Docs / Mixing / The Monitor Bar

The Monitor Bar

The strip across the top of the window is your control room. On a studio console this section answers one question — "what am I listening to, and how loud?" — without ever touching the mix that leaves the building. Aura Mixer's monitor bar works exactly the same way, plus it hosts the engine controls.

The full monitor bar, left-to-right: MONITOR dropdown · ● CLR SOLO indicator · VOL fader + dB readout · DIM toggle · 🎬 Scene chip · OUT device label · ▶ / ⏹ engine buttons · status dot.
The monitor bar — control room on the left, engine on the right.

MONITOR — choose what you hear

The dropdown selects which bus is in your ears right now:

  • Main L+R — pinned first; the default.
  • Physical outputs — your other hardware buses.
  • Virtual outputs — and this is the gem: select your OBS or Discord bus and you hear exactly what your viewers or callers receive. No more "is my stream music too loud?" guesswork — audit any mix in one click, switch back, done.

Switching the monitor changes only your listening; every bus keeps delivering its own mix to its own destination the whole time.

VOL and DIM — how loud, for you only

  • VOL — your listening level. It sits after everything else, so cranking it for a quiet passage or pulling it down for lunch never alters what any bus outputs. Double-click resets; the readout shows the exact dB.
  • DIM — one click drops monitoring by −20 dB; another click restores exactly where you were. The button glows while active, and the volume readout dims too. It's the "someone's at the door" button — conversation-friendly in an instant, back to full level in another.
⚠️ Quiet but faders look fine?

If everything seems quiet and faders look fine — check DIM. A glowing DIM button has confused every audio engineer at least once.

● CLR SOLO

Lights up when any strip anywhere is soloed; click to clear all solos at once. Details in Mute, Solo and Select.

🎬 Scene chip

When a scene is active, its name lives here — a constant reminder of which saved setup you're running. Loading and saving scenes happens in the Scenes window (menu bar); see Scenes in the Scenes & Presets section.

OUT + engine controls

The right-hand cluster reports on the engine:

  • OUT — the device the Main L+R bus is playing to (short name; hover for the full one). Configure it via Main L+R → SETUP.
  • ▶ / ⏹ — start / stop the audio engine.
  • Status dot — green = running, grey = stopped.
  • — appears only when the engine hit an error; hover it to read the message.

More on what the engine actually does: The Audio Engine.

stuck? ask on Discord
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