The console menus

Six menus sit across the top of the header: Setup, Patch, Scenes, Meters, Layouts and Help. Everything the desk can show is behind one of them, and this page is the list — one line per item, with a link to the page that explains it properly.

The header menus: one is open at a time, a click on an item runs it and closes the menu.

One menu is open at a time. Clicking an item does the thing and closes the menu; a click anywhere else, or the Esc key, closes it without doing anything.

The items land in one of two places, and it is worth knowing which:

• The config zone — the reserved column at the top right. It holds one panel at a time and is where the between-songs settings live. On a narrow screen it comes in over the right edge with a dimmed backdrop; tap the backdrop to send it away.
• The work zone — the middle of the screen, where the mixing panels live. Opening a work-zone panel adds it to the current arrangement rather than replacing it. See layouts and the work zone.

Setup

Fourteen panels, all of them in the config zone.

Patch

Four work-zone panels.

Scenes

Meters

Meter bridge and Analyzer open in the work zone; Telemetry and Perf open in the config zone.

Layouts

Two actions, then the whole list of work-zone panels.

Below the divider, every work-zone panel the console has, each one an "add this panel": Fader wall, Processing, Plugin rack, Plugin editor, Plugin catalog, Sends, Routing, Bus sends, Bus masters, Matrix, Output inserts, Source layer, Patchbay, Talkback, Record, Graph, Meter bridge and Analyzer. See layouts and the work zone.

Help

Last of the menus, and always there — it does not disappear when the console is offline, which is exactly when you are most likely to want it.

The first three open a panel over the desk, not a new page: the meters keep moving, the fader bay stays where it is, and the panic buttons still work while you read. Close it with its ✕ or with Esc. Each page in the panel also carries Open in a new tab, for when you want the manual on its own screen.

About reports the build the console is running, asked of the console itself. Where the console does not report one it says unidentified build rather than guessing: a version the browser made up would describe the wrong thing.

About also carries a QR code for this console's own address, below the build — scan it from a phone or tablet to open the same console there. A device meeting this console for the first time lands on the trust page instead of the console itself, because it has not yet been told to trust the certificate the console issued itself; the code beside the QR names that page's address too.

The menu also carries a one-line reminder of the faster way to get help — hold any control for half a second, or tap its ⓘ mark on a touchscreen. See getting help on a control.

The rest of the header

Not menus, but they live up there too.

• The connection indicator — the first thing to read when something looks wrong. See the surface.
• MAINS MUTE and ALL MUTE — the panic buttons. They fire immediately and do not ask. Held, each stays lit so the room's silence has a visible reason. Beside them, CLEAR CLIPS clears every latched clip on the desk in one tap; it is greyed while nothing has clipped, so a lit button is itself the sign that something did.
• Routing loop detected — a banner that appears only when the desk's routing feeds back into itself, naming the channels in the ring. BREAK LOOP cuts one link to open it; if there is no link the desk can safely cut, it says so rather than cutting something else.
• The cue and monitor block. See cue, solo and the monitor.
• Display settings — console appliance, personality, density and theme, the same four the Preferences panel carries, put where you can reach them without opening a panel. See personalities and themes.
• Warnings — see what the warnings say below.
• Undo / redo and the History panel — see undo and history.
• The REC transport — see recording and takes.

What the warnings say

The header carries a warnings button with a count. The count is a chip, red when there is anything to warn about. It is lit when the console is unhappy about something and calm when it is not; opening it either way gives you the list, and under it the things that have cleared.

A warning names what is wrong, where it came from and when it was raised, and carries a Copy button that puts the whole entry on the clipboard — the fastest way to get an exact fault into a message to someone else. Long entries can be expanded for detail.

Four of them are about the surface's own grip on the console rather than about audio, and they are worth recognising on sight:

Resolved warnings are kept for the session so you can see what happened during a set without watching for it.

Undo and history

Every change you make is an entry: Ctrl+Z (⌘+Z) undoes it, Ctrl+Shift+Z redoes it, and the header's two arrows do the same with the pending change named in their tooltip.

The History panel lists the changes themselves, newest first, each with what it was and what it became, and who made it — this surface, another surface, a client over the network, or the console itself. Any entry can be undone from the list rather than by walking back through everything after it. While you have stepped back, a chip at the foot of the list counts how many changes are undone and waiting to be redone.

The history holds a bounded number of changes and says how many. If an entry you are about to jump back to has been changed since, the desk says so and offers Go back anyway or Leave it rather than quietly overwriting somebody's more recent work.

Related

• The surface — the shape of the screen the menus sit on.
• Layouts and the work zone — what happens when you add a panel.
• The Setup panels — what each Setup item opens.
• Keyboard reference — the shortcuts that skip the menus entirely.