The Silverdaw Window

This page is a quick tour of the main parts of the Silverdaw window, so you know where everything lives before you start building a mix.

The menu bar

Along the top you'll find the main menus:

• File — create, open, and save projects; set project properties; import audio to the Library; add a track; and export your finished mix.
• Edit — undo and redo; cut, copy, and paste; split, duplicate, and delete clips; and open Preferences….
• View — zoom the timeline in and out, jump to zoom presets, show or hide the Library / FX panel, and toggle full screen.
• Help — open the Documentation and the Keyboard Shortcuts reference, Submit Feedback, and see version information in About Silverdaw. When diagnostic logging is turned on, a Send Diagnostic Logs… item also appears here (see Feedback & Support).

The Submit Feedback item opens Silverdaw's feedback site (powered by Featurebase) in your browser, where you can suggest features, vote on ideas, and report problems.

The transport

The transport controls handle playback. You can start and stop with the play button or the space bar, and skip through your project with the previous and next buttons. By default those buttons jump to the start and end of the project; you can set them to step through your markers instead in Preferences ▸ Timeline. A Follow playback toggle decides whether the timeline scrolls to keep up with the playhead or stays still while you play.

The timing display shows your position in the project and includes a Metronome click you can switch on to hear a tick in time with the project tempo. See the metronome for more.

The timeline

The timeline is the large central area where you arrange your music. Audio appears here as clips laid out on horizontal tracks, measured against a bar-and-beat grid running left to right. This is where you move, split, trim, and rearrange your material — see Arranging the Timeline.

Track headers

Each track has a header on the left with its controls:

• A volume fader.
• A Pan control (just under the fader) to place the track left or right.
• Mute and Solo buttons — mute silences a track; solo plays only the soloed track(s).
• An Import button to bring an audio file straight onto that track (available while the track is empty) — a quick alternative to dragging from the Library.
• A Remove track button to delete the track.
• A track effects toggle that shows or hides the Track FX for that track.
• An automation toggle that shows or hides the track's automation lane, where you draw curves that change settings over time.

Single-click a track's name to rename it in place.

Drag the edge of a track header to resize it, and drag headers to reorder tracks. The overall level of your mix is shown by the master output meter.

The bottom panel

The panel across the bottom has three tabs:

• Library — the audio imported into this project, ready to drag onto the timeline. See Importing & the Library.
• Track FX — the effects for the selected track. See Mixing & Effects.
• Project FX — the shared Reverb and Delay used across the whole project.

You can collapse the panel when you need more room for the timeline, and expand it again when you need it — from the panel's header, with Ctrl+J, or View ▸ Toggle Library / FX Panel.

Choosing your audio output

Silverdaw plays through your chosen audio output device, and you can switch devices at any time without leaving the timeline. If you press play and hear nothing, this is the first thing to check.

You can set the output in Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Audio, and a project can also remember its own device in Project Properties. Choosing Use Application Settings for a project clears its override, so the device from Preferences is used instead.

If a device tends to go to sleep and clip the start of playback (common with some USB audio devices), turn on its Keep awake checkbox in Preferences ▸ Audio.

The Clip Editor

Double-click a clip (or right-click it and choose Open in Editor) to open the Clip Editor, a focused window for detailed work on a single clip: matching tempo, shifting pitch, slicing into loops, shaping volume, and more. See Editing Clips.