Preferences Window

Open the Preferences Window by selecting "Preferences" from the MenuBar or pressing "⌘,".

This window has six toolbar buttons. Clicking one of the buttons opens that page of settings. Note that all changes take place immediately so you can bring up Preferences to tweak settings and immediately watch the changes.

General

To have SonicMood automatically check for a newer version after it launches, check the “Check for a newer version at launch” checkbox. See the Update Check Help topic for more information.

SonicMood can undo changes to many of its control settings. Select the “# of Undo levels” to determine how many changes you can undo at one time.

The yellow "Help Tags", which appear when the mouse cursor "hovers" over an area, can be turned on or off by checking or unchecking the "Show Help tags" checkbox (can also be done from the "Help" menu on the menubar).

The “Auto Save Changes” checkbox and the "Save Changes Delay" slider let you turn on and select how long SonicMood should wait before automatically saving any changes you've made. SonicMood always saves changes while shutting down, too. If unchecked SonicMood will prompt you to save changes when closing a window that has unsaved changes.

The "Pause audio recording..." setting (if checked) will pause any recording you're doing (see Help topic "Audio Recording") when SonicMood pauses. This includes "Sleep Timer"-induced pauses as well as user-induced pauses. The recording will continue when SonicMood is no longer paused. If this box isn't checked, the recording will continue (and record silence) during pauses of SonicMood.

Check "Ask before adding, deleting, or resetting" to get a confirming prompt before adding or deleting Moods and Themes, deleting Pictures, or restoring the original Moods. This is checked (on) by default.

The "Volume Fade Down" slider lets you select the length of time the fade down takes (in seconds). Set it to “0” to disable fade down. Volume fade down happens if a Mood change occurs because of a timed event (either the Mood timer or the Mood schedule timer). If you manually select a Mood the current Mood stops playing immediately and the selected Mood starts.

SonicMood will "Fade Up" the volume when beginning a Mood, starting from zero and gradually increasing until the current volume setting is reached. The "Volume Fade Up" slider lets you select the length of time the fade up takes (in seconds). Set the time to “0” to disable fade up.

If you check the "Show finger pointer over button and slider controls" checkbox a "finger pointer" will appear to guide you when the mouse cursor hovers over a control.

Check the "Quit when SonicMood's main window is closed" box to have the program quit when you close the SonicMood window. If unchecked, closing the SonicMood window will not cause the program to quit. Click SonicMood's dock icon or press "⌘1" to bring back the SonicMood window. This box is unchecked by default.

The font size of text in lists and the marquees is adjustable using the "Font Size" slider.

Clicking on the round green “+” ("Zoom button") in SonicMood’s title bar ordinarily will cause SonicMood to zoom to a compact size, similar to what happens with the iTunes window. If you prefer to have SonicMood’s behavior more like that of the Finder windows, check the “Green "+" zooms SonicMood full-screen” checkbox. This will provide behavior similar to the Finder, while holding the ⌥ (Option) key down while clicking the green "+" makes the SonicMood window small.

Check "Restart sound every 24 hours" to have SonicMood restart its sound routines every 24 hours, avoiding the Quicktime "no sound after 24+ hours" bug. If you don't leave SonicMood running for long periods you can uncheck this if you wish. However, it does no harm leaving it checked.

You can choose to have a logarithmic volume scale. Check the "Logarithmic Volume Sliders" checkbox for this. The volume sliders on the SonicMood window will become logarithmic and the volume changes will more closely match the way human hearing responds.

Windows

Check "Move by dragging within a window" to permit dragging from anywhere in the window (not just the titlebar). This ability applies to all of the movable windows except the registration windows.

When checked, "Don't Open SonicMood window if dock icon clicked" keeps the main (SonicMood) window from opening if all windows are closed and the SonicMood dock icon is clicked. Instead only the MenuBar appears. You may have the main window appear by pressing "⌘1", if desired.

"Live resize window's contents" should be checked if you'd like to view the effect of resizing a window while you're dragging the resize tab (lower right corner of the window). If the resizing is sluggish, you can uncheck this box. You'll see an outline of the window while resizing, and the window will redraw when you're finished. Live resize is always on for the Chimes Window.

To have a visual indicator of when SonicMood has lost focus to another app, check the "Dim colors when SonicMood loses focus" box.

By default SonicMood limits the position of its windows to within your monitor screen's area. This prevents, for example, a window accidentally being positioned so far off the screen that it is no longer retrievable. Floating windows like the "chimes" and "colors" windows are not prevented from being moved outside the limits, but will be positioned within the limits when closed and re-opened. Normal document windows can be dragged outside the limits but will "jump" back immediately to within the limits. If you'd rather not have this behavior, uncheck the "Limit a window's position" checkbox.

