Music

Music runs separately from the slides. Moving to the next slide does not cut the track. It sits in the middle of the preview row. The Music area is between the stage on the left and Slide settings on the right.

When you cannot see the labels

Most buttons in the Music area only show their name when you hover over them (Add music, Add folder, Track settings, Play · Pause · Stop · Mute, In point · Out point · Clear In/Out). What is always written out is the Music heading, the right-click menus, Stop · Next · Repeat in the Track settings panel, and the row names in the Settings window.

Adding tracks

There are two ways.

What you want	How
Pick the files	The + at the right of the Music heading (Add music) — you can pick several at once
Drag them in	Drop the files onto the dark list box. The border turns teal while you drag

These seven can go in.

mp3 · m4a · aac · wav · flac · aiff · ogg

Video, images and folders that come mixed in are filtered out without a word. The list does not fill up with rows that will not play.

.aif and .opus can be picked but do not go in

The format line in the file picker lists .aif and .opus too, so you can select them, but they are not added to the list. Nothing happens, so it is easy to think you missed them. Convert these two to mp3 or wav beforehand.

A drop goes into the folder that is open right now

Dropping onto a folder bar does not put the track in that folder. Open the folder you want first, then drop.

Files are copied into the media folder

Tracks you add are copied into the Media folder. If the original sits on an external disk or in the cloud, it will cut out on stage. If the same name and the same size is already there, it is not copied again.

Sorting them into folders

One event picks up a dozen or more tracks. Split them into folders and there is less hunting on stage.

• Press Add folder and a folder is made, then it asks for a name right away
• Press a folder bar to open it, press it again to close it
• The pill at the right of the bar is the number of tracks · total length
• Drag folder bars up and down to reorder them (an open folder brings its tracks with it)

The name is only set with Enter

The window that asks for the folder name is confirmed with Enter only. Close it and the folder keeps its placeholder name, New Folder. The folder that is already there when you first start carries a default name of its own, which you rename the same way.

Only one folder is open at a time

Opening another folder closes the one before it. If a track is playing inside a closed folder, a teal dot and that track’s name appear on the bar, so you know what is running even while it is closed.

Track order, and sending a track to another folder

Drag a track row up or down to change the order. It moves within the same folder only, and this order is the order Play next follows.

Dragging to another folder is a copy, not a move

Drop a track on another folder’s bar and one more row appears in that folder, while the original row stays where it was. The file is not duplicated, only the list grows. To really move it, copy it and then delete the original row.

This path is deliberate. You can cut the same track differently in each folder — the range, the end action and the speed carry over the values they had at the moment you copied, and after that they live apart.

Playing · pausing · stopping

What you want	How
Play	Click the track row (it comes in on the fade in)
Pause	Click the playing row again, or Pause under the list
Stop	The ■ (Stop) under the list
Move the position	Drag the progress bar under the list
Volume	Press or drag the thin bar on the right
Silence	The speaker button to its left (Mute)

The row of the track that is playing turns teal, with a dot at its left.

Pause and Stop are different

Pause stands still where it is. Stop takes the sound down through the stop fade and then puts the track away. On stage, “music off” means Stop.

The music volume is always remembered

The volume in the Music area stays the same the next time you open the app. It is separate from Remember master volume in Settings, so the music volume is remembered even with that turned off.

The 1× chip under the list changes the speed of what you are listening to now. This value is not saved — cue another track and it goes back to the speed saved on that track.

What each track keeps — Track settings

Hover over a track row and press the slider button that appears, or right-click the row → Track settings. The heading of the right-hand panel changes from Slide settings to Track settings. No new panel opens; the same panel now shows the track.

What you set here	What it does
In point · Out point	Trims the talk-up at the front or the silence at the back
Clear In/Out	Clears the in and out points at once (shows only when at least one is set)
Playback speed	0.25× to 3×. This value is saved on the track
Stop · Next · Repeat	What to do when the track ends
Format line	Reads like MP3 · 320kbps · 44.1kHz, with the channel layout at the end

Set a range and the length badge in the list shows the range length instead of the file length, in teal. The total length on the folder bar adds up those values too.

Landing on the exact spot

Click the progress bar in the Track settings panel once so the ring comes on, then press ← → to move in very small steps. Hold Shift for ten times as much.

A silent preview is not a fault

The preview in Track settings runs completely apart from the music going to the stage. So while stage music is playing, the preview is silent. That is to keep the two sounds from overlapping. The preview also runs past the out point on purpose — keeping the out point is the stage’s job.

There are two speed chips

The chip under the list changes only what is playing now and is not saved. Only the chip in the Track settings panel is saved on the track. They look the same, which makes them easy to mix up. Slides have the same split — see The main window.

