One musician's mix - Shadow Rack Docs

One musician's mix: you place the band around their head, set the levels and choose whether they hear it in 3D, stereo or mono.

The MIX page is one musician's in-ear mix: a view from above with every source around their head, a panel for the source you picked, and a little mixer with all their levels. Everything here changes only this musician's mix.

To get here, click OPEN or the mini scene on a musician's strip, or the MIX tab (it opens the last musician you had, or the first). With no musicians, the page goes back to MUSICIANS by itself.

The header#

Control	What it does
‹ ›	Step to the previous / next musician (wraps round)
Colour chip, name tile	Their colour; right-click the tile for Rename / Colour / Icon / Remove, double-click the name to rename, double-click the icon to change it
3D / STEREO / MONO	How they hear the mix – see below
ROOM	A touch of space around the mix, 3D only
PHONE	Their phone link. Lit while a phone is connected; reads "2 PHONES" with more than one
CLR SOLO	Lit only while something is soloed; clears every solo in this mix
MUTE	Mutes the whole mix

On the far right is the MASTER strip: their overall level (-60 to +10 dB, or MUTED) with L/R meters – the same as the fader on their MUSICIANS strip.

The scene#

You look down on the musician's head, nose up: FRONT at the top, BACK at the bottom, L and R at the sides. The red line points straight ahead.

Each source is a glowing dot in its colour with its name under it.
A muted or silenced source is an empty ring. A soloed one has a yellow ring. The picked one has a white ring.
A raised or lowered source shows a stem and its angle, for example "+35°".

What you can do:

Click a dot to pick it. It opens in the panel on the right.
Drag a dot around the head to change where it comes from.
Scroll over a dot (wheel or two fingers) to raise or lower it in 5° steps, from -45° (below the ears) to +90° (straight above). It follows the scrolling direction set in macOS.

Stereo sources#

A stereo source – overheads, keys, a stereo playback – is one instrument. Its two dots are marked L and R, joined by an arc, with the name shown once.

Drag either dot to turn both around the head, keeping their spacing.
⌥-drag one side to move it alone and make the source wider or narrower. The width stops at 170°; the sides never swap over.
Height always applies to both sides.

The picked source#

The panel on the right shows the source you picked:

Colour chip and tile. Right-click the tile for Rename / Colour / Icon. For a rack channel this renames the rack channel itself, so the rack and the in-ears always show the same name.
Where it comes from: RACK CHANNEL (or RACK CHANNEL STEREO), INTERFACE IN 3, TEST NOISE or TEST FILE. A rack channel has a chip: POST in green – after its plugins, RAW in yellow – straight from the interface right now, "..." while it isn't known yet. See POST and RAW.
DIRECTION – the view from above. Drag around it; the wheel moves 5°; double-click puts it straight ahead. The read-out says FRONT, BACK or for example "30° L".
HEIGHT – the view from the side. Drag along the arc from -45° to +90°; the wheel moves 5°; double-click puts it level with the ears.
WIDTH (stereo sources only) – 0 to 170°, double-click for 60°.
LEVEL – its level in this musician's mix, with the source's input meter (for stereo, the louder side). Double-click for 0 dB.
SOLO and MUTE.

LEVELS#

Under the scene is a little mixer with one slim strip per instrument (a stereo source counts once): name, dB, fader with meter and MUTE. There are no position controls here – it's for levels.

Click a name to pick that source on the scene. Double-click to rename. Right-click for the menu.
The picked source's strip is outlined.
Click the LEVELS bar (with the arrow at its right) to fold the little mixer away and give the scene more room. Click again to bring it back. The app doesn't remember it folded between launches.

3D, STEREO, MONO#

Each musician chooses how they hear their mix:

Mode	What they hear
3D	Every source from its direction and height around the head, through measured responses of a dummy head's ears (headphone 3D, "binaural"). Front, back and height are heard
STEREO	A plain left-right pan. Sources behind are heard as if in front
MONO	The same signal in both ears, like a classic aux in-ear mix

A source straight ahead is equally loud in all three modes, so switching compares the sound, not the level. On the MIX page, space switches between 3D and the last plain mode (MONO the first time) – handy for a blind A/B with the musician.

ROOM#

ROOM (0 to 100 %, off by default, 3D only) puts a little space around one musician's mix, so it sounds outside the head rather than in the middle of it. It adds a few short reflections from the walls, ceiling and back, plus a quiet short tail. Nothing below about 200 Hz goes into the room, so kick and bass stay dry, and the highs are softened. The direct sound isn't touched or delayed. Double-click the knob to turn it off.

Solo#

Solo is solo-in-place, inside this musician's mix only. Solos add up.
While anything is soloed, every other source in this mix is silent; their dots and strips are dimmed.
⌥-click SOLO to solo this one alone, clearing the others.
A muted source stays muted even when soloed.
CLR SOLO clears every solo in this mix.
Solos are kept: they are still there after a restart.