The safety switch

Every strip you put through the rack keeps its own source on the desk. Which one it plays – the return from Shadow Rack or its own source – depends on one switch on the WING: its ALT switch. Shadow Rack uses it as a safety switch. You can flip it yourself at any moment, and whenever Shadow Rack can't play, the desk goes to DIRECT by itself.

THROUGH RACK and DIRECT#

Strips that aren't on the rack never change. The rack keeps running on DIRECT - your plugins just aren't heard - so going back is instant.

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1. 1The WING display: click it to switch
2. 2On the rack: everything the switch moves
3. 3The strip's state: THROUGH RACK, DIRECT NOW on DIRECT

Switching it yourself#

• Click the WING display on the top bar. It goes from THROUGH RACK to DIRECT and back. The toast says WING DIRECT - every rack channel plays its own source or Wing channels play through Shadow Rack again.
• View > Wing: all rack channels DIRECT (⌘⇧D) does the same; the menu item is ticked while the desk is on DIRECT.
• On the desk: set a WING user button to OTHER > ALTSRC. It's the same switch, so it works with or without the Mac, and Shadow Rack follows it - the WING display shows what the desk says.

The choice is remembered. A strip you put on the rack while the desk is on DIRECT doesn't switch the desk back; it waits on direct too (DIRECT NOW on its card).

DIRECT is sent twice, a quarter of a second apart, so one lost network packet can't leave the desk where it was.

The ALT switch is the whole desk's#

The WING has one ALT switch for the whole desk, and it moves every channel that has an ALT source with automatic switching on - not just Shadow Rack's. If some of your own channels are set up that way (a backup stagebox on ALT, for example), they switch too. Shadow Rack notices and tells you once: The Wing's ALT switch moved other channels too, with the list. If that's not what you want, turn off automatic source switching on those channels on the desk.

Mac down? The show goes on#

While anything plays through the rack, Shadow Rack keeps a small file with the desk's address and the DIRECT commands up to date. A separate little helper process waits for Shadow Rack to end - however it ends - and if that file is there, it sends DIRECT to the desk at once, and four more times over about two seconds.

After 3 restarts within 3 minutes the helper stops restarting, so a plugin that crashes at every start can't loop forever.

"The Wing is on DIRECT"#

Shadow Rack never goes back through the rack by itself after a restart or a quit - you decide when the plugins come back. At the next start, once the desk is read, a box says so:

The Wing is on DIRECT - Shadow Rack stopped unexpectedly, so the Wing channels on the rack were switched to their own sources (nothing went quiet).

(After a normal quit it starts with Shadow Rack was closed.)

To go back through the rack: