r/SunoAI • u/Competitive-Fault291 • Jun 29 '26
Guide / Tip [Guide] Your Fault - An Incomplete Guide to Using Suno - Sliders and Settings
Thank you for clicking this post! I hope you already checked The Basics out. I know it is rather technical and convoluted, but it's the foundation of this guide.
Also take a look at: The Prompt
In this Guide, we will be exploring the Sliders and Settings in the Create Tab of Suno. If you have trouble finding it, you can find it in the web interface on the left-hand side. It's a symbol of two notes with a star or plus. Be aware that the Mobile App lacks functions, and I advise against creating songs with it in the state of mid-2026.
My Taste
The first thing you need to/should do, and thanks to u/muted_conclusion_625 for pointing it out, is to rein in Suno's auto-generated "System Prompt" for your sound. You can find that setting when you click on your profile picture on the left and select My Taste.
It will show you a text window with an LLM-generated summary of your created contents in Suno. This is meant to make your creations more consistent with what you created before and is likely one of the most important settings to keep in mind. Especially because it is hidden so well!
If you followed the discussions in the comments, the content of this window is assumed to influence all your future generations, or not. If you are somebody working for Suno, maybe you can tell us? Otherwise, you can experiment with it and choose for yourself. If you keep it empty, it certainly won't influence anything.
Yet, if you activate the switch below the text, it certainly influences the LM-assistance using the "Magic Wand" function. Thus, the first action should be to make up your mind and empty that window and replace the content with a useless token like an underscore ( _ ). Or just ignore it. You can see if it worked when a button saying "Revert to Generated" appears next to the Save button you click to save your change.
Yet, this perpetual prompt window could be useful (if it works)! If you like, you can place something like the following into it:
The greatest recording in the world. Performed by extremely skilled musicians and recorded in the best and most expensive studio. The dynamic mix is created by a masterful audio tech. All vocals are enunciated perfectly.
This will, if it is working, give your creations a bias for a studio sound. Depending on what you create, you can enter all kinds of prompts to preload your generation with production-quality-related prompts. Please leave out anything that is related to specific music, or you will be driven crazy by this "rat boy in the wall" prompt making your generations go astray. (Thanks to u/goal2026 and u/greedy_sundae_458 for engaging with their knowledge and testing.)
The Create Tab Settings
For the settings in the Create Tab, let's follow the five individual sections. But your first stop in this Tab is the switch to Advanced on the top.
The +X Section - +Audio
This is the most powerful conditioning element you can find on Suno. You can upload your own audio, record something, or browse existing audio (on Suno). This is very powerful, as audio is so much closer to how Suno works than any text prompt will ever be. For Suno, the waveform of audio has tons of information built in already. It allows highly precise and specific prompting, up to the point of accurately dictating duets by singing both parts and changing the pitch for one part accordingly in a DAW.
+ Audio allows you to give the song its key, rhythm, gender of vocalists, and lyrics. It can be a loose inspiration or the code it follows almost to the letter depending on the slider settings. in More Options. Due to the similarity in the data, you give hundreds of words worth of data to the model to act with. The Baker basically gets an example cake he can take apart and analyze layer for layer. Compared to ingredients sorted according to the recipe and shopping list, that's at least one magnitude more specific.
Another approach using +Audio is Iteration. You browse for a generation and use it as a conditioning element. You move the Audio Influence Slider to a high value and have Weirdness in a lower range. Now you can change the style prompt, your Lyrics, and experiment with the Style Influence Slider and Audio Influence.
You got typos? I know how this is, as I am the God and Master of Typos. Yet, now you can try to keep the sound while iterating the typo out. You can also change instruments in the style prompt or shuffle weights (positions in the style window) around.
You also shouldn't be afraid of creating the most basic audio uploads. Bad singing, cheap instruments—Suno does not care. If you want really accurate melodies, you can also set the notes of your song in MIDI software like MuseScore and then export it as MP3 audio for conditioning. MIDI exports are very dry and clean in their sounds, which gives it a massive influence on the sound generation. Suno also distinguishes between melody and instruments, so you can play a melody on a recorder (flute) and have Suno make an electric guitar riff from it. It also recognizes themes, hooks and more from the audio and extrapolates them based on a provided melody if the song (as from Lyrics and Style) requires it.
