When you start the program, you'll see a window with 75 buttons, arranged in a 5 by 15 array. Each button represents one sound file (clip) that may be played. You'll also see a smaller window on the left. This is the Play List, described in the next chapter.
 
To assign a clip to a button, click on the button while holding down the command key. This will bring up the a small window called "Sound Clip Editor".
 
Clicking on the "Select Sound File..." button allows you to select the clip to associate with this button.
The name of the file is automatically used as the button title. If you'd like to change the title, type the name you'd like to assign to this sound clip in the field called title. You'll want do do this after you select the sound file, or the name you've typed in will get replaced by the name of the sound file, and you'll have to enter it in again.
If you select the Abort other sounds playing option, then whenever you play this sound, any other sounds that are currently playing will automatically be stopped. This can be much more convenient than having to manually stop the other sounds that may be playing.
If you select the Loop option, then when the sound is done playing, it will automatically be re-played.
You can also assign a hot key to this sound. This allows you to play the clip by just typing that key, without using the mouse. Hot key's may include the shift and option keys.
Clicking on the "Set Button Color..." button lets you change the color of the button. This can be very handy if you want to color code buttons to make them easier to find. You'll get a color picker window, with lots of options, depending on which version of MacOS you're running. Select the color, then click on OK.
When you're done, click on the OK button. Clicking on the Clear button will erase the button name and file association, essentially erasing the button entry.
You can also drag a suitable sound file into the button, which will assigned that sound file to the button.
If you want to move buttons around (within the same rack), you can just drag one button on top of the other. They will automatically trade places.
To play a clip, just click on the button, or type the hot key. The button will be slightly darker in gray, to show that the clip is playing. Clicking on a button while the clip is still playing will stop playback. You can have more than one clip play at the same time.
When one or more clips are playing, a red "ON AIR" will display at the top center of the window. Clicking on this will stop all currently playing clips - a quick way to stop all sounds. You can also stop all currently playing clips by pressing the ESC (escape) key.
Under the Rack menu is a list of the racks available. To chose a new rack, just select it from the menu. The name of the rack can be changed by editing the name that appears in the small box under the speaker in the main window.
Sound PlayThru:
It's possible to play sounds thru your Mac and have them mix with any sound clips. Just connect the sound device to your Mac's microphone jack (making sure the audio levels are appropriate). So, for exmaple, you could plug a microphone into your Mac, and run the Mac's speaker output into a loudspeaker system. You can speak into the microphone, this audio will be played to the loudspeaker, as well as any sound clips you play.
 
Click on this icon to start sound playthru. The icon will change to show that sound is being played through your Mac's audio system.
 
The icon shows playthru is active. Click on it again to stop playthru.
