Players

Each column is one player. Players are independent: each has its own playlist tabs, transport, volume and outputs.

Header

Info row

• Cover of the track on air, or a vinyl placeholder.
• Title and artist of the track on air. A stopped player shows the track Play will start (its next), with its cover, its length and its waveform, ready at the cue-in, or where you clicked its waveform.
• A track played or loaded before its analysis has finished already has its length when its file’s header gives it: the countdown, elapsed / total and click to jump work at once, over a flat line until the waveform is ready. When the header does not store it (raw AAC files, MP3 files with no length frame, Matroska and WebM), the total reads “—” and the waveform cannot be clicked until the analysis ends.
• Stereo meter (in the column at the right of the player, next to the fader; it spans the info row and the transport): the level the player puts out, after its volume.
  • One continuous bar per channel, on the scale of the meter type’s standard (the digital peak meter by default: −60 to 0 dBFS, with the top 20 dB taking half the height). The scale is a ruler on each side of the bars, labelled in the meter’s own units on both sides. Its top and its bottom (for the digital meter, the scale floor) are always marked; every label has a tick on each ruler, and shorter ticks between the labels work like those of a measuring ruler: evenly spaced on round values, every 1 dB on the EBU meter and every 5 dB below −20 on the digital one when the meter is tall enough, and every 2, 2.5, 5 or 10 dB (or none) where it is too short for them. On the digital (and custom) meter, a tall meter labels more values: every 1 dB from −20 to 0, and every 5 dB between the 10 dB marks below −20 (−45, −55), always evenly spaced and only where they fit without the labels touching; the other meter types keep the labels their standard gives. The alignment level (−18 dBFS on the digital meter) is a thicker white tick on both rulers. Nothing is drawn over the bars or between them, so what you see in the bars is only the level, the peak hold and the colours.
  • The bar is green, yellow from the warning level (−9 dBFS), and red from the danger level (−3 dBFS). The other meter types turn red where their scale does (from 0 VU, from the permitted maximum on a PPM).
  • K-System meters show two sections: the solid bar is the average (RMS) level and the dimmer part above it reaches the peak. Their colours are the K-System’s: green below 0, amber from 0 to +4, red above.
  • Digital peak, K-System and custom meters keep the highest level lit for a moment as a line (the peak hold; its length is Peak hold in Settings → Meters, and 0 turns it off). EBU PPM, DIN PPM and VU meters have no hold.
  • The number above is the highest level since the entry started, in dBFS, red in the danger zone. It stays after a stop and starts again when an entry plays (the next one or the same again), or when you click it.
  • The number underneath is the loudness in LUFS (EBU R128), green within ±1 LU of the target (−23 LUFS).
  • The meter type and every level can be changed in Settings → Meters.
  • Readings above 0 dBFS. The meter shows what the player puts out, and that can exceed full scale. The bar stops at the top of the scale, so the same red shows 0 dBFS and anything above it; only the number above tells how far, with its sign (for example +3.5).
    • A file can carry levels above full scale itself (a float file, or a lossy file whose decoded peaks exceed it).
    • Converting the rate can create peaks between the samples: a signal that touches 0 dBFS reads about +3 dBFS after 44.1 → 48 kHz. The true-peak option reads those peaks too.
    • The meter reads each player alone, not the sum on the device: two players on one output can add up above full scale without either meter showing it.
    • Nothing in the player adds gain above 100 %. An integer device clips at full scale; a float device receives the level as it is and the sound system or driver clips it.
• Volume fader (right of the meter, as tall as it): drag it or use the mouse wheel, one step per notch. The The level in dB (one decimal, or −∞ for silence) is written under the fader, on the same row as the meter’s loudness line, and the tooltip shows it too; the top is 0 dB and the bottom is silence. On a player whose Main output is bit-perfect the fader is locked at 100 % and greyed, it reads a dimmed 0.0, and its tooltip says why (see What it costs).
• Title, artist and the next line, with a green square. While CUE is on, the pre-listen position shows in blue.

Transport

Buttons that cannot act right now are dimmed: Stop and Restart with nothing loaded, Pause and Fade stop while stopped, Previous with no earlier track or during a fade. A player remembers the last 50 tracks it played (players.history_len in config.json, 0 to 1000).