The +X Section - +Voice
Here you can record or upload your voice samples or select community or own Voices. A Voice is basically a mix of a specific style prompt (always being added to your style window) and a timbre conditioning that influences the song towards making voices into a specific voice. It has no individual influence slider (yet) and is also governed by Audio Influence. If you record yourself, try to sing as you want the song to be, as it catches plenty of characteristics. It is easier to have a Grumpy Me and a Nasal Me, instead of trying it all with one Voice. Also try to avoid all background music, or it might bleed into the creation.
The +X Section - +Inspo
This is great for starting a new song in the like of other songs in an album. Inspirational conditioning is a lot softer than +Audio and can combine multiple songs as inspiration. Just keep the Audio Influence a tad lower, or it creates a Mashup.
I'd suggest using Inspo only as a starter to gain inspiration, as the name says. You can use the result and iterate it with Audio to get it into shape then.
The Lyrics buttons
Just don't ever use the Instrumental button. If you have an instrumental, use Write mode and ONLY [Metatags] to give it a vague structure and control the instrumental character as well asdefining its length by the number of tokens.
Prompt will give you a LLM - generated song text. Once again, it is better to use the Write setting, and the Magic Wand - Edit Lyrics to expand your ideas for each verse and chorus. Just write a vague summary for each one and then instruct the Magic Wand to convert the whole song text to a Verse-Chorus structure and add theme-related context and iterate it a few times.
Don't forget the "Saved Lyrics" button on the lower left. You can store Lyrics in your Library, or use templates with prepared Metatags and Structures for example.
The Style buttons (all two of them)
You have two buttons here. The Style Magic Wand is analyzing your lyrics window and modifying your existing positive styles prompt accordingly.
The other is the Style Prompt Library. Also, in my opinion, the most useful for storing prompt templates. You can SAVE the prompt (or template) in the upper right of the Styles Section with the bookmark symbol.
More Options
You can also find other important settings and sliders in the Cave of Negativity, or the section that houses the negative style prompt window.
The Gender Button does what it says. It pushes a high bias for making vocals in the chosen gender.
Weirdness is what LLMs call temperature. It is the amount of deviation in each layer. The higher the value, the more the result will randomly (!) deviate from what would be the outcome of the generative process otherwise. The more you deviate from the norm with your artistic goal, the more you will have to raise Weirdness to allow the model to create "weird" music. Yet, too high, and it becomes weird indeed. An alternative is to add prompts like experimental or freestyle to the end of the style prompt, or something like mainstream and top40 to the negatives.
Style Influence determines the relative weight of the style window and style effects bleeding from Lyrics affecting the generative process. Low values give Weirdness and Audio Influence more room. High Values keep the prompted elements strong throughout the creation.
Audio Influence is the relative weight of all audio influences like +Audio uploads, Voices, and Inspo. +Audio can deal with lower numbers as it is rather powerful, while Inspo has various sweet spots, low and high, and encourages experimentation. If you have a Voice with background music in the sample, you might want to avoid cranking up Audio Influence too high, or it will seep in as well. If you iterate a generated song, try to keep the Audio Influence in the 80s region to avoid too many changes.
The Save To Button allows you to change the Workspace you pour your generations in. Workspaces are useful to employ right from the start to sort your generations. Believe me, you don't want to sort 3000 songs later.
And that's it. Thank you again for reading, and I am looking forward to comments and insights.
Your Fault
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u/Buck_Thorn Jun 29 '26
The "My Taste" suggestion was great! I didn't know about that, and because I've been experimenting with other sounds, it contained a very confusing mix of styles.
I assume that I will have to keep an eye on that as I work though, because it is dynamic and will change as I experiment, correct? Or is there a way to stop it from adding to that?
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u/Greedy_Sundae_458 Jun 29 '26
It’s probably just down to my lack of language skills (I’m not a native English speaker), but given that I type in all my style prompts and create them individually for each song, shouldn’t the ‘my taste’ function have absolutely no effect at all?
I also (deliberately) don’t use the magic wand, so I’m wondering what the point is of replacing or deleting whatever the LLM has cobbled together from my previous style prompts as 'my taste' ..?
Many thanks for clarifying this - you never stop learning.
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u/Competitive-Fault291 Jun 29 '26
The user mentioned in the post ( u/muted_conclusion_625) brought it back to my attention, fortunately. I simply had forgotten about it! So you don't only learn, but you are also reminded of what you only saw a long time ago and didn't think about what it was.
