How to present a live show

The microphone

Press Mic (or Ctrl+M) to go live. Right-click the Mic button, or look in Settings next to the microphone input, to choose what the music does while you talk:

• Lower the music to the level on the slider (classic ducking).
• Mute the music.
• Pause the music, carry on after: the song picks up where it stopped when you switch the mic off.
• Keep the music at full level, for stations that never lower the music on air.

The music fades down and back up smoothly. To stop the studio speakers feeding back into the mic, mark them as Studio monitor in Settings → Audio devices → Outputs: they go quiet while the mic is on, and the stream carries on as normal.

The cart wall

The cart wall is a grid of pads for jingles, beds, sound effects and IDs that play over the main programme. Open it from Jingles → Show cart wall.

• Right-click a pad to Assign audio file…, change its Label, or Clear pad.
• Click a pad to fire it. Playing pads light up red; click a red pad to stop it.
• Shift+F1 to Shift+F12 fire pads 1 to 12 (press again to stop), and Ctrl+J or ■ Stop all jingles fades out everything that's playing.

Jingles fired from the cart wall are recorded in the play history and reports, just like the ones in the playlist.

Voice tracks

A voice track is a recorded link that sits between two songs, so the station sounds live when you're not there.

• Ctrl+R (Playlist → 🔴 Record voice track…) opens the recorder: press ● Record, then ■ Stop, and Insert after selected row. Recordings are saved as WAV files in the voicetracks folder of your RadioMaster data folder.
• Ctrl+W inserts a voice track you recorded earlier.

Text to speech and time checks

Playlist → Add text to speech… (Alt+T) adds a row that a computer voice reads on air. Use placeholders such as {last}, {next} and {time}, for example "That was {last}, coming up {next}". Choose the voice, speed, pitch and volume, add an intro or outro sound, and press preview to hear it. RadioMaster prepares the speech just before it's due so it starts without a gap.

A Time announcement row reads the time, either from your own recorded files (H00–H23 and M00–M59) or with a speech voice ("It's 4:15 PM").

Speech uses your computer's own voices: Windows voices (including the newer Windows 10 and 11 voices), every macOS voice, or espeak-ng on Linux.

Staying on the clock

• Hour markers (Ctrl+H) keep you on time: Wait holds until the marker, Soft lets the song finish then jumps, Hard cuts in exactly on time.
• Every row shows when it will start, and the clock counts down to the next hour.
• The Track Info panel shows the last, current and next song with your own notes about each song and artist, ready to talk over.
• The Notepad (T) keeps your scripts and running notes beside the playlist.

Shortcuts presenters use most