Good sound is half the picture. This article covers the fundamentals of working with audio in Lightworks: how tracks and channels work, mono versus stereo, reading waveforms and meters, monitoring, and the project options that affect audio.
A sequence holds audio tracks (A1, A2, and so on) that play together. Keep different kinds of sound on different tracks - dialogue on one, music on another, effects on a third - so you can balance and process each independently. A sequence can hold many audio tracks (up to 32), and all of them feed the audio mixer (see The audio mixer).
Clips arrive with their channels intact:
Lightworks shows a clip's channel layout in its metadata (see Clip information and metadata).
You can group audio tracks so they behave as one - most commonly a left and right pair handled as a single stereo unit. Grouped tracks share fader and control moves, which keeps a stereo pair balanced and makes mixing tidier. Use Group Audio Tracks on the timeline to group the selected tracks, and Ungroup Audio Tracks to treat them separately again.
Each audio clip shows a waveform - a picture of its loudness over time. Waveforms make it easy to spot where speech starts, find a beat, or see a loud transient to cut on. Toggle them with Show Audio Waveforms in the timeline display options. Waveforms are generated after import, so they may take a moment to appear on freshly imported media.
PPM meters show you the actual signal level as audio plays, per track and on the master output. Watch them to keep levels healthy: strong enough to hear clearly, but never hitting the top of the scale where the sound distorts (clips). Meters live in the audio mixer, which also has a compact monitor mode when you just want to watch levels (see The audio mixer).
Monitoring is what you hear as you work:
Some audio behaviour is set at the project or application level, including the audio output device and how audio is handled for variable frame rate media (VFR correction keeps audio and video in sync). These are covered in Project settings reference and Application preferences.
Tip: Set a sensible track layout early - dialogue, music, effects on their own tracks - and the mix later becomes far simpler.