Chapter 1Getting started

CurryCaster II is a whole show desk in one app: your microphone, eight players for clips, a cart wall, your show outline, guests from anywhere, recording, streaming and an editor. This manual shows every part of it.

Install

1. Mac: unzip the download and drag CurryCaster II into your Applications folder, then open it. If your Mac says “CurryCaster II” Not Opened, click Done, open System Settings → Privacy & Security, and click Open Anyway beside “CurryCaster II” was blocked. You do this only once.
2. Windows: run the installer. If Windows says Windows protected your PC, click More info, then Run anyway. It installs for you only, with a Start menu entry and a desktop icon.
3. Linux: make the AppImage executable and run it.

The website's download page shows every step with pictures.

What you need

• Mac: Apple Silicon (M1 and newer), macOS 13 Ventura or newer.
• Windows: Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.
• Linux: a 64-bit PC (x86_64), for example Ubuntu 20.04 or newer.
• All: 4 GB of memory (8 GB is better), 1 GB of free disk space, a microphone or a USB mixer, and an internet connection for guests. Headphones are best when you have guests.

The first start

The desk starts by itself when the app opens. There is no start button to press.

The first time, your computer asks if CurryCaster II may use the microphone. Click Allow. Without it the desk cannot hear you, and the computer hides the names of your audio devices.

CurryCaster II also makes an Example Show for you, so you can try everything at once. You find it in your home folder, under StudioCast/Example Show. It has:

• a User Guide outline, open in the Show outline,
• seven sound effects, already on the cart wall,
• your own guest room, ready to open (with a guest-room subscription).

Read this first: how you hear yourself

In ONE MIC mode, CurryCaster II puts the clips, the carts and the guests in your headphones. Your own voice is not there: Hear my voice is Off. A computer always adds a small delay, and your own voice, late in your ears, makes it hard to talk.

So your headphones must get your voice from the hardware, with no delay:

• A USB microphone with a headphone jack (the usual case): plug your headphones into the microphone. In CurryCaster II, choose that microphone as Microphone and also as Headphones. You hear yourself directly, and the clips and the guests come out of the same jack.
• An XLR microphone: use an audio interface with direct monitoring. Plug the microphone and your headphones into the interface, and turn on its direct monitoring (a switch or a knob). In CurryCaster II, choose the interface as Microphone and also as Headphones.
• A mixer (for example a RØDECaster): use MIXER mode, not ONE MIC. The mixer gives you your voice and mixes the show. See Sound.

Headphones in the computer, and a microphone with no headphone jack? Then you do not hear yourself. You can set Hear my voice to Unprocessed, but your voice is a little late.

The desk at a glance

From top to bottom:

1. The top bar: the name, ONE MIC or MIXER, the show, and the buttons for the editor, your recordings and STOP ALL. See Shows.
2. The on-air bar: the clock, RECORD, MARK, STREAM, loudness, TALKBACK, guests and disk space. See The on-air bar.
3. Eight players for your clips. See Players.
4. Clips (left): the files of your show. See The clip browser.
5. Show outline (middle): your running order and notes. See The show outline.
6. Desk, Guests, Carts (right): three tabs. See Sound, Guests and The cart wall.

Five minutes to your first sound

1. On the Desk tab, under Sound, choose your Microphone and your Headphones.
2. Talk. The meter on the MIC channel moves.
3. In Clips, click a sound file. It loads into the next free player.
4. Press PLAY on that player.
5. Open the Carts tab and click Ding.
6. Press Save in the top bar, so the show keeps your choices.

Chapter 2Shows

A show keeps everything for one program: its clip folder, cart deck, outline, devices, levels, stream and guest room. Open the show, and the whole desk is set up the way you left it.

The show buttons

If you are recording or streaming, CurryCaster II asks before it opens another show, because a show change sets up all devices again.

A new show gets its own cart deck

A new show starts with its own empty cart deck, with the same name as the show. A note above the cart wall says so:

Your other decks are not gone. Press EDIT on the Carts tab and choose one from the list. Then press Save, so the show keeps that deck. See The cart wall.

The other buttons in the top bar

Chapter 3The on-air bar

The on-air bar shows the state of your show in one look, and holds the buttons you need while you are live.

Messages at the top

Important messages appear as a bar under the on-air bar, with a button to act on them. For example, when there is a new version:

Other messages: a recording that stopped when the computer crashed (it is repaired and safe), the audio engine stopping, or recorded audio that has gaps. Read them, and click the button they offer.

Chapter 4Players

Eight players across the top of the desk play your clips. They go straight into the show's mix.

