1 · Track
Load audio into Studio, read its embedded artwork and lyrics, and set playback volume, beat marks, fades, and loudness normalisation.
Everything in Studio reacts to the audio you load here. You can brand a silent clip and add the track later, but the visualizers, analysis graphs, playheads, and lyric timings all need a file to work against.
Loading audio
Open AUDIO SOURCE in the settings rail.
- ORBITAL BLOB loads the built-in sample track. It carries artwork and lyrics, so it is the quickest way to see every part of Studio doing something.
- UPLOAD YOUR OWN opens a file picker.
- You can also drag an audio file onto the waveform strip at the bottom of the window. Dropping a file when one is already loaded replaces it.
Once a file is loaded, the step strip shows its name, the waveform fills in, and the clock shows the real length.
Embedded artwork, info and lyrics
Leave EMBEDDED ARTWORK, INFO & LYRICS on and Studio reads the tags inside your audio file:
- Cover art is placed on the canvas as an image layer.
- Title and artist fill the text lines, replacing the placeholders. If the artist tag is empty, Studio uses album artist instead — usually the one that is filled in on a compilation or a track with a feature.
- Album fills its own text line when the tag is present.
- Embedded lyrics load into the lyrics timeline, timed if the tag carries timings.
If the file has no tags, Studio falls back to the file name for the title — dashes, underscores, and dots become spaces.
Anything you type yourself sticks. Loading a new track will not overwrite a title you have edited.
Audio settings
Switch the rail to ADVANCED to see the rest of the step.
Meter, mute and volume
The METER shows the live level with a peak readout. MUTE silences monitoring without changing the file.
VOLUME is a playback gain — it changes what you hear while you work, not the file and not the render. At 100% what you see on the meter is the true file level. Below 100%, the level you hear and the TRACK meter will not match the analysis graphs, which always measure the file.
Beat marks
BEAT MARKS draws white ticks on the transport waveform at beats and transients, on top of the loudness bars. It is a navigation aid for placing lyrics and cues — turning it off leaves the loudness bars alone.
Fades and loudness
- FADE IN and FADE OUT apply a fade at the head and tail of the exported audio, in seconds.
- NORMALIZE LOUDNESS mixes the exported audio to the loudness target shown in its hint — −14 LUFS integrated with true peak held at −1 dBTP by default. That is the level most streaming and social platforms target, so a normalised export is less likely to be turned down on upload. Off leaves the file exactly as you mixed it.
Both settings apply to the render. The EXPORT summary reports the loudness setting so you can confirm it before rendering.
Choosing what you hear
If your project has both a music track and a video layer with its own audio, MUSIC · VIDEO · MIX buttons appear on the transport. They choose which source you hear and which source drives every audio-reactive layer. The EXPORT summary names the chosen source.
Related
- Album art music visualizer: stop retyping your MP3 tags — what is inside the file, and how to fix a bare one
- How to make a lyric video — what happens to the lyrics tag