Zones and Players

Players

A player is an audio source. Each player is one of these types:

• Playlist — Play tracks from a playlist (sequential, shuffle, or repeat modes).
• Input — Capture live audio from a microphone, line-in, or an ASIO input channel.
• Loopback — Capture the audio output of another device (what-you-hear).
• Capture — Capture audio from a specific running application (Windows 10 19041+, license-gated).

Each player has its own:

• Volume control
• 10-band parametric EQ
• Compressor
• Crossfade settings (for smooth transitions between playlist tracks)
• Playback mode (sequential, shuffle, repeat one, repeat all)
• Real-time VU meter

A colored type badge (Playlist — green, Input — blue, Loopback — purple, Capture — amber) appears next to the play state in both the Players list and the player detail header.

Creating players

The Players view Create button is a dropdown:

• Playlist player… — a player that plays from a playlist.
• Add input… — a microphone, line-in, or ASIO input player. Pick an input device, then a channel (All channels or a specific channel index for multi-channel/ASIO hardware). The name auto-fills from the device and channel if you leave it blank.
• Capture system audio… — a loopback player. Pick a loopback (system-audio) device/channel.
• Capture app… — a per-application capture player (only shown when the ProcessLoopback feature is licensed).

Loopback players are also created automatically for the system-audio devices present on first run (when you choose the demo workspace). Microphone, line-in, and ASIO input players are only created on demand — they are no longer auto-created one-per-channel at startup, which previously flooded the list on multi-channel hardware.

Re-pointing an input source

Input and loopback players have a pencil (edit) button in the detail header that opens an Edit input source dialog, letting you re-point the player to a different input device or channel without deleting and recreating it. Capture players use the same pencil to re-pick the application they capture.

Zones

A zone is a user-defined output target — you choose its device, its channel (or a stereo channel pair), and its name. The same physical device can host both mono and stereo zones at once.

Zone definitions are stored independently of devices (in %APPDATA%\MZAP\zones.json), so a zone layout built on one PC is portable: open it on another machine and re-point each zone at whatever devices exist there.

Each zone has its own:

• Volume control
• Mute toggle
• 10-band parametric EQ
• Compressor
• Real-time VU meter

Creating, editing, and deleting zones

• Create a zone: pick a device, a channel (or stereo channel pair), and a name. By default every channel is listed; channels already used by another zone are labelled with the owning zone (e.g. Channel 3 — used by "Bar") and picking one shows a non-blocking warning. Where the driver exposes them (ASIO), real channel names are shown in parentheses, e.g. Channel 3 (SPEAKER_PAIR2).
• Edit a zone: change its device, channel, mono/stereo layout, or name. Volume, mute, EQ, and compressor settings are preserved across the edit and persist with the zone.
• Delete a zone: confirms first and warns which players are routed to it; those players are automatically detached on delete.

Offline zones

If a saved zone’s device is not connected, the zone is shown as offline (no audio) instead of disappearing, and offers a Reassign action to bind it to a present device/channel.

Zone layout: mono vs. stereo

A zone is either mono (one device channel) or stereo (a pair of even-aligned channels, e.g. 1+2, 3+4). A stereo zone spans both physical channels: volume, mute, EQ, compressor, VU metering, and jingles all apply across the pair, and a mono source routed to it is centered across both channels. You choose the layout per zone when you create or edit it.

Shared channels

By default, multiple zones may target the same device channel — their audio sums at the shared output. This makes a layout portable: define several zones on one PC (even pointing at the same output) and re-point each to a different device/channel on another machine.

To enforce one zone per channel, turn on Strict zone channels in Settings → Audio. When strict mode is on, occupied channels are disabled in the create/edit dialog and the API rejects overlap.

Bulk-create zones for a device

A device detail page (for an output device) has a Create Zone dropdown with two choices:

• Create Zone — a single zone (the standard form).
• Create all zones — fills every free channel of the device with a zone in one step. A dialog lets you choose Mono (one zone per free channel) or Stereo (one zone per free even-aligned channel pair) and an optional name prefix (defaults to the device name). Generated names follow the convention "{prefix} ch3" (mono) or "{prefix} ch3-4" (stereo).

Only currently-free channels are filled; channels already claimed by a zone are skipped. The dialog shows a live preview (“Will create N zones, M skipped”). This is admin-only and applies to output devices — it is ideal for high-channel hardware like a 64-channel Dante Virtual Soundcard, where creating zones one at a time is tedious.

Metering

Every player and zone shows a real-time VU meter that reads like a professional audio console:

• dBFS color thresholds following the EBU R128 / SMPTE alignment standard: green below −18 dBFS (the “digital 0 VU” alignment level), amber −18 to −6, red −6 to 0.
• Scale runs from −48 dBFS to 0, with ticks at −48, −36, −24, −18, −12, −6, 0.
• A peak-hold marker shows the maximum peak observed and falls slowly, like hardware.
• A latching clip indicator lights when any sample reaches 0 dBFS and stays lit for ~1.5 s, or until you click it to reset, so overs are unmissable.

A player meter always shows the post-fader source level (level × the player’s volume). A muted player still shows its source level, but the bar is desaturated — so “the source is alive but not going out” is visible at a glance. An idle zone (nothing playing to it) shows a flat (zero) meter.

Routing

Players and zones are connected through MZAP’s matrix router. This is a many-to-many relationship:

• One player can route to multiple zones (e.g., send lobby music to all lobby speakers).
• Multiple players can route to the same zone (e.g., mix background music and announcements into one speaker).

Audio is mixed in real-time with zero interruption when routing changes are made.