When youre using a Mac as a sound mixing and/or presentation device, you want to know that youve got an external sound device plugged into the system, and that the system is not muted, before the gig starts. If youve got sound issues that are related to the Mac that youre operating, a fullscreen translucent (non-blocking) overlay will be shown in red, with a status text to tell you whats wrong.
The statuses are as follows:
- External sound device (green): youre using an external sound device as system default, i.e. youve set the system default sound device to an USB sound card. The system is not muted.
- Built-in sound device (green): the built-in sound card is the system default, and youve got something plugged into the 3.5mm stereo jack. The system is not muted.
- Unplugged (red): the built-in sound card is the system default, and you havent got anything plugged into the 3.5mm stereo jack. Regardless of mute status.
- System muted (red): the status would be green if it werent for the fact that youve muted the system sound.
The utility is an extremely light-weight utility, and sits only in the System Menu. The options available are reachable through a menu which pops down when you click the System Menu icon. At this point, there is only one option - to always show an overlay stating the current status of the system, which means that there will be a smaller green area sitting at the bottom of the screen showing the green status texts when theyre active. If this is deselected, only the red fullscreen overlay will be shown when theres a problem, and the green ones will be hidden.
