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Basic Use Guide

Taiko2k edited this page Mar 15, 2020 · 51 revisions

Tauon Music Box is a playlist oriented music player that makes that assumption that folders are albums.

The words album and folder are often used interchangeably throughout the interface and documentation.

For best experience you should have an organized and structured music library, ideally made of albums with each album in its own folder.

Importing tracks

  • Drag and drop files and folders from your file manager to the center of the application window. Tracks will be added to the end of the viewed playlist.

  • If you want to quickly import all music from your home music folder, you can also select Import Music Folder from the main menu.

Tip: Try importing all your music to a single playlist to get started.

Playlist scrolling

  • The playlist scroll bar is to the left of the playlist, hidden until moused over.
  • Click above or below the scroll bar to scroll quickly in that direction.
  • Right click anywhere in the scroll field to jump immediately to that location.

Feature: Each playlist remembers its position individually.

Show playing

  • Right click the play button to jump the track-list back to the currently playing track.

Super Feature: If there is an identical track in the currently viewed playlist, it will be jumped to and set to be the current active track position instead.

Track navigation by buttons

  • Forward and Back buttons play the next and previous tracks as they appear in the playlist.

  • With shuffle mode on, Back plays songs from playback history.

Top panel

top_panel_guide

Note: Visualisers are only available with the BASS audio backend.

Playlist management

  • Tabs can be rearranged by dragging them.
  • You can merge playlists together by holding shift when releasing the mouse button.

If there isn't room on the top bar to show all playlists, you can view them all by opening the playlist side panel (The button in the far top left corner). From here you can also hide playlists from the top panel by clicking the toggle switches.

Bottom panel

bottom_panel_guide

Right side panel (Album-art + Metadata + Lyrics)

Ways to show side panel:

  • Click MENU then click the first icon from top
  • Press mouse button 5 on a 5 button mouse

There are 3 main layouts of the side panel:

  • Large album-art

    Tip: You can drag the side panel to make the art larger or smaller. Tapping Shift while dragging left will allow you to unlock the 1:1 width constraint.

  • Centered album-art
  • Lyrics

    Note: Will only show if lyrics are available.

You can cycle the side panel layouts clicking the middle mouse button

Gallery view

Ways to enter gallery view:

  • Click MENU then click the second icon from top
  • Press mouse button 4 on a 5 button mouse.
  • Press Tab to enter in gallery keyboard control mode

Click an album to play.

Tip: Albums in the gallery will play on just a single click. You can change this to a double click in settings in the 'view' tab.

Search

Global search can be activated at any time on the main screen by typing. See Find and Search.

Enqueuing tracks

You can override what tracks will be played immediately after the current by adding them to the queue.

  • Add single tracks by middle/wheel clicking a track
  • Add an album/folder by right clicking the folder title and selecting Add album to queue

You can view the queue by opening the left side playlist panel (button in top left corner). From this view you can:

  • Re-arrange or remove individual queued items
  • Pause the queue from having effect

Tip: If you wish to enqueue many tracks, you could also consider simply making a playlist.

Tip: When dragging and dropping an album to the queue, holding Ctrl will add tracks separately rather than grouped as an album.

Feature: You can force a stop after any items in the queue by right clicking an item and selecting Auto-Stop.

Copying tracks to another playlist

  • A selection can be quickly appended to another playlist by dragging it onto a playlist tab.

Tip: You can create a new playlist by dragging tracks into empty area of tab panel.

Moving tracks within a playlist

  • Single tracks can be re-positioned within a playlist when holding shift while dragging.
  • To move a selection, click and drag.
  • To move a single album, click the title and drag. (Clicking a folder title will make that folder/album the selection.)

Hint: To make a selection of tracks, click the first track, then hold shift and click the last track.

Misc playback modes

Right click the shuffle/repeat buttons to find these.

  • Album Repeat Mode: Repeats from beginning of current album once end is reached.
  • Album Shuffle Mode: Starts a random album after the current one finishes.
  • Shuffle within a single album: Plays random tracks within a single album.

    To activate, enable both Album repeat mode and Shuffle Tracks (standard shuffle).

Updating tracks

Updates need to be done manually as there is no background file monitoring.

There are two ways of doing this:

  • Simply clear a playlist and re-import.
  • Select Rescan Folder from the playlist tab menu.

    Explanation: The folder re-scanned by this function is the first folder ever imported into the playlist. So to take advantage of this feature, only import a single folder after initially making the playlist.

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