TG Drop Deck for Mac, the manual

This is the reference for the Mac version. If you want the short version, press 1 in the app and you will hear applause; that is the whole learning curve, and the rest of this is for when you want more.

Nothing here needs a mouse or a trackpad. Every feature is reachable from the keyboard and announced out loud, and the app was built and tested with VoiceOver running.

Conventions. Keys are written like Command+B. Menu paths are written like On air, Go live. Where a thing has both a key and a menu item, both are given, because a key you have not learned yet is no use to you today.

Coming from Windows? The Mac copy is the same program with the same board file, and nearly every key is the Windows key with Command where Windows has Ctrl. Chapter 4 explains the one place that had to move and why. The Windows manual is at /drop-deck-guide/.

Back to TG Drop Deck for the download.

Contents

Getting started

• 1. Installing and first run
• 2. How the app is laid out
• 3. How the app talks to you

The soundboard

• 4. The four banks
• 5. Playing and stopping sounds
• 6. Putting your own sounds in
• 7. Changing a sound
• 8. Removing and restoring slots
• 9. Finding a sound
• 10. Firing sounds from another program

Running a show

• 11. The running order
• 12. Crossfades and segues
• 13. Drops and your drops library
• 14. The warning before a track ends
• 15. Saving a running order
• 16. Volume, and getting out of the way

Your voice, and other audio

• 17. The microphone
• 18. Voice processing
• 19. Audio sources
• 20. Source control

Getting it out

• 21. Streaming
• 22. Stations
• 23. Who is listening
• 24. Recording
• 25. Outputs and routing
• 26. Feeding OBS, Twitch or YouTube

Reference

• 27. Boards and files
• 28. Every setting
• 29. Every key
• 30. Questions people ask
• 31. When something is wrong
• 32. Updates, feedback and licence

1. Installing and first run

Drop Deck is free, needs no sign-up and no licence key, and installs nothing but itself.

Installing. Unzip the download and move TG Drop Deck into your Applications folder. That is the whole installation: no runtime, no helper, no driver. The demo sounds travel inside the app.

The first time you open it macOS may say the app cannot be checked for malicious software, because it is signed with an Apple developer certificate but not yet notarised. Open System Settings, Privacy and Security, arrow down to the line about TG Drop Deck and choose Open Anyway. You only do that once. Updates installed from inside the app never ask again.

Requirements. macOS 14 Sonoma or later on a Mac with Apple silicon, which is any Mac made since late 2020. Capturing one program's audio needs macOS 14.2 or later; everything else works on 14.0.

One setting worth making before you start. The volume keys are F3 to F8, and a Mac keyboard sends brightness and volume on that row unless you turn on Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys in System Settings, Keyboard, Keyboard Shortcuts, Function Keys. The app checks at startup and says so once if it is off. Until then, hold fn with the key, or use the Sounds menu, which has every volume command on it.

What you already have. Press 1 and you hear applause. Forty sounds and beds are loaded, all of them generated rather than sampled, so you may use them in anything you make. Your board and settings live in Library/Application Support/TG Studios/TG Drop Deck in your home folder, never inside the app, so they survive an update. It is the same board.json the Windows copy writes, so a show built on one machine opens on the other.

2. How the app is laid out

There are two views, one button and one status line.

The soundboard is eighty buttons in four banks of twenty, on four tabs. Control+Tab moves to the next bank and Control+Shift+Tab to the previous one, and Command+Shift+] and Command+Shift+[ do the same for a keyboard where Control+Tab is awkward. The tab says which bank it is and how many sounds are on it.

The running order is a table of songs and drops with columns for whether it will play, title, artist, whether it is a song or a drop, length, when it starts, and its own crossfade if you have given it one.

Command+Shift+P goes to the running order, Option+Command+Shift+S back to the soundboard, and Option+Command+Tab swaps between the two. Each swap says where you have landed and puts focus there.

The Stop everything button sits under the banks and does in one press what Escape does in two.

The status line carries the three volumes, whether ducking is on, whether the microphone is open, whether you are on air and whether you are recording, and beside it the last thing the app said. It is always true; nothing there needs a key press to refresh, and VoiceOver can read it at any time.