Load a clip

• Click a file in the clip browser. It goes into the next free player.
• Drag a file from the clip browser, or from Finder or Explorer, onto a player.
• Right-click the name of a player to load any file from your computer.

Click a file that is already in a player, and that player flashes. It is not loaded twice. When all players are full, the player that has not been used for the longest time is used again, but never one that plays.

The buttons

Click the player's name to turn PFL on or off too.

Time, volume and the end of a clip

• The time shows what is left. Click it to show the time played; it turns yellow.
• The last ten seconds of a clip flash, so you see the end coming.
• The fader at the right is the volume. The mouse wheel anywhere on the player changes it too, in steps.

IN and OUT points

Play only part of a clip: set an IN point where it starts and an OUT point where it stops.

• Double-click the waveform to set the IN point there.
• Right-click the waveform: Set IN here, Set OUT here, or Reset IN and OUT.
• Click the waveform to jump to that place.

Zoom in

Hold Ctrl (or ⌘ on a Mac) and turn the mouse wheel over the waveform to zoom in. Drag the waveform left or right to slide it. This lets you set an OUT point to the tenth of a second, even at the very end of a clip.

If the app crashes

The players are put back as they were: the same clips, levels and IN and OUT points. Nothing starts playing by itself.

Chapter 5The clip browser

The clip browser shows the folder of your show, exactly as it is on your disk.

Find a clip

• Click a folder to open or close it.
• Type in the search box (Ctrl+F). Search covers every sound file in the show's folder.
• Search forgives typing errors. A hit that is not exact shows a ≈ and a different colour.

Played clips are dimmed

A file that you PLAY on air turns grey. Loading it is not enough, and playing it on PFL does not count. A new show, or starting CurryCaster II again, clears it. Turn this off on the Desk tab, under Clips.

Focus on one folder

Right-click a folder and choose Focus on this folder. The browser then shows only that folder, and search still covers the whole show. Click ✕ on the focus bar to see everything again. The show remembers the focus when you save it.

Choose the show's folder

Click ⚙ next to the search box, then Choose folder…. Everything under that folder is browsed and searched.

New files that you add to the folder while the app runs appear by themselves, in a few seconds.

Formats: MP3, WAV, AIFF, FLAC, OGG, Opus, M4A (AAC and Apple Lossless), AAC, WMA and WebM.

A folder from somewhere else

To put a folder from another place (another disk, say) in your show's folder, use a symbolic link. The browser shows it as a normal folder, and search finds the files in it.

• On a Mac or on Linux, open Terminal and type ln -s "/path/to/the folder" "/path/to/your show folder/". Tip: drag each folder from the Finder into Terminal to type its path.
• A Mac Finder alias (Make Alias) does not work. The browser shows it greyed, with "Finder alias: cannot be opened".
• On Windows, a shortcut does not work either. Make a folder link in a Command Prompt instead: mklink /J "C:\path\to\your show folder\Name" "D:\the folder".

Chapter 6The show outline

The outline holds your running order, notes and links. It reads and writes OPML, the standard outline format, so other outliners can open the same file.

Move around with the arrow keys

Click a line to select it. Then use the keyboard:

Write and change lines

On a Mac, use ⌘ where this says Ctrl.

Links

Select a line and press Ctrl+L (or the Link… button) to add, change or remove its link. Ctrl+Enter on a line with a link opens it in your browser.

Open, make and save outlines

• The list above the outline shows every outline in the show's folder, newest first.
• New… makes a new, empty outline and asks where to save it.
• Open… opens any .opml file on your computer.
• Save (or Ctrl+S) saves it. Saving the show saves the outline too, and the show remembers which outline was open.
• If the file was changed on disk after you opened it, CurryCaster II does not save over it. It asks: load the version on disk, or save yours over it.

Dark or light

The outline is light, like paper, at first. Press Dark above the outline to make it dark like the rest of the desk, and Light to go back. This computer remembers your choice.

Chapter 7Sound: one mic or a mixer

The Desk tab sets up your sound. First choose who mixes the show: CurryCaster II, or your own mixing desk.

ONE MIC: CurryCaster II mixes

Best with one USB microphone and headphones. Your microphone, the clips, the carts and the guests are mixed in the app. Plug your headphones into the microphone (or into your audio interface) to hear yourself with no delay. See Read this first: how you hear yourself.

• Microphone: the microphone you speak into.
• Headphones: where you listen. You hear the clips, the carts and the guests, with no processing. The recording and the guests get the processed sound.
• Hear my voice: Off is the default. A computer always adds a little delay, so to hear yourself with no delay, plug your headphones into your microphone or audio interface.
• Unprocessed puts your voice in these headphones as it comes in, a little late.
• Processed (delayed) puts your voice in the headphones as the recording has it: filtered and compressed. It is a good way to check how you sound, but it is late. Choose Off for the show.
• The note under it says how late the computer is. Even a few milliseconds of your own voice sounds wrong, so the headphone jack on your microphone or interface (with Off) is the right choice.

