Entrance music and match-night sound

You queue the next entrance while this one is still playing

This is the whole reason the application exists, and match night is the purest version of it. In any ordinary player, moving to the next track plays it — which on a live card means the next competitor’s music firing over the one currently walking. Here the highlight and the sound are separate: Up and Down move a cursor, and nothing plays until you press play. So while the first entrance is running you find the next name, park the cursor on it, and wait for the nod. The header says it in words — Playing — track 4 of 12 · Play starts track 7 — so you can check what is armed without stopping anything.

The order is rewritten between bouts, and that is normal

Someone does not clear, a match is swapped, the main event moves. Drag rows to reorder, or highlight several and move them together; the cursor and whatever is playing follow the tracks themselves rather than their positions, so reordering mid-bout cannot make the wrong thing play next. A late addition is dragged in from a folder without importing anything into a library first.

Entrance music ends when they reach the ring, not when the file does

Nobody’s entrance is exactly as long as their walk. Bind Stop now to its own button and the music dies on the first press, however long the fade is set to — that is the hard out, for the moment they hit the apron. Ordinary Stop fades instead, over anything from half a second to fifteen, for the times you want it to fall away under an announcement. Pressing Stop twice during a fade cuts immediately, so you always have both.

Stings over a crowd bed, without killing the bed

A bell, a buzzer, a three-count, a goal horn: these belong on the pad wall, set to overlay so they play over whatever is running and duck it while they sound. The crowd bed or the house music keeps going underneath and comes back up on its own. A pad set to layer retriggers over itself, which is what you want for a bell you may hit three times in four seconds. Pads under a minute are held in memory, so the buzzer is on the press rather than just after it.

Fourteen competitors, one keypad

Assign the pad positions to a numeric keypad and the entrances become muscle memory: the same physical key is the same slot in every bank, so four banks give you four cards’ worth without anything moving. A cheap keypad plugged in beside the computer is the whole control surface, and it keeps working when the venue takes the table away and gives you a shelf.

Can I line up the next entrance without it playing?

Yes. That is the central behavior: the cursor moves without sound and play starts whatever the cursor is on. It is what separates this from a music player.

Can I cut the music the instant they reach the ring?

Bind Stop now to a button. It cuts immediately whatever the fade setting is, and leaves any sounding sting ringing over the top.

Can I hit the same bell three times quickly?

Set that pad to layer and each press starts another copy over the last, rather than restarting or stopping it.