Modes

• CONT (continuous): at the MIX point the player starts the next track and overlaps the end of the current one. See Markers and mixing.
• SINGLE: every track stops at its end. Stop after is not available in this mode, because every track already stops, except while the current track repeats: then it ends the repeat when the pass that is playing ends.

Countdown

The large number is the time left until the end of the track (its cue-out), with tenths. The elapsed time and the total are on the row under the waveform, on the right. During the last seconds before the end (10 by default, set in Settings) the countdown blinks red.

Waveform

• The part already played is drawn in the waveform colour; the rest is dimmer. With a violet waveform colour, the violet MIX line stands out less; pick another waveform colour if you need to tell them apart.
• The outline shows the peaks, faint; the solid body inside it is the average (RMS) level. On a loud track the peaks fill the height, and the body still shows where the track is quieter or louder.
• A blue shaded area at the start marks the intro, and a badge counts it down. The intro only shows when it has been set.
• An orange shaded area at the end marks the outro, with its own countdown.
• A dashed violet line (the colour of the Mixing badge, so it is not mistaken for the orange outro) with a MIX tag marks where the next track starts in continuous mode. It is dimmed in single mode, and on a player whose Main output is bit-perfect, which does not mix (see What it costs).
• The whole file is drawn. The silent start and end that playback skips (before cue-in and after cue-out) are drawn darker, with a thin line where playback starts and ends. With Use cue-in and cue-out off (Settings → Players) nothing is darker and the two lines are dimmed: playback runs from the start to the end of the file, and the cue-in and cue-out in this guide mean those two ends.
• Hover to see the time under the pointer. Click to jump there. On a stopped player a click chooses where Play starts the next track: the playhead and the countdown move there, and nothing plays until you press Play. Choosing another next track, moving or removing it, or Stop goes back to the cue-in; so does any other way of starting a track, and Restart, Previous and the automatic advance always use the cue-in. A click before the cue-in (in the darker start) chooses the cue-in. A click at or after the cue-out (in the darker tail) cancels an earlier choice: Play starts at the cue-in. A click is a press and release without moving the pointer more than a few pixels.
• Press and drag moves the zoomed view along the track, like grabbing it. A drag never jumps, and without zoom it does nothing. Alt-drag still edits markers.
• Mouse wheel over the waveform: zoom in and out around the pointer, down to the finest detail the analysis has. Shift+wheel (or a sideways wheel) moves along the track. While zoomed, the view follows the playing position, except for 10 seconds after you zoom or move it (ui.follow_current_grace_secs; 0 turns following off). Full view, in the top-right corner, zooming all the way out or a new track show the whole track again.

CUE (pre-listen)

Pressing CUE (or Pre-listen on CUE in a track’s menu) plays the track on the player’s CUE output, for example headphones, without touching the on-air output, and opens a small CUE window for that player. Several windows can be open, one per player. See Settings to choose the CUE device. A player needs a Cue output that is not its Main output: without one, CUE and Pre-listen on CUE are dimmed, and hovering them says so.

The window shows:

• the title and artist;
• the waveform of the whole file with the CUE position. It works like the player’s: click to jump there, zoom with the wheel, drag to move along, Full view, the intro and outro countdowns, and the intro, outro and MIX markers, which you edit here as on the player (see Markers and mixing). A CUE plays the whole file, so nothing is drawn darker, the cue-in and cue-out are dimmed lines, and the outro counts down to the end of the file. Its zoom is its own: the player’s waveform does not move. While the CUE plays, a zoomed view follows its position as the player’s does; a paused CUE keeps the view you set, so you can zoom in and place markers. A CUE started after its window closed, or on another track, shows the whole file;
• the elapsed time and the time remaining to the end of the file (a CUE plays whole files);
• Pause / Resume, Stop and Set as next. Set as next makes the cued track the player’s next and keeps the CUE playing. It is dimmed when the track already is the next. If the cued track is the one on air, it plays once more when the current pass ends.

While the CUE is paused, its Pause button (shown as Resume) blinks amber, like the player’s own.

A jump on a paused CUE keeps it paused. The close button of the window, or Stop, stops the CUE.

While a CUE runs, setting a next (double-click) or a single click on a row moves the CUE to that track, from its cue-in; if it was paused, it plays again. A track whose file is missing or unreadable leaves the CUE where it is.