3. How the app talks to you

VoiceOver reads the controls. The app adds speech of its own on top, through VoiceOver rather than through a voice of its own, and Preferences, Speech has three settings for how much of it you get:

• Everything, including confirmations and bank hints.
• Only what I cannot hear or read for myself. Things you have no other way of knowing: a file that is missing, the microphone opening, going on air.
• Nothing but the answers to what I ask, such as Command L.

There is a separate switch for announcing what is playing as each sound or track starts.

Turning the app quieter never silences the essential channel, and everything it says is also written to the status line at every level. Being told whether you are live is not a pleasantry.

Each bank's hint is spoken once per session when you first land on that tab, not every time.

4. The four banks

The keyboard map came from the soundboard this app replaces and has not changed shape. What changed on the Mac is which key sits under your thumb.

Why not the Windows keys. On Windows the drops are Ctrl and the beds are Alt+Ctrl. On a Mac, Control+Option is VoiceOver's own modifier, the VO keys, and VO plus a digit already jumps to a VoiceOver hot spot. VoiceOver takes those combinations before any program sees them. Control plus a digit is also how macOS switches desktops. So the map moves one key: what was Ctrl on Windows is Command here. Every finger moves the same way and the thumb moves one key to the left.

The Windows combinations still work wherever the system leaves them free, so a key you already know is not refused. If you have moved VoiceOver's modifier to Caps Lock and turned the desktop shortcuts off, Preferences, Keyboard can give you the literal Windows map instead, and says there what it costs.

Help, Check the keyboard is how you find out what really arrives. It asks you to press each combination and reports exactly what the app received, because nothing in any manual can know what your VoiceOver settings will let through.

Twenty slots a bank, eighty in all. Command+F2 renames the bank you are on, and Banks, Reset this bank's name puts the original back. Renaming bank 3 does not stop it being the looping bank, and renaming bank 4 does not stop it taking your own hotkeys. Those are what the keys do, not what the tab says.

Bank four is the one you design yourself. Its slots have no keys until you give them one, through Sounds, Assign a hotkey or the pad's own menu.

5. Playing and stopping sounds

Press the key and the sound plays. That is all there is to the good case.

Sound effects and drops overlap. Press the same key twice and you hear it twice, and a laugh can land on top of a sting: banks 1, 2 and 4 overlap and never cut each other off. That is what a soundboard is for, and it is the default.

Beds toggle. Bank three is the looping bank: the same key starts a bed and stops it, and only one bed plays at a time. Starting another takes the first down with its own fade, because two pieces of music at once is a mistake rather than a texture. A bed will not start over a running playlist either, for the same reason; stop the playlist first.

Three ways to stop.

• Option+Space stops the sound you started last and leaves everything else playing. Press it again and the one before that stops, so a stack unwinds in the order you built it. It says which one it stopped. It is Option rather than Command because Command+Space is Spotlight and Control+Space switches keyboards.
• A slot can stop itself. In its properties, tick Pressing its key again stops it and that slot behaves like a bed. It is off by default, for a long file you only ever play a bit of.
• Escape stops everything, and takes more than one press. Two by default, one to four in Preferences, Sounds and beds, because a single key that silences a live show is a single key away from silencing it by accident. It counts out loud. The Stop everything button and the menu item do it in one, since choosing something called Stop everything is not done by mistake.

Stopping can cut instead of fading. A short fade is the default so a stop does not click. Turn it off in the same place if you are riding a mixer and want the app out of the way instantly.

Command+L says what is playing right now, on the board and in the running order, and how long the current track has left.

6. Putting your own sounds in

Land on any empty button and press Space, or use Sounds, Assign a sound file, or Control-click the pad for its menu.

It takes WAV, MP3, M4A, AAC, FLAC, OGG, Opus, AIFF and more, everything the Mac itself can decode, so an Apple Music library goes straight in. WMA is the one common Windows format a Mac cannot read, and the app says so rather than failing when you press the key.

A folder works too. Sounds, Assign a folder puts a whole folder on one key, and each press plays a different one at random, never the same one twice running. Drop another jingle into that folder later and the app picks it up; nothing needs re-scanning by hand.

