Mixer & effects
Mixer mode is the final stage — balance the four tape tracks, polish the master, and export the finished thing. Four pages: MIX · EQ · FX · OUT.
MIX
Four live VU faders, one per track, each with a pan dot and a level readout in its track color. The LEVEL / PAN chip flips what the four knobs control — levels or pans. The PATH chip swaps the meters for spool.’s signal path so you can see the whole chain at a glance:
ENGINE → INSERT FX → TRACK → MIX → MASTER FX → EQ → DRIVE → OUTEQ
A 3-band master EQ — LOW · MID · HIGH — on the whole mix.
FX — the master effect
One effect across the entire mix, with its own LFO routing. The same rack is available here as on each track’s insert slot:
| Effect | What it is | Knobs |
|---|---|---|
| BAT | dual-band resonant filter — two peaks, like bat ears | LOW · HIGH · RES · SWEEP |
| DELAY | tempo-syncable delay | TIME · FBACK · TONE · MIX |
| SPRING | spring/plate reverb | SIZE · DECAY · DAMP · MIX |
| GRID | drive + bitcrush | DRIVE · CRUSH · TONE · MIX |
| PUNCH | compressor — glue and thickness | THRESH · RATIO · ATTACK · MAKEUP |
| SWIRL | chorus/ensemble width | RATE · DEPTH · SPREAD · MIX |
| JET | phaser | RATE · DEPTH · FBACK · MIX |
| WAVE | tremolo / auto-pan | RATE · DEPTH · SHAPE · STEREO |
| STUT | beat-repeat stutter | DIV · CHANCE · FEEL · MIX |
| HALO | pitch-shifter / harmonizer | PITCH · FINE · FBACK · MIX |
DELAY, JET, WAVE and STUT can lock their timing to the tempo. The free version includes SPRING, BAT, PUNCH (and bypass); the full rack unlocks with Spool Pro.
Remember: insert effects belong to tracks, so each of the four tape tracks keeps its own effect, and this page holds the one master effect on top.
OUT — master and export
The OUT page has the master VOL and DRIVE knobs — and a brickwall limiter always guards the output, so your mix never clips.
This is also where songs leave the app:
- Tap MIXDOWN — spool. records everything you hear at the master output, effects and all, while you play the song down.
- Tap stop when it’s done.
- Tap EXPORT WAV to save the mixdown to the Files app as a WAV.
Mixdown export is a Spool Pro feature.
Next: Sampling →