The room gate

In ONE MIC mode the microphone has a gentle gate that sets itself. There is nothing to set.

• It listens to the quietest moments of your microphone, the gaps between your words. That is the noise of your room. It keeps listening during the show, so it follows a room that changes.
• When you stop talking, it lowers the room by 12 dB. It never closes completely, so the room never sounds dead.
• It opens at once when you speak, and closes slowly, so the start and the end of your words are kept.
• The note under Microphone shows the room level. If the room is too loud, the note says so: move closer to the microphone, or make the room quieter.
• It is on the recording, the stream and the guests. It is not in your headphones, and not on the Mic track when you record separate tracks.

Channels

Each channel has a meter, a fader in dB and a MUTE button. CLIPS carries the players and the carts. GUESTS carries everyone in the guest room.

Buses

• PROGRAM: mic, clips and guests, high-passed and compressed. This is what is recorded and streamed.
• TO GUESTS: mic and clips only. The guests are not on this bus, so no guest hears themselves.

MIXER: your mixing desk mixes

Click MIXER in the top bar when your microphones are on a USB mixer.

Find your mixer

Plug in the mixer by USB and switch it on. Press Find your mixer, then talk into your microphone for a few seconds.

• CurryCaster II listens to every audio device that is not the computer's own, at the same time. The one whose level moves with your voice becomes Main mix in, and the output with the same name becomes Players + carts out.
• When it finds no mixer, or hears nothing while you talk, it says so, and what to check. You can always choose the devices by hand below.
• It does not choose Mix-minus in: choose it by hand if your mixer has one.

Advanced: extra devices

Only needed with a mixer that has many inputs, or when sound comes from another app on this computer. Leave it alone otherwise.

• Clips in: an extra device added to the clips channel.
• Guests in: a guest who is not in the guest room, for example a phone line.
• Guests out: sends the guests to a device, so your mixer can carry them on a channel.
• Keep the guests in the program mix: turn it off when your own mixer already has the guests, so they are not recorded twice.
• PFL out: where a player on PFL plays.

Press Save to keep your sound settings with the show.

Chapter 8The cart wall

Carts are buttons for short sounds you play often: jingles, stingers, sound effects. Click and it plays.

Play

• Click a cart to play it. Click it again to stop it.
• The time at the top shows the cart that plays.
• The fader at the side of each cart is its volume. The mouse wheel anywhere on the cart changes it too, in steps, and shows the new value for a moment.
• The tabs above the wall (here: Sound Effects, Stingers) hold 18 carts each.
• STOP ALL in the top bar stops all carts and players.

Change the carts: EDIT

Press EDIT. Nothing on the wall changes by accident while EDIT is off.

• Drag a sound from the clip browser, or from Finder or Explorer, onto a cart.
• Click a cart to change its name, colour and level, or to clear it.
• Double-click a tab to rename it.
• + Tab adds a tab of 18 carts. Remove tab removes the tab you are on.
• Every change is saved at once. Press EDIT again to go back to play only.

Decks: each show has its own

• The carts are kept in a deck. The show remembers which deck it uses when you press Save.
• When you open a show, its own deck comes up on the wall.
• A new show gets a new, empty deck with the same name as the show.
• To use another deck: press EDIT and choose it from the list. Then press Save.
• Two shows can use the same deck. Then a change to the carts changes them in both shows.
• New deck makes another empty deck. Copy to edit makes a copy of a deck that you cannot change (a Currycaster deck).

Reset deck and Restore deck

Reset deck empties every cart on every tab. The tabs stay. It asks first, and it keeps a copy:

After a reset, Restore deck appears. It puts the carts back as they were.

Chapter 9Guests

The guest room brings guests on the air from anywhere. A guest opens a link in a browser, on a computer or a phone. Nothing to install, no account to make. The guest room needs a subscription.

Open the room

1. Open the Guests tab.
2. Press Open the room. Your switchboard and key are already filled in.
3. Press Copy and send the link to your guest, by email or a message.

• Your link stays the same, every show and every week, so a regular guest can keep it.
• Anyone with the link can reach the green room, so treat it like a key. You still let each person in.
• New link… makes a new link. The old one stops working at once. Use it if the link got to the wrong people.