Listening while you choose. The file window is the standard Mac one, so press Space on a file in it to hear it with Quick Look, and Space again to stop. You pick by ear instead of by file name.

Sounds are never copied into the program. The board remembers where they live. That keeps boards small and means one file can be on several boards.

7. Changing a sound

Command+I on a slot opens its properties, which holds everything on one window. Option+Return opens the same window, because that is the key in every TG Studios app. The same things are on the Sounds menu and the pad's Control-click menu one at a time.

• Name. F2. What the app says and what the button reads as. The file name is the default and is rarely what you want live.
• Level. Per slot, in decibels, so one loud sound can be tamed on its own without touching the fader.
• Looping. Beds loop by default and effects do not. Sounds, Loop this bed and the pad menu switch it for the bed you are on.
• Pressing its key again stops it. See chapter 5.
• A hotkey of its own, for bank four.
• A global hotkey, for any slot. See chapter 10.

An edit lands the instant you make it. The button reads its new name without you tabbing away and back.

8. Removing and restoring slots

Delete empties a slot but keeps its key and its name. On a Mac keyboard that is the key above Return; the forward delete key does the same.

Shift+Delete takes the slot off the board entirely. Its key then does nothing, which is the point: an empty pad you keep hitting by accident is worse than no pad. Nothing is renumbered, ever, so taking slot 5 away leaves 6 on the 6 key.

Sounds, Put a removed slot back lists what you have taken off this bank and puts one back where it was, with everything it had. Put this bank's slots back restores the lot. Both are on the pad menu too whenever there is something to put back. Want ten slots instead of twenty? Remove 11 to 20.

9. Finding a sound

Command+F searches every slot on the board by name, across all four banks. Command+E does the same, because it was the key for two releases and taking a key back off somebody who learned it is not a fix.

Type part of a name, press Down into the matches, and the Play button plays one without closing the window so you can check you have the right one. Return jumps to it on the board.

10. Firing sounds from another program

This is the point of a soundboard on a live show: you are in your DAW, your browser or on a call, and you still need the sting.

Control-click a slot, or use Sounds, Assign a global hotkey, and give it one. Any slot in any bank can have one, and it fires while another program has focus. macOS needs no permission for this.

It needs at least one modifier, such as Command or Option. A bare key would be taken away from every other program on the Mac, including whatever you are typing into, so the app refuses it and says why. If another program already owns the combination, the app tells you which keys it could not take.

Command+G arms and disarms the whole set at once, and disarming hands the keys straight back to macOS. The Sounds menu shows whether they are on, because "does this key belong to me right now" has to be answerable without pressing it. Preferences, Keyboard has the same switch.

11. The running order

Command+Shift+P takes you to it.

Getting songs in. Copy them in the Finder and press Command+V, as many at once as you like, and a whole folder works. Playlist, Add songs to the end does the same through a file window, and you can drag files, folders or a saved running order onto the list.

What it shows. Whether it will play, title, artist, whether it is a song or a drop, length, the time it starts, and its own crossfade if it has one. Title and artist come out of the file's tags and fall back to the file name. Typing a letter jumps to the next title starting with it.

Playing. Return plays from the row you are on. Command+Shift+Return does the same from anywhere in the app. Once it is going it works down the list on its own.

Ticking. Space ticks and unticks, and VoiceOver says checked or not checked. An unticked track stays in the list and keeps its place, and is skipped. Shift+A ticks every track and Shift+U unticks them all; both are on the Playlist menu too.

Moving. Option+Up and Option+Down move the track you are on by one place. Option+Home sends it to the top and Option+End to the bottom, which on a laptop keyboard is Option+fn+Left and Option+fn+Right. Delete takes it out.

Getting about. Command+Shift+L puts the cursor on whatever is on air, which matters once the show has run past the row you were looking at. The Playlist menu also has Next track, Previous track and Stop the playlist.

Control-click a row, or use VoiceOver's own menu command, for everything you can do to the row you are on, which is how you find these without learning them first.

What is on air is spoken, never written into a row. Each song is announced as it starts and the window's title carries it, but the row you are standing on is never rewritten under you while a song changes.

