Logs

All MZAP logs live in one place: %APPDATA%\MZAP\logs\. Use Settings → Logging → Open Log Files Folder to open it.

The folder holds two kinds of file:

File	Written by	Rotation
mzap-<date>.log	The audio engine and API, one per session	Rotates by size; the last 10 are kept
shell.log	The desktop shell	Capped at 5 MB; the previous file is kept once as shell.log.old

If a player fails to start, its error output is captured in shell.log — the only record when the audio engine cannot start at all.

Upgrading from an earlier version

The desktop shell used to write a separate startup.log, either next to the program files (portable copy) or in %APPDATA%\MZAP\ (installed copy), so a session's record was split across two locations depending on how MZAP was launched. That file never rotated and, because it mirrored everything the audio engine logged, could reach hundreds of megabytes.

Existing startup.log files are not removed automatically. Look next to MZAP.exe and in %APPDATA%\MZAP\, and delete them.

Log Verbosity

Routine playback chatter — crossfade steps, file loads, repeated same-state updates — is logged at Debug rather than Information. A busy player cycling short clips could otherwise emit thousands of near-identical lines and bury the events that matter.

Engine output is no longer duplicated into the shell log; it was already written to the per-session logs, which rotate.

Set Log Level to Debug in Logging Settings to get the detailed traces back.

Log File Rotation

When the active log file reaches the Max Log File Size configured in Logging Settings, MZAP rotates it to a numbered suffix and continues writing into a fresh file. Older files end with -1.log, -2.log, and so on. The retention cap is re-applied on each rotation, so the directory will not grow unbounded — older numbered files are deleted when the cap is exceeded.

Logging continues across rotations; there is no need to restart MZAP to keep recording once the size limit is reached.

Folder Watcher Verbosity

The folder watcher that picks up library changes is quiet by default:

• Raw FileSystemWatcher events for non-audio files (.DS_Store, desktop.ini, .tmp, Google Drive / OneDrive sync touches, and similar) are no longer logged.
• Per-file enqueue and scan traces are emitted at Debug level.

If you need to diagnose a library scan that isn't picking up the files you expect, switch the Log Level in Logging Settings to Debug, restart MZAP, reproduce the scan, and then attach the resulting log file to your support request.