Double click a song, press Return, use the right click menu, the buttons across the top or the play button on an open album. Stellody carries on through the album by itself.
The song playing is marked on its row in the list and in the album open under the covers, even while another song is selected; the mark moves with Next, Back and one song running into the next. Its title and artists sit along the foot of the window for as long as it is loaded: pausing keeps them, stopping clears them.
Press Back once to return to the beginning of the song you are on. Press it again to go to the one before, the way it works on a CD player.
They sit at the right end of the strip along the bottom: volume, mute, the output device, exclusive output and the equalizer, then shuffle and repeat. Volume, mute, shuffle and repeat are all remembered for next time. Repeat has three settings rather than two: off, repeat the album, then hold the one song you are on.
Shuffle reorders the album afresh each time it comes round again. Every switch shows you what pressing it would do rather than what it is doing now, so you never have to work out which way round it is.
A drive that is not plugged in, a file in a format this build cannot decode, an output device another program has taken exclusively: any of them used to look exactly like a press that missed the button. Stellody names the song and the reason along the bottom of the window instead, hands the sound device back and leaves the rest of your library working.
A button on the bottom strip, also Output device on the Sound menu, lists System default first and then every device your computer can play through, in its own order, with two devices of one name numbered apart. Choose one and the song moves there from where it was; a paused song stays paused. The choice is remembered, while the list keeps up as devices come and go.
Headphones you chose that disconnect pause the music; press play and it carries on through the system default, while the list names them as not connected with System default ticked. Put them back on and the music moves back to them by itself. A device that will not open leaves the music on the system default, with the bottom of the window naming it and the reason it gave. Tried on Windows, macOS and Linux, every listed device chosen and heard playing.
With System default chosen, headphones that connect and become your computer's sound output take the song with them, from where it was, with no press. Headphones switched off pause the music rather than sending it out of the speakers: both play buttons turn back to play at once and the bottom of the window says why. Press play and the song carries on through the new output from the point you last heard.
Live recordings, concept albums and most dance records are made to run straight through with no pause between the songs. Stellody plays them that way, with no silence dropped in where the artist never put one.
A picture of the whole track runs along the bottom, showing the quiet parts and the loud ones at a glance, with a line marking where you are; beside it, the time reached and the length of the whole track. Click anywhere on it to jump there. A track played before draws its shape at once; a new one is measured the moment it is highlighted, before you press play.
Music used to break up into static while the computer was working flat out on something else, such as a large software build using every core. Stellody now keeps a larger reserve of sound queued at the output device, so a moment's delay in feeding it is not heard.
The fix was measured and heard on Windows; macOS and Linux ask their mixer for the same reserve. Sound now leaves the device a fraction of a second after it is decoded, which the position line and the dancing bars allow for.
Open it from its button at the right end of the bottom strip, else from the Sound menu. Take the bass up, bring the harshness down, then hear the change as you move each slider. A lift is given room rather than clipped: the whole curve is brought down by the most it raises any part of the sound, so a record already mastered loud never distorts.
That is why music plays quieter with a lift switched on; a curve that only cuts keeps its own level. There is a separate on and off switch, so you can compare it against the untouched sound without losing the settings you spent time on.
Plenty of players still push your music through their sound processing even with everything set to zero. Stellody adds nothing of its own: turned off, the equalizer hands the block back untouched rather than multiplying it by one. Left at full, the volume does the same.
Out of the box, what leaves Stellody then goes through your system's sound mixer, which converts on the way, so it is not bit perfect. Exclusive output, below, takes the mixer out of the way.
One press on the bottom strip asks the sound device for the music with the system mixer out of the way, which is the only way it can be bit perfect. The song in hand reopens where it was; a paused song stays paused. Beside the time along the bottom, a line says what the device actually took: the mode, the rate, the depth, plus "bit perfect" where that is true. Bit perfect also needs the volume at 100% and the equalizer off, since either one alters the samples.
It is offered only for a song the device can take untouched: not for a lossy song such as an MP3, which has nothing to deliver untouched, nor at a rate the device does not take. A Bluetooth headphone taking 48 kHz alone cannot have a 44.1 kHz CD rip that way. For such a song the switch is shut off with the reason on it, naming the rates the device does take; your choice stands, so the next song that can have it gets it without a press. With no song selected the device is judged against your library instead.
Changing the sound output asks the new device afresh. A device that turns the request down, because another application holds it say, takes the switch back to shared and the foot of the window says why. On Windows the device is handed over outright; on macOS it runs at the song's own rate and refuses to convert, though another application playing at the same time is still mixed in. Linux does not offer it.
Twenty bars along the bottom of the window move with whatever is playing. They line up with the ten sliders, two bars to a slider, so you can see exactly which control owns the part of the sound you are listening to.
Turning the volume down does not shrink them, because they are showing you the music rather than the volume. They measure the sound after the equalizer, so with a lift switched on they mostly read lower than the same record with it off.
The bars watch the sound only after it has already gone to your speakers, so they cannot alter it even by accident. There is no switch and nothing to set up: it is simply there; it stops completely when the music does.