12. Crossfades and segues

Each song hands over to the next before it ends. How long they overlap is the crossfade. The box for it sits under the running order, with a stepper beside it, and the same number is in Preferences, Playlist: two views of one setting. Playlist, Crossfade between tracks takes you straight to the box.

Three seconds to start with. Set it to zero and each song plays right out before the next begins. The overlap is the outgoing song riding down under the new one as it comes in, so every start time in the list moves when you change it, and the list shows the new times.

The crossfade is measured from where the music stops, not where the file does. An MP3 usually carries a second or two of silence on the end, and the app measures it once in the background so the handover lands on the music.

A single track can have its own, from its Control-click menu: Crossfade for this track. Useful for an ident you want played dry in the middle of a music show. A drop never fades under the next song unless you say so.

Shift+Return crosses into the track you are on, fading out whatever is on air at the crossfade length. That is how you get out of a song early, and it is the same thing the row menu calls Segue.

13. Drops and your drops library

A drop is an ident, a stinger or a bumper: something short that goes between songs rather than being one.

The drops library is Playlist, Drops library. Put your regular idents in it once and they are one key away for ever. It travels with the board.

• Option+D inserts a random drop from the library before the track you are on, or at the end when nothing is selected, and never picks the same one twice running.
• Command+Shift+D inserts one from a file.
• Playlist, Insert a drop every so many songs puts one in automatically down the whole running order. Drops already in the order are left where they are, and nothing goes after the last song, which would play to an empty studio.
• Add to the drops library, on a row's menu, puts the item you are on into the library.

A drop in the running order is marked as a drop, so you can hear the shape of the show at a glance.

14. The warning before a track ends

Preferences, Playlist. Turn it on and set how many seconds, ten by default. It is the countdown clock a sighted presenter watches.

You hear it wherever you hear yourself, which is the output set under Hear yourself through on the Microphone tab, so with headphones set up there it never reaches the show or the recording.

Six sounds to choose from: a pip, a double pip, a chime, a bell, three ticks and a rising sweep, with a volume of its own. They are different shapes rather than different notes, which is what lets you tell them apart over a song, and all six sit at the same loudness, so changing your mind never changes how loud your warning is.

A track shorter than the warning does not get one, so a nine second ident with a ten second warning does not beep the moment it starts.

15. Saving a running order

Playlist, Save the running order writes an M3U file, dated, wherever you like. Open a running order loads one back in place of what is there, and asks first if the list is not empty.

M3U because every player opens one, so a saved show can be checked in VLC, in Music, or handed to somebody else, and a running order saved on Windows opens here. Drops, ticks and per-track crossfades are kept in comments this app reads back and other players ignore.

Dragging an M3U onto the running order adds it instead of replacing, so you can build a show out of several saved parts.

16. Volume, and getting out of the way

Three faders, because a bed and a sound effect should never fight over one.

Each says its new level as you move it, and all six are on the Sounds menu for a keyboard whose function row belongs to brightness and volume.

Ducking. Fire an effect or a drop and the music underneath drops about nine decibels, then slides back when it finishes. Opening the microphone does the same. It is the thing radio does that makes a show sound produced rather than assembled, and here it happens without you touching anything.

Command+D turns it off and on. Preferences, Sounds and beds sets how far it ducks and how long beds take to fade in and out.

The duck follows the microphone being OPEN, not you talking. A gate that opens on your voice clips the first word of every sentence, so there is not one.

While you are on air, F7 and F8 become a monitor fader. Pull the music right down to hear VoiceOver and get about the list, and your listeners still get it at full level. F3 to F6 move both what you hear and what goes out. This is the single most useful thing in the app for working a show by ear, and it is why the playlist has its own fader at all. Preferences, Playlist turns it off if you want F7 and F8 to change the level on air as well.

17. The microphone

Command+M opens and closes it. Command+Shift+M is where you set it up.

• Which microphone. Remembered by the device itself, not its position in a list, so plugging a headset in later does not silently move you to it.
• Which channel the voice is on. A headset is mono and arrives on the left. A hardware mixer's output arrives as a stereo pair, and the voice may be on one side. Choose both mixed, left only or right only.
• Gain, in decibels, either side of zero.
• Which output you hear yourself on, and whether you hear yourself at all.

