Fairlight · Monitor · Resolve 21
Monitor and source monitoring
A practical guide to the current Fairlight Monitor utility visible in Resolve 21: source selection, what monitoring means in an audio-post workflow, and how to avoid confusing the monitor path with track input, recording or final routing.
Source selection
Choose the source that should feed the monitor path.
Monitoring ≠ recording
What you listen to and what a track records are related routing questions, but they are not automatically the same thing.
No Source
The live screenshot is captured with no source selected, so silence in that state is expected.
Control Room context
The Monitor utility and the Control Room meter are related, but they are not the same UI
The dedicated Monitor utility above selects a source for monitoring. The Control Room block shown here sits in the main Fairlight metering area and reports the listening/mastering path alongside Bus 1 and Loudness. Keeping both screenshots prevents the common mistake of treating every monitoring control as one panel.
1. Monitoring logic
Listening is a signal-path decision of its own
Source
The visible Source selector is the first explicit control in the live UI. If no source is selected, the monitor path has nothing explicit to audition through this utility.
Track input
Recording input patching answers a different question: what source is being captured by the armed track? Do not use the monitor selector as a substitute for verifying the track input patch.
Mixer routing
Buses and outputs decide where the mix travels. Monitoring decides what you hear while working. They can interact, but they should be diagnosed separately.
Final delivery
Monitoring does not define the final rendered mix by itself. Delivery still follows the buses, tracks and export configuration chosen for the render.
2. Troubleshooting
No sound? Check source, input and routing as separate layers
Monitor shows No Source
Select the intended monitoring source first. A silent Monitor with no source selected is not evidence that the recorded track or bus is broken.
Track records silence
Go back to Input/Patch/Arm on the recording track. Monitoring configuration cannot repair an incorrect recording input assignment.
Meters move but you hear nothing
Then inspect monitor speaker configuration, output patching, mute/dim state and the physical listening path instead of changing clip processing at random.
3. Related pages
Monitoring sits between recording, routing and metering
Blackmagic's current Fairlight console documentation describes flexible monitoring, switching between sources, speaker configurations, control-room/studio levels and monitor feedback. The exact Source selector and --- No Source --- state on this page come from the supplied live Resolve 21 interface. Because the public page does not document the screenshot's unlabelled circular control, its function is intentionally left unnamed here.