What the guest sees

• The guest types a name, clicks Allow for the microphone and checks the meter.
• Headphones are best. Without them, the guest ticks "I am not wearing headphones", which turns on echo cancellation.
• Nothing of the guest goes anywhere until you let them in.
• The green room tells the guest where you are: The studio is open. The host has been told you are waiting., or The studio is not open yet. when your guest room is closed.

Waiting guests hear the show

In the Guests tab, under In the room, is the switch Waiting guests hear the show. It is off at first, and it is saved with your show.

• When it is on, a guest in the green room hears what your guests on the air hear: you, your clips and the other guests. It is like a radio station's off-air feed, so the guest can follow the show and come in on time.
• The guest's page shows a line called The show, with its own volume. On your desk, the guest's line says hearing the show.
• Nothing goes from the waiting guest to you or to your other guests. Their microphone is sent only when you let them in.
• Anyone with your guest link can listen while the switch is on. If the link got out to the wrong people, use New link first.

Let a guest in

A waiting guest shows on the Guests tab, and GUESTS on the on-air bar turns yellow.

Press Let Pastor Jimmy in (the button has the guest's name). The guest's page then says You are on the show:

On the guest's page there is a big MUTE MY MICROPHONE button, the guest's own meter, a "Hear yourself" control, and a "What is happening" log the guest can copy and send you if something goes wrong.

Each guest's controls

• The line shows the delay, lost packets and bitrate of the guest's connection.
• The fader is the guest's level. MUTE mutes the guest. Drop sends the guest out of the room.
• Everyone hears everyone, the clips and the carts, but never themselves.

Guest clips: players 6, 7 and 8

A guest can play their own clips on the show. Press CLIPS on the guest's line (it is off at first, for every guest). Their page shows three slots at once, with no need to reload.

• The guest presses Add… to choose a file, or drops a file on a slot. Slot 1 loads into player 6, slot 2 into player 7 and slot 3 into player 8, in place of what was there.
• The guest has PLAY (and PAUSE), STOP (back to the start) and the waveform: a click in it jumps there. The clip plays on your desk, so it is in the show at full quality, recorded and streamed, and everyone else hears it. A player on PFL plays on PFL, as always.
• You stay in charge: you can stop or replace those players at any time. A guest can press only a clip they loaded, and a player that is playing is never replaced under you.
• Audio files only (MP3, WAV, AIFF, FLAC, OGG, Opus, M4A), up to 60 MB. Press CLIPS again to take the slots away.

Processing for each guest

Click FX on a guest's line. Each guest has a gentle noise gate, a 3-band EQ, a compressor and a limiter, with one on/off switch. So a laptop microphone and a studio microphone sit together in the mix.

Talkback

Hold TALKBACK on the on-air bar to talk to your guests off the air. While you hold it, the recording and the stream do not get your microphone.

Chapter 10Record

Press RECORD and the show is recorded: the PROGRAM bus, as a WAV file in your recordings folder.

• Press RECORD to start. Press it again to stop. It asks first, so a wrong click does not end your show.
• The recordings go to StudioCast in your home folder. Recordings in the top bar opens that folder.

Markers

Press ◆ MARK at any moment of the show. A box asks what it is. Type a word or two and press Enter.

The markers come back in the editor, and become the chapters of your MP3. Every clip and cart that played is kept too, so you can find them in the editor.

Separate tracks

On the Desk tab, under Recording, tick Also record separate tracks. The show keeps this setting when you press Save. Next to the show mix, RECORD then writes one file for each source:

• Mic: your microphone, mono.
• Clips and carts: everything the players and the cart wall play, stereo.
• One file for each guest, mono, with the guest's name. A guest who joins late is silent until they join. A guest who leaves and comes back stays on the same track. There are tracks for up to 8 guests.

The tracks are unprocessed: the mic is without its filter, and each guest is without their gate, EQ and compressor. Your fader levels and mutes are kept, and what you say on talkback is not on the mic track. All tracks start with the show mix and are the same length, so they line up in any editor. They go in a folder beside the recording, for example show-2026-11-05-200000 tracks. Each track takes about 0.35 GB an hour (0.7 GB for the stereo clips track).

In MIXER mode your microphone goes into the mixer, so the mic track is silent. The clips and guest tracks still record.

Safe when something goes wrong

• If the app crashes, the desk starts again by itself, and the recording carries on in the same file. The gap is marked in it.
• If the computer crashes, the recording is safe up to that moment. The next start offers to carry on recording in it, or to leave it closed.
• If audio goes missing from the recording (for example the computer was overloaded), a red message says so, and the place is marked.
• Closing the window always asks first, and warns you when you are recording or streaming.

Chapter 11Stream

Stream your show live to an Icecast server.