The first time you press Command+M macOS asks whether TG Drop Deck may use the microphone. Say yes once; the app is signed, so the answer survives updates.

Hearing yourself is off until you turn it on. On headphones it is how you know you are live. On speakers it is a feedback loop.

The monitor can have an output of its own, so what you hear sits in your headphones and the show goes somewhere else entirely.

Nothing opens your microphone except you pressing Command+M. Not startup, not opening a board. Whether it was open is never saved.

Going out is a different question from hearing yourself. On the Streaming tab, Send the microphone as well decides whether listeners get you, and it works whether or not you are monitoring. On speakers you monitor nothing and are still live.

18. Voice processing

The Voice tab in Preferences is a gate, a high pass filter, a three band equaliser, a compressor and a ceiling, on your microphone, in that order. It is what makes a voice sit in a mix rather than sounding like a laptop.

It is one list. Up and down choose a setting, left and right change it, and it says the new value as you go, in real units. Hold Shift for ten steps at a time. Page Up, Page Down, Home and End move around the list as they do in any list.

Process my voice at the top switches the whole chain off and on while you talk, which is the quickest way to hear what it is doing.

The ceiling is a real ceiling, not a loudness maximiser. Set it to minus one and nothing leaves louder than minus one, ever. It adds no delay at all, because a few milliseconds between your mouth and your headphones sounds like a barrel.

Everything here is live. The microphone you are listening to changes as you arrow about, which is the only way to set a compressor. Cancel puts all of it back; OK keeps it, and it is saved with your board.

The defaults are set up for a voice already, so a good first move is to turn it on and leave it. The Windows copy can also load a VST3 plugin into this chain; the Mac copy does not host plugins yet.

19. Audio sources

Option+Shift+S, or On air, Audio sources. Other things to put on the air besides your own voice: a co-host's microphone, a hardware mixer, or one program's audio.

It is one list of sources and one set of controls that follows whichever row you are on. Add a source makes one, Take audio from says what kind it is, and every source has a name, a gain, which channel to take, whether it goes on the air and whether you hear it yourself.

A sound card or a cable

Anything macOS offers as an input: an interface, a second microphone, or a virtual device such as BlackHole or Loopback.

One program

Take audio from, One program, then pick it from the list. macOS hands over exactly what that program is playing and nothing else. There is nothing to set up in the program itself, no driver to install and no cable in the middle.

The first time, macOS asks whether TG Drop Deck may record system audio. Say yes once. This needs macOS 14.2 or later; on 14.0 and 14.1 the option says it cannot be done, and a cable still works.

Drop Deck remembers a program by its identity, so it finds it again next week even though its process number will be different, and on macOS 26 the capture survives the program being quit and reopened during a show.

VoiceOver itself

VoiceOver is in the list. Capturing it puts its speech on the air, which is how you demonstrate something, or teach with it, without holding a microphone up to your headphones.

Two things worth knowing before you put it on air. Everything it says goes out, including it reading Drop Deck's own buttons while you work, so Option+Command+Shift+S and mute it between the bits you want. And turn "Hear it yourself" off, because you are already hearing VoiceOver through your own speakers.

If the program is not running when Drop Deck opens, the source says so. If you quit it mid show, the capture notices within a couple of seconds and tells you, instead of going quiet and looking fine.

Hearing it yourself

Leave it off when the sound already comes out of your speakers from the program itself, or you will hear it twice, slightly apart. Turn it on when the program is sending its audio only to a cable.

Sources are never ducked and never go through the voice processing. Both belong to your microphone: program audio is not somebody talking, and a compressor set up for a voice has no business on a games call.

20. Source control

Option+Command+Shift+S. This is the one for during a show, and it is worked entirely from the keyboard.

• Up and down choose a source.
• Left and right choose what to do to it: Mute, Solo, Rename, Remove. It says which as you cycle.
• Space does it.
• A digit jumps straight to that source, and 0 is the microphone.

Your microphone is in the list, because soloing a games call has to take your voice down with everything else or it is not a solo. It can be muted from there, and not renamed or removed: Command+M is its switch.

