-monitor setups, live VJ performances, and OBS video streaming.

Channel Routing & Brush Controls

Each of TOMiC's 16 drum channels features independent Artchemy routing:

Enable Checkbox: Toggles autonomous visual stroke generation whenever the selected drum channel triggers a hit.

Brush Selection (16 Procedural Brushes):

SHAPES — Geometric polygons and flat shapes

SPLATTER — Fluid dynamic paint splatters

INK_BLOT — Organic ink diffusion patterns

STARDUST — Shimmering particle clusters

WEAVING — Interlocking woven stroke threads

VINE — Branching tendril growth

PULL_SHAPES — Kinetic vector shape pulling

PARTICLES — High-velocity particle physics

FRACTAL — Recursive self-similar fractals

NETWORK — Node-line network webs

SPEED_SHAPES — Velocity-scaled geometric shapes

SYMBIOTE — Living organic fluid blobs

TUNNEL — Concentric 3D depth tunnels

VIRUS — Cellular reproduction patterns

CELLULAR_AUTOMATA — Grid automaton life simulation

DOUBLE_PENDULUM — Chaotic physical pendulum trails

Hue (H): Base brush stroke color hue on the color wheel (0° to 360°).

Size Min / Max (S & →): Minimum and maximum randomized brush sizes in pixels (1px to 200px).

Zone Center (X, Y) & Radius (R): Drawing target zone center (X: 0.0=left to 1.0=right, Y: 0.0=top to 1.0=bottom) and radius R (0.05 to 0.5), allowing spatial separation of drum parts across the screen (e.g. Kick in the center, Hi-Hats at the top).

Draw Modes (19 path algorithms): how the brush moves across the canvas on each drum hit, grouped in the picker as basic paths, spectral/cymatics-driven paths, and organic paths:

Stamp (HitStamp) — Single mark placed at the hit position.

Cont (Continuous) — Bézier curve path drawn over roughly 12-30 frames.

Gen (Generative) — Stamp placed on a 4×4 grid cell derived from the current sequencer step.

Orbit — Circular arc orbiting around the zone center.

Wave — Sinusoidal wave path sweeping across the zone.

Spiral — Outward spiral expanding from the zone center.

Burst — Radial stroke shooting from the zone center outward.

R.Walk (Random Walk) — Short random-walk path meandering around the start point.

Pendulum — Pendulum swing across the zone with a slight arc bow.

Rings (Frequency Rings) — Concentric rings sized by frequency-band energy (cymatics-style).

Lissa (Lissajous) — Oscilloscope-style Lissajous curve, frequency driven by spectral centroid.

Bloom — Rose-curve petals radiating from the zone center.

Shock (Shockwave) — Fast expanding ring whose radius is driven by hit velocity — an impact visualizer.

Stars (Constellation) — Random points connected by lines, like a star-map diagram.

Vine (Tendril) — Chained bézier vine for smooth organic growth, pairs well with the Force Field/Sculpt affects.

Breath — Pulsing inhale/exhale loop with smooth radial oscillation.

Grav (Gravity) — Parabolic arc that lobs the shape outward and lets it fall and settle.

Swirl — Double logarithmic spiral, a yin-yang-like whirl.

Weave — Figure-eight infinity loop, a continuous loom path.

Canvas Affects & Transformations (14 Affect Modules)

Real-time global canvas affect algorithms:

Mir-H / Mir-V / Quad — Horizontal, vertical, and 4-way quadrant symmetry.

Kaleido — Multi-fold radial kaleidoscope reflection.

Displace — Vector displacement warp applied to existing shapes.

Field (Force Field) — Vector force field steering particle trajectories.

Smudge — Fluid dynamic color blending (Liquid Smudge).

Sculpt / Rotate / Smooth — Edge sculpting, rotation drift, and antialiasing.

Shatter — Fragment shapes into debris upon hit collisions.

Erode — Opacity decay and shape erosion over time.

RndClr — Automatically randomizes stroke color on every hit.

Limit — Caps maximum total shapes on canvas for optimal rendering performance.

Auto-Clear Canvas

Auto-clear Every N Steps: Automatically clears the visual canvas every 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, or 256 sequencer steps (or Off for persistent cumulative artwork). Ensures seamless visual synchronization with bar phrases during live performances.

7.5 Display Scaling, UI Persistence & Diagnostics

TOMiC features dedicated settings and display persistence mechanisms designed for seamless integration with high-resolution studio monitors:

Persistent UI Zoom Scaling: The sidebar provides instant zoom presets (80%, 100%, 125%, 150%). Your selected UI scale is automatically persisted to %APPDATA%\tomic\ui_settings.json and remembered across application restarts and DAW sessions.

Unified Scaling Engine: Scale requests route cleanly through the requested_scale pipeline, ensuring artifact-free window resizing on multi-monitor setups without startup layout jumps.

Widened Mix/FX Channel Strips: Mixer columns and FX tabs provide ample layout width for CLAP plugin tabs, filter routing selectors, and modulation readouts without visual clipping.

About Window Diagnostics: The About dialog card displays the compile-time Git commit hash alongside the build version (Version 0.6.0 ()), streamlining technical support and version tracking.

Typography & Icons: The UI is set in Exo 2 (text) and JetBrains Mono (numeric read-outs), with every icon drawn from the Phosphor set — the fonts are bundled, so nothing depends on system fonts and no glyph ever renders as a square placeholder. Exo 2 is metric-patched so rows stay pixel-identical to the previous layout.