SdPlayer

SdPlayer is tape group software written by Keith Rubow, available at https://www.krubow.com/Downloads.htm. The site makes SdPlayer available for Windows and Linux, but not for Mac OS.

Alex Dehnert has a GitHub repo that builds SdPlayer using GitHub Actions and links to built outputs (there's also Qt5 builds for Linux as a .deb and a snap there).

Instructions on building yourself are below.

MacOS

To do so:

  1. Download the source (SdPlayerSrc200.zip) and unzip it into a directory.
  2. Download and install Qt from https://www.qt.io/download
  3. Download and install VLC from https://www.videolan.org/vlc/
  4. Apply sdplayer.patch, which is attached to this wiki page (find the paper clip icon near the top-left of the page).
  5. From the directory with the patched source, run the following, adjusting the Qt path if necessary:
    ~/Qt/5.11.2/clang_64/bin/qmake -config release && make -j4 && cp filetypes.txt *.png     SdPlayer.app/Contents/MacOS && install_name_tool -add_rpath /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/lib SdPlayer.app/Contents/MacOS/SdPlayer
  6. Download Music.icns, attached to this wiki page, and save it to SdPlayer.app/Contents/Resources in the build directory. This file is a set of icons both scaled-up and scaled-down from Music.png. (I'm not sure if/when the higher-resolution icons are ever used, but if you end up seeing blurry icons, that's why.)
  7. Run ~/Qt/5.11.2/clang_64/bin/macdeployqt SdPlayer.app -dmg

You will now have an SdPlayer.dmg file, which you can use as normal. If you give the .dmg file to someone else, they will need to install VLC, but none of the other above steps will be necessary. By default, no keyboard shortcuts are configured, so you'll need to configure some. The default shortcuts, which many people are accustomed to, can be found at https://www.krubow.com/Downloads/SdPlayer200/sdplayer.html#L2482 (although consider only configuring the first key corresponding to each command).

Thanks to Rachel Chasin for writing up an initial set of instructions at https://phantomcolumnist.blogspot.com/2014/09/installing-sdplayer-200-on-osx.html, which this set of instructions is based upon.

Dual-channel Audio

It's common to use different channels for the music and the cues. This allows adjusting the volumes separately, if you know how to.

For Linux (Gnome): Open Settings → Sound. Under "Output", there should be three options: the device, the volume, and the balance. Adjust the balance slider to either side as desired.

For Mac: Open the sound settings panel (e.g., type "sound" in Spotlight). Towards the bottom, there should be a section labeled "Output & Input". Choose the "Output" panel, and there should be three options: devices, volume, and balance. Adjust the balance slider to either side as desired.

Windows 11 Home (Dell):

  1. Open the System → Sound settings dialog
    1. On the taskbar, in the bottom right, there should be an icon for sound/network/notifications/etc.. Open it.
    2. Choose the settings icon ("Select a sound output") next to the volume slider. (Or, hit Windows-Ctrl-V to open the dialog immediately.)
    3. Choose "more volume settings".
    4. This should show the System → Sound settings dialog.
  2. There should be an "Output" section. Next to your output device, there should be a little ">" – click it.
  3. The device specific sound dialog that comes up should have an "Output settings" section, with a "Left channel" and "Right channel". Adjust appropriately.

Windows (some other version? from Discord):

  1. Click the sound icon
  2. Pick Volume Mixer
  3. Click the device icon to open Speakers Properties
  4. Choose the Levels tab
  5. Use the Balance button
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