Every source keeps a number, and the number is its position rather than anything to do with its name, so renaming one does not renumber it.

Mute wins over solo. A source that is both stays silent.

Neither is saved with the board. A mute is something you do during a show, and coming back tomorrow to a source that is quiet for reasons you cannot remember is worse than having to press it again.

Turning your microphone off with Command+M does not take your sources off air. They are separate on purpose: somebody putting a call out has not necessarily got their microphone open.

21. Streaming

Command+B goes live and comes off air again. Command+Shift+B says what the stream is doing: on air or not, for how long, at what bitrate, to where, and whether anything has been lost.

Set it up first in On air, Set up streaming, which is the Streaming tab of Preferences. Everything on it is something the person who runs your server tells you.

Test the connection proves it works before the show rather than during it. It connects, says what the server answered in a box you can read back at your own pace, and disconnects. It sends no audio.

The format is AAC. macOS has no MP3 encoder at any layer and cannot write an Ogg container, so the two formats the Windows copy offers as well are not offered here rather than offered and then failing when you press Command+B. Every Icecast, Liquidsoap and SHOUTcast server takes AAC, and so does every player. A station saved on Windows as MP3 is quietly moved to AAC when it is loaded here.

What goes out. Sounds, beds, the running order, your microphone if it is set to, and any audio source that is on air. Everything, whatever sound card it was routed to. Not a preview, and not the warning before a track ends, because those are yours.

Track titles go to the server as they change, so listeners see what is playing. Turn it off on the same tab if your server does its own.

If the connection drops the stream loses audio and what you hear does not, which is the right way round, and it reconnects on its own. If listeners have actually missed something it says so, and Command+Shift+B reports it.

22. Stations

Save as many servers as you run. The Streaming tab has Saved stations, a pop-up to load one into the boxes, with Save this station and Forget this station beside it. A station saved there is kept even if you cancel out of Preferences. On air, Station lists them, so switching is one menu rather than four boxes of retyping.

Switching station is refused while you are on air. Come off first.

23. Who is listening

Command+Shift+A. Every stream on your server, how many people are on each, the most there have been at once, and what the server thinks is playing, in a box you can read at your own pace.

It works whether or not you are on air, which matters if your station carries on without you.

If you stream into automation, the server you send to is not the server people listen to. That is the normal setup: you connect to a harbor on one port, the automation decides what goes out, and the audience is on the streaming server behind it. Put the address of the listening server's status-json.xsl page in Where to ask who is listening on the Streaming tab, and leave it empty to ask the server you send to.

Nothing here needs a password. Icecast publishes its listener counts already. If your server says nothing, it is usually missing the status-json.xsl file Icecast normally serves, and whoever runs it can drop one in.

24. Recording

Command+R starts and stops it. The status line says RECORDING while it runs.

It records the same mix that goes on air: every sound card, the running order, your microphone if that is set to go out, and any source that is on air. The warning before a track ends and previews are never in it.

It does not need you to be on air. A show taped for later is the ordinary case. Recording and streaming run together and neither takes audio from the other.

Files go to your Documents folder, in TG Drop Deck, named Drop Deck Stream 001 and counting up, so nothing you have already recorded is written over. On air, Open the recordings folder takes you there.

Preferences, Recording sets the format, the bit rate and the folder. WAV if the recording is going into an editor; AAC for everything else, at about a tenth of the size; FLAC when you want it lossless and half the size of WAV. There is no MP3 here for the same reason there is none in streaming.

Quitting the app finishes the file first, so a recording always opens.

25. Outputs and routing

Preferences, Output.

The main output is where everything goes by default, including a virtual audio device.

Each bank can go to a card of its own: beds to one output, effects to another, the running order to a third. That is how you feed a stream or a recorder while you keep listening on your own speakers. Ducking still works across outputs, and so does the stream: the encoder takes the sum of everything whatever card it went to.

Devices are remembered by the device itself, so plugging in a headset later will not silently move your sound somewhere unexpected.

Where you hear yourself, on the Microphone tab, is where your monitoring and the end of track warning play. Set it to your headphones and neither reaches the show.