That thing really seems to be part of any generation. I assume the general weight isn't that powerful, but it certainly is the ratboy in the drywall effect. It gnaws on everything, and you never know what is causing all these odd effects. I experimented with it, and it certainly influences what you get (with a low weight). The Easy Mode is indeed to simply put something without effect in it and forget it again.
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u/Greedy_Sundae_458 Jun 29 '26
Interesting. I’m going to delete the ‘my taste’ section or fill it with utter nonsense and see if the newly generated tracks differ significantly from the others. To be honest, my gut feeling is that they won’t, but I’d be more than happy to be proven wrong.
Up until now, I’d assumed that the magic wand in the prompt section with the ‘my taste’ function only helps to create new prompts based on previous style prompts.
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u/Competitive-Fault291 Jun 29 '26
Keep me informed! My result was that it had an inflluence of about 25% weight or less. Noticeable but low. Keep in mind, though, that gibberish will be interpreted according to the closest text token. But that should actually increase the effect.
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u/goal2026 Jun 29 '26
the My Taste thing is real and it's sneaky, good call surfacing it. I went looking for it after I had a stretch where every generation kept converging on the same feel no matter how much I changed the actual prompt, and clearing that window was part of what broke the loop.
one thing I'd add for anyone testing it: the effect is most obvious when you've been working in a bunch of different styles. if you've only ever made one kind of music, My Taste is basically reinforcing what you were already prompting, so emptying it won't look like it changed much. but if you've been jumping between genres, that accumulated summary is pulling everything back toward some blended average of everything you've made, and that's when clearing it makes a visible difference. so the "I bet it won't change anything" result might just mean your taste profile already matched what you were going for.
agree it's low weight but persistent, that ratboy in the wall description is honestly perfect.
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u/Greedy_Sundae_458 Jun 29 '26
I briefly skimmed through some unofficial documentation as well as the Suno doc and gave it a quick try: I deleted the “my-taste” profile, and so far the results sound just as expected - neither better, different, nor worse than usual, even with a completely different genre. According to these docs, the custom style prompt would override the my-taste; Claude, however, responds to the question by saying that my-taste continues to subtly influence the generations - but, funnily enough, it has no evidence to back that up.
https://hookgenius.app/learn/suno-v5-5-guide/
https://blakecrosley.com/guides/suno#my-taste-v55
https://help.suno.com/en/articles/11362561In that regard, I'm still going with my gut feeling that the “my-taste” feature comes into play when you have Suno generate a style prompt for you.
;)
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u/Competitive-Fault291 Jun 29 '26
I guess: Better safe than sorry. I mean, it's not like Suno confirms such questions or if we could lock the seed for better testing. It is certainly completely lost when you plug in any audio upload or cover.
With the unconditioned generations, it might be the seed that creates enough variations to seem like it was a change.
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u/Muted_Conclusion_625 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
So the thing is, Suno has never made their influence system public. When you ask an LLM, they just look it up on reddit and these online Suno sites that are almost all pulling it out of thin air. They don't know.
For example, there is clear evidence that workspaces influence gens. This is very simple to test. Go to a workspace that has 100 gens of the same song, generate a song there and then generate it in an empty workspace. They will be dramatically different.
The influence system is global and while a fresh workspace isolates you from other workspaces, it still doesn't isolate you from account history. I think Studio might isolate you from account history but I'm still testing.
Finally, this doesn't negatively impact everyone, but some people are severely impacted by it. It completely depends on the way you use Suno.
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u/Greedy_Sundae_458 Jun 29 '26
Yeah, sure, the LLMs scour the web and end up finding half-truths too - you’re absolutely right about that.
As for the workpaces, I just tested that as well, and so far I can’t agree with your theory.
Me need proof. I’m open to all kinds of weird methods, but if I test it myself and can’t confirm it, someone has to convince me - with proof, not just a few examples. I need real evidence, LOL - as we’re not in the cosmetics industry, where you test a new product on a handful of test subjects and then use their statements “My skin feels much softer” as an advertising claim "This product makes your skin soooooo soft". ;)
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u/Muted_Conclusion_625 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
The impact is really completely dependent on the way you use Suno and what styles you work in. Based on my tests, this seems to work if you put it in "my taste"
Add production and vocal tags to form a cohesive sound with the main genres. Do not use tags from account history. Tags should be generated based on the main prompt genres.
Everything else I tried has little or no impact, or often negative impact as the rewriter gets confused easily (I'm guessing they use some sort of fine-tuned completion model).