When the format line is empty

Length, format and tag titles are read with an outside tool called ffprobe. On a computer without it, the length badge is empty and the format line says Format unknown. No warning window appears, so it is easy to read as “something is wrong with this one track”, but playback itself is not affected.

When a track ends — the end action

Each press of the button at the far right of a track row cycles through three.

End action	What it does
Stop at end	The track stops where it ends (this is what a newly added track has)
Play next	Carries on to the next row in the same folder
Repeat one	Repeats that track only

You set it per track. “Repeat this one” and “carry on for the rest” can live in the same list. Change it on the track that is playing and it takes effect where it is, without re-cueing.

Check carry-on playback in rehearsal

Play next carries on inside the folder you have open, and nowhere else. It does not cross into another folder, and around the last track of a folder it sometimes stops instead of carrying on. For a stretch where the music must not break, set Repeat one, or press the next track yourself when you move on.

When sounds pile up — Settings › Stage › Music

The Stage tab of the Settings window holds a Music group. The values here apply to the whole list right away.

Row	What it does	Default
Music fade in	How long the sound takes to come up when you cue a track	0.8 s
Music fade out	How long it takes to disappear when you put it away with Stop	1.2 s
Music crossfade	How long the two tracks run together when moving to the next one	1.5 s
Music while video plays	Keep · Lower · Mute	Keep
Lower to	Appears only when you pick Lower	25%

Music crossfade is the most noticeable point during a show. Move through it once in rehearsal.

Even at 0 there is still 0.2 s

Cutting the sound dead makes a “tick”. So a very short fade remains whatever value you set.

When speech in a video is buried under the music

Set Music while video plays to Lower and the music drops only while something with sound is on stage, and comes back by itself when it ends. It does not apply to things without sound, like images or subtitles.

The default is Keep for a reason. Music going quiet with no explanation reads as a fault, not a feature (“the music does not play when I run a video”). Turn it on only where you will use it.

When the file has gone

A track name in red means the original file was not found. Right-click that row → Relink file → pick the new file.

Do not delete it and add it again

Delete and re-add it and the range, the end action and the speed you set on that track are all lost. Relink file swaps the file and leaves those values as they were. The new file is copied into the media folder too, and the length is measured again. The name is left alone (you may have changed it yourself).

If you moved the whole media folder somewhere else, the app finds the files again itself by subfolder/file name.

Renaming and deleting

• Right-click a track row → Rename — only the name shown in the list changes (the file name stays)
• Right-click a folder bar → Rename Deleting comes in two kinds — whether the file in the media folder goes with the row.

Right-clicked	List only	With the file
A track row	List only	Track and file (to Trash)
A folder bar	Folder only (keep files)	Folder and files (to Trash)

The file route asks first. And it does not delete — it moves the file to the Trash, so there is a way back if you picked wrong. If another folder has a track using the same file, you are told before it happens: send it anyway and that track shows as missing, but its row stays.

When deleting a folder, files that a track outside it still uses are neither counted nor sent.

Why deleting the file is worth having

Music is copied into the media folder when you add it. Remove it from the list only, and that copy stays behind. Add the same track a few times and you may have name-1, name-2 sitting there.

Taking a row out of the list does not come back with ⌘Z

This is not like deleting a slide. It goes the moment you press (only the file route asks). Do not delete during a show. Tidy up before the event, and look over the list once after deleting a row.

The folder used to look deleted with the last track

Before 0.9.6, deleting the last track in a folder made the folder look gone too. It was not — the whole list was simply hidden. An empty folder now stays in view.

Music files put in a playlist

A music file can also go in as a slide in a playlist. The card gets a Music chip, and presenting it lays the sound over the screen without changing what is on it.

A sound-only slide does not go onto any layer

There is no picture to draw. Pressing the layer chip changes nothing. A track cued this way is not a row in the music library, so no dot appears in the Music area.

Background music that runs through the whole event belongs in the Music area; “a sound that goes out once at this point” belongs in a playlist slide. That way the two do not get mixed up.

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Values to remember

Music fade in	0.8 s (0–5 s)
Music fade out	1.2 s (0–5 s)
Music crossfade	1.5 s (0–5 s)
Music while video plays	Keep / Lower to 25%
End action of a track	Stop at end
Speed of a track	1× (0.25× to 3×)
In point · Out point	None (to the end)
Overall music volume	100% — the same the next time you open it
The folder you start with	Made automatically; rename it as you like

Shortcuts

← →	With the progress bar in Track settings clicked, move the playback position in very small steps
Shift + ← →	The same move, ten times as far
Enter	Confirm the name in the window asking for a track or folder name

If something does not work, see Help or tell us at [email protected].