Changing the output reopens the sound cards and stops what was playing.

26. Feeding OBS, Twitch or YouTube

Nothing new is needed for this.

1. Install a virtual audio device if you have not already. BlackHole is free; Loopback is the paid one.
2. In Preferences, Output, send the banks you want OBS to hear to that device.
3. In OBS, add an Audio Input Capture source and pick the same device.

OBS then gets the soundboard along with everything else it is capturing, and Twitch or YouTube get it from there. Keep your ordinary output on your speakers or headphones so you still hear yourself.

If you would rather OBS got everything, including the running order and your processed microphone, send every bank to the device and use Drop Deck's own Hear yourself through output to listen on.

27. Boards and files

A board is your eighty slots, your running order, your drops library, your settings and your stations, in one file.

The board saves itself a couple of seconds after anything changes, and again when you quit.

File, Relink missing sounds repairs a whole board against a new location in one pass, and does the running order and your drops library at the same time. Move your sound folder and this is the fix.

File, Load the demo pack brings the included forty sounds back at any time. File, Import an old soundboard bank reads a bank from the soundboard this app replaces, or a board exported from the Windows copy.

The same file on both platforms. A board written on Windows opens here with everything in it, and the Mac writes back everything it does not itself use, so nothing the Windows copy owns is lost on the round trip. The only things kept apart are the keys: a bank four hotkey pressed on Windows and one pressed on a Mac are saved side by side rather than over each other.

28. Every setting

Command+comma opens Preferences, and Command+P still does too. Nine tabs, and everything is applied on OK whichever tab you were looking at.

Output. The main output, and an output of its own for each of the four banks.

Sounds and beds. How far the beds duck. How long music beds take to fade in and out. How many presses of Escape stop everything, one to four. Whether stopping fades or cuts.

Playlist. The crossfade between tracks. Whether to beep before a track ends, how many seconds before, which of the six sounds and how loud. Whether the playlist fader changes only what you hear while you are on air.

Microphone. Which microphone, which channel the voice is on, gain, whether you hear yourself and through which output.

Voice. Process my voice on or off, and the gate, high pass, equaliser, compressor and ceiling as a list. See chapter 18.

Streaming. Server type, address, port, mount point, user name, password, bit rate, station name, genre, where to ask who is listening, whether the station is listed publicly, whether the microphone goes on air, whether what is playing is sent, a button to test the connection, and your saved stations.

Recording. Format, bit rate for AAC, and the folder.

Keyboard. Which keys fire banks 2 and 3: Command, or the literal Windows Control and Option keys. Whether global hotkeys are on.

Speech. How much the app says of its own accord, and whether it announces what is playing.

Cancel means cancel on every tab, including Voice, where everything you do changes the microphone you are listening to as you do it. The one exception is a station you saved or forgot on the Streaming tab, which is a deliberate act and stays done.

29. Every key

F1 inside the app is this list, and it is always right for the version you are running.

Sounds

The running order

Levels

Your voice and other audio

On air

Files and the app

The Windows keys still work. Control+F, Control+E, Control+L, Control+D, Control+B, Control+M, Control+R and Control+G do what their Command versions do whenever no text box has focus, and Control plus a digit still fires a drop where macOS has not taken the combination for switching desktops.

30. Questions people ask

Does it cost anything? No, and it will not. There is a donate page if it earns a place in your show, and nothing is held back from anyone who does not.

Will it run on an Intel Mac? Not this build, which is for Apple silicon on macOS 14 or later. The Windows copy runs on anything from Windows 10 up.

Is it the same program as the Windows one? Yes. Same banks, same running order, same microphone chain, same streaming, and the same board file. A show built on either machine opens on the other. The differences are the ones the platforms force: the Mac sends AAC rather than MP3 or Ogg, cannot read WMA, does not host VST3 plugins yet, and moves Ctrl to Command for the reason in chapter 4.

Why do my bed keys do nothing? Almost always VoiceOver. If you have chosen the literal Windows keys in Preferences, Keyboard, Option+Control plus a digit is VO plus a digit, which VoiceOver takes for its hot spots. Go back to the Command map, or move VoiceOver's modifier to Caps Lock. Help, Check the keyboard shows you exactly what is arriving.

