Farrago's main window provides access to all sounds currently available within the program. The left side of the window allows you to switch between sets, while the center displays all sounds contained within the selected set. Each set in Farrago can contain up to 80 sounds, one per tile on the screen, and you can have as many sets as you need.

Audio playback of your sounds can be triggered in three different ways. You can press a tile's keyboard shortcut. You can also highlighting a tile and press the Return key. Finally, if you wish to use the mouse, you can instead click on a tile to play it. See “Triggering Sounds via the Mouse” below for more details.

Farrago's Toolbar and Now Playing LCD

The top of Farrago's main window provides useful controls and information, including app-wide volume settings, the Now Playing LCD area, and app-wide playback controls.

Master Volume Control

Farrago's Master Volume control can be found on the left-hand side of the toolbar. This slider controls the level at which audio from Farrago plays. To make it easy to duck audio down, Farrago offers two master volume levels, Volume A and Volume B. These can be set to distinct volumes, after which you can fade between them by clicking their respective flags. If you wish to mute all playback entirely, click the speaker icon to the left of the slider.

Now Playing Bubbles

The LCD in the center of the toolbar shows bubbles for each tile that's currently active. When a tile is playing audio, its bubble will appear in color in the LCD, with playback progress indicated visually, and a clickable Stop or Pause control available. Paused tiles are shown in a dimmed state.

Playback Controls

Finally, the right-most section of the toolbar shows standard playback controls. The Pause All button will pause or unpause any currently active tiles. The Stop All button will immediately end playback of all active tiles. The Fade All button will fade out playback of all active tiles over 2 seconds.

Triggering Sounds via Keyboard

Farrago provides fast and powerful keyboard-based playback when it’s in the foreground. You can press 40 different keys (On a QWERTY layout, these are 1 -> 0, Q -> P, A -> ;, and Z -> /) to trigger a unique sound in the foremost set window. Another 40 sounds can be accessed by adding the option key.

With Farrago, your keyboard itself becomes a sound effects machine. Simply press a key once to trigger the sound. Press it again while playback is occurring to stop or pause it (depending on the tile's Pausable setting, adjustable in the Inspector). A third press will cause the sound to play once again.

Example

This screenshot shows a simple set of 4 sounds, arranged in a convenient 2x2 grid. The “W” on the keyboard has triggered playback of the “Bike Bell” sound. Pressing “E” would trigger the “Train Whistle” sound, pressing “S” would trigger “Robot”, and so on.

For many more details on using the keyboard to control Farrago, see Keyboard Controls.

Triggering Sounds via the Mouse

Farrago is geared toward keyboard usage, but it's also possible to trigger sounds using the mouse. This works similarly to keyboard-based playback. Double-clicking on a tile will cause the sound to play, and double-clicking again will stop or pause it (depending on the tile's Pausable setting, adjustable in the Inspector). Double-clicking the tile a third time will again initiate playback, or unpause the tile.

Additional Notes

To prevent inadvertent audio, mouse-based playback requires a double-click on the tile by default. If you intend to operate Farrago via the mouse, you may wish to set tiles to play with just a single click. This can be done by enabling the Single click to trigger sounds checkbox in Farrago's Settings.

When controlling Farrago with your mouse, the Playback menu will be helpful for accessing tile playback options.

Previewing Audio

When using Farrago in a live setting, you may wish to preview audio before playing it through the main output. Farrago offers a Preview output device setting to accomplish this. To begin, configure the Preview output device in Farrago's Settings window.

To preview audio, hold the Shift key then press the tile’s keyboard shortcut or click to play the tile. You can also preview by highlighting a tile, then pressing Shift+Return or selecting Preview from the Tile menu or contextual menu.

When using Farrago’s search, you can use similar controls to preview results before adding them to your sets. Hold the Shift key then click to play the tile. Alternately, highlight a tile, then press Shift+Return or select Preview from the contextual menu.

While a tile is being previewed, it will show a small headphones icon on its face to indicate audio is playing through the preview device (which is often a pair of headphones). This same indictor will be visible in the LCD bubble at the top of Farrago’s main window.

When using Farrago’s built-in editor, audio playback occurs through the preview device, so you can edit a sound prior to playing it through the main output.

Throughout Farrago, the preview functionality makes it easy to be sure you’ve got the exact sound you want, before you play it live.

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