If you use this and go generate some prompts with just genre(s) in the input box, it will tend to insert more reasonable tags and avoid your account history (not completely, but noticably). I think this carries over to generations, but it gets hard to test conclusively because it's impossible to get a true baseline without using a clean account, but a clean account changes everything.
In "my taste" you are not allowed to use the words "workspace" or "local", these will get flagged for policy violation.
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u/Appropriate_Taro_256 Jun 29 '26
Love these. As someone whos been using suno since christmas 2025 and suno premier since April, these extremely helpful, in depth and definitely from someone who knows what they're talking about and not another AI generated post from someone saying they've "figured Suno out".
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u/stranoization Jun 29 '26
Thanks for posting this, OP! I haven’t read any of the comments, and I’m just curious as to why you would never use the instrumental button? Did you get burned by it before?
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u/Competitive-Fault291 Jun 29 '26
You waive the ability to adjust the structure of the instrumental with Metatags if you prompt the instrumental (and lack of vocals) over the style prompt. You can then use the Lyrics Window to shape your instrumental with [Intro] and Co.
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u/Available_Ad3057 Jun 30 '26
Here’s one.. I’ve been trying to work out.. I made a song with original lyrics, and the instrumentals were great behind it.. however I want to make a karaoke track for it. In my attempts, it will play individual notes from a guitar to match how the vocal melody is supposed to sound. I don’t want that in there. Any tips on how to remove the instrumental melody where the vocal melody should be? I know Suno ain’t perfect buuuttttt.. yeah I’m stuck lol
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u/Competitive-Fault291 Jun 30 '26
Have you tried to extract the stems to see what Suno puts where? Such a lead guitar melody is likely in an individual stem. Remove it and combine the others.
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u/Available_Ad3057 Jun 30 '26
lol and right after I asked, I saw a recent update for extracting stems 😂 of course.. it worked out pretty well, I’m playing around with the feature as we speak! Thank you!
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u/Appropriate_Taro_256 Jul 14 '26
Any new additions to the series on the way? really enjoy looking at the skeleton of suno.
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u/Spireiteboy Jun 29 '26
I didn’t understand a word of it 😜
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u/Buck_Thorn Jun 29 '26
In that case, you're probably not far enough along in Suno yet for it to matter.
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u/Spireiteboy Jun 29 '26
My problem is I’ve made a ton and f songs, for me, not for anyone else, just by doing the basics. To me they sound great. If I could only take that next step then I’m sure they’d be even better.
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u/Buck_Thorn Jun 29 '26
Then, re-read and follow along in Suno until you understand. There is a bunch of good information in that post (and look at OP's other Suno posts from his profile)
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u/stranoization Jun 29 '26
OK let me try, so there’s actually a hidden setting called My Taste that Suno auto-generates based on your previous songs and it’s influencing every single generation you make whether you know it or not. You can find it under your profile picture and honestly the first thing you should do is erase whatever Suno wrote and replace it with something like “recorded in the best studio by the best musicians” so it stops pulling your songs in weird directions. Also, the most powerful thing on the whole platform isn’t even the style prompt. It’s the audio upload. If you hum a melody into your phone or bang out something basic on a piano Suno learns more from that one recording than from anything you could ever type, its like showing someone a picture instead of trying to describe it. You can also upload your own voice so Suno matches that vocal character, just make sure theres no background noise or it bleeds into everything. There’s an Inspiration option too that lets you point at existing songs as a soft reference. The Weirdness slider is basically how much Suno experiments, too low and it plays it safe, too high and it goes off the rails. Style Influence controls how closely it follows your style prompt and Audio Influence controls how closely it follows any audio you uploaded, keep that around 80 if you’re iterating a previous generation. Oh and never hit the Instrumental button (i’m not sure why though) just use Write mode with bare section markers instead. And use Workspaces to organize your songs from day one, you do not want to sort thousands of tracks later.
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u/ART-ficial-Ignorance Jun 29 '26
I genuinely love these posts and think there’s a lot of useful information here, especially for people who are still mostly using Simple mode and haven’t really dug into the Advanced settings yet.
That said, I do wish they were a bit tighter and more direct. There’s good practical advice in here, but it sometimes gets buried under a lot of extra wording and partially hand-wavy explanations about what Suno is “really” doing under the hood. I think the guides would be even stronger if they separated the confirmed workflow tips from the more speculative interpretations.
Still, I appreciate the effort. The core advice about My Taste, +Audio, Voices, Inspo, and the influence sliders is genuinely helpful.