Why do the volume keys change my screen brightness? Because the function row is set to brightness and volume. Turn on Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys in System Settings, Keyboard, or hold fn.

Can I use the included sounds in my show? Yes, for anything you make. They were generated with AI rather than taken from a commercial library, which is what makes them safe to hand out.

Why does pressing a key twice play the sound twice? Because that is what a soundboard is for. If you want one particular sound to stop instead, tick Pressing its key again stops it in its properties. Music beds already work that way.

Why does Escape need two presses? Because one key that silences a live show is one key away from silencing it by accident. Set it to one in Preferences, Sounds and beds if you would rather.

Does turning my microphone off stop my audio sources going out? No. They are separate on purpose. Mute a source in Source control, Option+Command+Shift+S.

Can I record without being on air? Yes. Command+R works whether or not you are streaming, and both run at once without affecting each other.

Can I put a Zoom or FaceTime call on the air? Yes, two ways. Add it as a program source, which needs nothing set up in the other program, or point it at a virtual audio device and add that as a sound card source.

Will my listeners hear VoiceOver? Only if VoiceOver is going to the same output as the show, or you have added it as a source on purpose. Give the show its own output, or your monitoring its own, and they will not. While you are on air, F7 and F8 pull the music down for you alone so you can hear yourself think.

Where are my recordings? Documents, in a folder called TG Drop Deck. On air, Open the recordings folder takes you there.

Where do my settings live? Library/Application Support/TG Studios/TG Drop Deck in your home folder. Not inside the app, so an update never touches them.

31. When something is wrong

macOS will not open the app the first time. It is signed but not yet notarised. System Settings, Privacy and Security, then Open Anyway beside the line about TG Drop Deck. Once.

A sound will not play, or says it is missing. The file has moved. File, Relink missing sounds repairs the whole board, the running order and the drops library in one pass.

No sound at all. Check Preferences, Output, and check the three faders in the status line.

The microphone will not open. Check System Settings, Privacy and Security, Microphone has TG Drop Deck turned on. If you said no the first time, that is where to say yes.

A program source is silent. Check the program is running, and that it is actually playing something. On first use macOS asks for permission to record system audio; it lives under Privacy and Security, Screen and System Audio Recording. Capturing a program needs macOS 14.2 or later.

I can hear a program twice. Turn off Hear it yourself for that source. The sound is already reaching your speakers from the program itself.

The stream will not connect. Use Test the connection on the Streaming tab. It says exactly what the server said. The usual causes are the source password rather than the listener password, a mount point with no leading slash, and for a Liquidsoap harbor, the Icecast port instead of the harbor's.

Who is listening says nothing. Your server may not publish status-json.xsl, or the listening server is a different one from the one you send to: put its address in Where to ask who is listening.

A key does nothing. Help, Check the keyboard tells you whether the app received it. If it did not, VoiceOver or macOS took it first; the Keyboard tab and chapter 4 say which and why.

The app will not open, or opens and does nothing. Only one copy runs at a time; a second launch brings the first to the front. Check the Dock.

Something else. Help, Submit feedback sends a report with your settings attached, which usually answers the question on its own. It never includes file names, sound names or paths.

32. Updates, feedback and licence

Help, Check for updates looks for a new version and tells you what changed before it downloads anything, in a box you can read back. The app also looks once a day on its own and only speaks up when there is something. Updates are signed, and one that does not match its signature is thrown away rather than installed.

Installing one downloads the new copy, checks it, puts it where the old one was in your Applications folder, and reopens it. Your board and settings are untouched, and macOS remembers the permissions you gave, because the new copy is signed by the same developer. It will not do any of this while you are on air or recording.

Help, Submit feedback sends a message with your version, your macOS version and your settings. Never a file name, a sound name, a bank name or a path, and the window shows exactly what will be sent before it sends it. If you are offline it is kept and sent next time.

Help, User manual opens this page. F1 is the key list inside the app, always right for the version you have.

Free and MIT licensed. Source on GitHub, in the same repository as the Windows copy.

Get in touch if this manual does not answer your question, and I will fix the manual as well as the problem.