You can set the shadow state and opacity of the SonicMood, Edit, Picture Window, Picture List, Piano Keyboard, Audio Recording, Chimes, and Colors window using the "Hide window's shadow" checkbox and the "Window Opacity" slider.

The bottom area is devoted to “Color Schemes.” You can change the colors of windows, buttons, list highlights, and the SonicMood and Picture window “marquees” (the informational displays near the tops of both windows). There are two ways to make changes: use a pre-defined “Scheme”, or manually select each item’s color.

You select color Schemes by clicking the pop-up menu list. There are some pre-defined Schemes you can use, and you can change them or add your own. To restore the original pre-defined Schemes, press the "Restore Schemes" button (Schemes you've added or changes you've made will be discarded). Check "Allow Editing" to enable the "+/-" buttons, the "Edit Name" button and the square color select buttons. To change the current Scheme, just click a color button for the item you want to change and select the new color from the "Color Picker" window that appears. To add a new Scheme, click the "+" button and enter a name for the Scheme in the window that opens. After closing the window, your new Scheme will be selected in the pop-up menu. Go ahead and make changes to the colors, they are automatically saved.

You can choose one of three ways to obtain good text and symbol contrast against a background color. Using "Auto" will cause the text and symbol colors to automatically adjust to complimentary colors. "Mono" will cause the text and symbols to be either black (when against a light background) or white (when against a darker background). Finally, "User" will let you select a custom color for the text and symbols by clicking on the color button and choosing a color from the "Color Picker." If the color you choose would provide poor contrast against a specific background, a better choice will be automatically made for that particular background.

If you want to save the current set of color Schemes, click the "Save" button, select a folder and enter a name for your file. If you've saved a set of color Schemes, you can replace or add to the current set of Schemes using the "Load" or "Add" buttons.

Chimes

The "Motion Intensity" slider adjusts the magnitude of the chime motion. Move it to the right to get more frenzied movement.

The chime tubes can be arranged in a "linear" fashion (in a row) or a "circular" fashion. Click the radio button for the arrangement you'd like.

Pictures

"Auto size the Picture window" causes the window to exactly fit around each image. It has no effect unless "Keep the Picture's aspect ratio" is also checked.

Checking "Keep the Picture's aspect ratio" causes each image to display with the width to height ratio the original picture had. Uncheck this if you want the image to fill all the available area. You can always go back to the original aspect ratio by re-checking this box.

Soundfiles

Typically soundfiles are not large or long in duration. They are meant to be a bit of background ambiance, not a symphony. Since the entire soundfile is read into memory, large files can take a long time to load and can hog your computer's resources. To prevent this from happening, you can set a maximum soundfile size using the "Maximum Soundfile Size" slider. Files larger than that size limit will not be used or displayed in the "Edit" window's Soundfile list. Once the slider is set to a new size, be sure and press the “Update” button to enforce the new setting. Setting the slider to zero removes the size restriction, and that is the default.

The "Hide each Soundfile's extension..." checkbox causes the list of soundfile names on the "Soundfiles" page of the "Edit" window to not include extensions (.MP3, etc.). It is checked by default.

Check "Start each Soundfile with a random volume" to let SonicMood choose a random starting volume for each soundfile when a Mood starts playing. Soundfiles for which the "play & pause on" checkbox isn't checked (on the Soundfiles page of the "Edit" window) are unaffected. It is "on" by default.

Synthesizers

You can select another synthesizer for SonicMood to use in generating its MIDI instrument sounds. First select the "Synths" page by clicking on the synths button. The default synthesizer, "QuickTime Music Synthesizer", should be highlighted in the list, and an arrow in the left-hand column should point to it.

If you've already added any .DLS or .SF2 files to your "Users//Library/Audio/Sounds/Banks" folder, you should see them listed here. If not, and you download any, you can added it to the folder by dragging the file and dropping it on this list.

Double-click the synthesizer you want SonicMood to use. The new instruments (with the same instrument numbers as were being used) will begin to play. Note that the list of instruments on the "Individual Note Properties" page of the “Edit” window will not change. This list represents the 128 "General MIDI" instruments and is not updated when another synthesizer is used.

You can manage the synthesizers available to SonicMood using the buttons at the bottom of the page. Each button affects the files in the folder mentioned above (and the list), deleting synth files from it, adding files to it, opening a finder window with that folder displayed, or refreshing the list by re-reading the files in that folder.