1. On the Desk tab, under Stream, type your Icecast address. It looks like this: icecast://source:password@yourdomain.com:8000/mountpoint
2. Choose the bitrate: 128k is a good choice.
3. Type a title, or leave it empty to use the show's name.
4. Press Save, so the show keeps the address.
5. Press the STREAM lamp on the on-air bar to go live. Press it again to stop; it asks first.

Send what is playing as the stream's title: each clip and cart you play shows as "now playing" in your listeners' apps. When nothing plays, your title comes back.

Chapter 12Edit and export

After the show, open the recording in the editor: cut, copy, paste, move blocks, add markers, and export an MP3 with chapters.

Open a recording

Click ✂ EDIT in the top bar. Choose the recording:

The recording itself is never changed. Your edit is kept beside it, and comes back when you open it again.

Play and move around

Select and edit

Separate tracks: volume, balance and processing

A recording with separate tracks opens with one lane for each track: Mic, Clips and carts, and each guest. The show mix is the last lane, muted. Keep it muted: it is there to compare, and playing it with the tracks would double everything.

Click anywhere on a lane to choose it. At the right you get its controls:

• Volume and Balance. Double-click a slider to set it back.
• PROCESSING ON / OFF, and the same processing unit the guests have: a gentle gate, a 3-band EQ (150 Hz, 2.5 kHz, 8 kHz), a compressor with level, and the limiter.

Each guest's track starts with the show's settings for that guest, as on the night. The mic and the clips start with processing off. A lane with processing on shows FX in green.

You hear every change while you play. Each slider move is one step for Ctrl+Z.

The waveform follows too. When you make a track louder, its waveform gets taller at once. With processing on, the waveform shows the processed sound: a moment after you change a setting, the lane is drawn again from what you hear.

Final processing, in the top bar: the show's gentle bus compressor and ceiling, on the whole mix. It is the same processing that the live show mix gets. It is on for a recording with separate tracks. You hear it as you play, and the export uses it.

Cut one track

Select on one lane (for example, a cough from one guest) and press Del or Ctrl+X. That track gets silence there, and nothing moves, so all the tracks stay in sync. Select on every lane to cut the show itself: then the gap closes on all of them, and the show mix follows too.

Import audio… brings in another sound file (a jingle, an intro) on a new track. The list of markers is at the right; tick "also every clip and cart that played" to see those too.

Export an MP3

Click Export MP3….

• Show, Episode, Date fill in the file name and the tags. {show} {episode} {date} {year} are filled in for you.
• Folder: where the MP3 goes. Quality: 192 down to 96 kbit/s, 44.1 kHz; tick mono for speech only.
• Chapters: from your markers, inside the MP3, and a chapters.json beside it if you want one.
• Processing: tick Final processing to put the show's bus compressor and ceiling on the export. It is the same box as the one in the top bar.
• Cover art and the tags: title, artist, album, year, genre and more.
• Save as this show's settings remembers all of this for the next episode.

Click Close ✕ to go back to the desk. Your edit is saved.

Chapter 13MIDI controllers

Use a MIDI controller with faders and buttons to run the show without the mouse.

Suggested controller: the Korg nanoKONTROL2. It is small and low in cost, and it has 8 faders, 8 knobs and many buttons. It connects with one USB cable and needs no driver.

1. Plug in the controller, at any time. The Desk tab, under MIDI, shows its name.
2. Right-click a control on the screen and choose MIDI Learn.
3. Move the fader or press the button on your controller. Done.

You can map:

• each player's PLAY, STOP, DUMP and PFL, and its fader,
• each cart and its fader,
• MARK, TALKBACK (held), STOP ALL and RECORD,
• the mic MUTE: a press turns it on or off, as a click does.

• The right-click menu shows what a control is mapped to now. Clear MIDI removes it.
• The last control you moved shows on the Desk tab, under MIDI. Use it to check that the controller works.
• The map is kept on this computer, for every show. A cart's control plays that cart position (for example cart 1) on whichever deck is up.
• Use Currycaster's MIDI map copies the map of the original Currycaster app, if you have it.
• A Stream Deck works too, with a MIDI plugin that makes its buttons send MIDI.

Chapter 14Updates, files and help

This manual

Click Manual at the top right of the desk. This manual comes with the app: it opens in your browser and works without the internet, and it always matches your version.

Updates

When a new version is ready, a blue bar at the top says so when the app starts. Click Download. The app never changes itself while you work.

Where your things are

Your shows, carts, outlines and recordings are all on your own computer.

The log

The bottom of the Desk tab shows the log: what the desk did, and any problem.

Keyboard shortcuts on the desk

Help

Write to adam@curry.com, and attach the log file.