Pro Tools: Master Faders

Avid’s Pro Limiter has loudness and true peak metering, and is best placed on a Master Fader where the inserts are post‑fader.

Master Faders offer much more than just level control!

Master Faders in Pro Tools aren’t created by default in a session, and things seem to work fine without them, so you might wonder why they exist at all. The reason is that they solve problems. They monitor and trim signal paths, and their inserts and metering work slightly different to those in other track types. This is great for tackling that often talked about and sometimes misunderstood aspect of audio production: gain management.

You might never move the fader that gives a Master Fader its name, but having one across, for example, the output bus of your session, is very useful. The meter in a Master Fader is often more important than the fader itself, and can be reason enough on its own to use Master Faders throughout your session.

Master Faders aren’t just for the main output. Place them on stems, effect sends, or cue mixes, and you instantly gain reliable metering and level control.

Meter Reading

If you see that you’re not managing headroom effectively, the Master Fader is all you need to correct the situation without disturbing your existing automation and balances. Master Faders control paths, whether outputs or internal busses. They consume no additional system resources and are available for all track formats. While many people only think of placing them across the main output, in practice you’ll often find uses for them across stems, submixes, and even headphone sends.

The scaling of the faders in Pro Tools does mean it’s easier to make fine adjustments towards the top of the range, but beyond that, there’s no sonic change created by adjusting levels using a Master Fader, unless you deliberately introduce non‑linearities by using analogue‑modelled plug‑ins. For this reason, some longstanding rules of thumb from the analogue world don’t apply inside Pro Tools, and Master Faders provide a good example.

I think a Master Fader is best thought of as a meter with an associated trim control. It targets a specific output or bus path, and while they can be used to control the level of multiple tracks together, there are other, often better ways to do that. The meter shows the level of that output or bus path at the summing point in the Pro Tools mixer.

Meters on Master Faders always show the post‑fader level, so any adjustment you make with the fader is reflected regardless of other metering settings. You can even choose a different metering type for Master Faders from the rest of your tracks — a valuable option when you want finer resolution for monitoring headroom.

There are only five insert slots on a Master Fader, but as...