---
title: "Group tracks, mute, and solo"
sidebarTitle: "Groups, mute, and solo"
description: "Give several audio clips one set of effects, one fader, and one mute — and know which of mute and solo reaches the export."
---

Five narration clips usually want one set of effects, one fader, and one mute —
not five copies that drift apart as you edit. A group gives them that: its members
sum through a single bus, and the bus carries the group's own volume, effects, and
automation.

## When to use a group

- **Narration in several clips.** One rack for the whole voice, and one thing for
  a [carve](/studio/voiceover-carve) to point at.
- **More than a couple of sound effects.** One place to turn all of them down is
  worth more than precise individual levels you will never revisit.
- **Anything you want to mute as a unit** — an ambience layer, a music stem.

A single clip does not need a group. Its own rack is already one place.

## Create a group

On an audio track holding more than one ungrouped clip, the **FX** button offers
to group them first: it reads "Group these clips to add effects to all of them".
Choose **Group**.

Studio creates a group behind those clips and points anything that needed it — a
carve, for instance — at the group rather than at the individual clip ids.

## Read a group row

A group gets its own timeline row, carrying:

| Control | Does |
| --- | --- |
| Caret | Shows or hides the member rows beneath it |
| `▤` and name | The group glyph and its label |
| Count | How many members it holds |
| Mute | Silences every member at once |
| **Hear only this** | Solo — listens to this group while you work |
| **FX** | Opens the group's own rack, applying to the summed bus |
| `∿` | Shows or hides [the group's own automation lanes](/studio/audio-automation) |

The caret and the `∿` toggle are independent: showing a group's members does not
open their automation lanes, and opening the group's lanes does not expand its
members.

A group-level effect hears the **sum** of its members, not each one separately.
That is the point of a bus — one compressor across a whole voiceover behaves
differently from five compressors on five clips, and usually better.

## Mute and solo are not symmetric

This is the part worth remembering:

| Control | What it does | In the export |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Mute | Silences a clip or a whole group | **Included** — muted audio is dropped from the render |
| **Hear only this** | Listens to one thing while you work | **Ignored** — solo never reaches the render |

So **mute is a mix decision and solo is a listening tool**. You can leave a solo
active, render, and get the full mix — which is deliberate, because a forgotten
solo silently shipping a one-track export would be much worse.

A group that is not soloed while one of its members is appears **half-lit**: the
display-only signal that some of what is under it still plays.

## Membership lives on the member

Worth knowing because it explains most surprises: each clip records which group it
belongs to, rather than the group listing its members. Delete a clip and it simply
disappears from the group; nothing dangles.

Groups are **audio only** and do not nest. A group marker on a video clip is
ignored.

## What should happen

- The group row appears with the members collapsed beneath it, and the
  grouping offer disappears from that track's **FX** button.
- Effects added to the group apply to everything under it at once.
- Muting the group silences all members, in preview and in the render.

## Common problems

**The group's effects do nothing.** Check that the members actually carry the
group, rather than that the group appears to list them.

**Nothing happened when I grouped clips.** Grouping resolves the clips it was
given against the timeline's current rows. If the track is collapsed, or its clips
live inside a nested composition, expand it and try again.

**Clips inside a nested composition are not offered grouping.** They arrive as
separate rows rather than as one track holding several clips, so the grouping
offer does not appear. Group them in the composition that owns them.

**A soloed track was missing from the export.** It was not — solo cannot affect a
render. Look for a mute.

## Related topics

- [Make music sit under narration](/studio/voiceover-carve)
- [Automate a parameter over time](/studio/audio-automation)
- [Audio effects implementation](/reference/audio-effects#groups-mute-and-solo)
