Cue Settings

Shape each cue with Stems, Hot Cues, sequences, loops, fades, gain, routing and playback controls.

Building · Updated 2026-11-04

Every pad in CueCart carries its own settings — its name, colour, the file it plays, how it fades, how it behaves when you press it, and which key fires it. Cue Settings is where you set all of that, one pad at a time.

Opening the editor

Alt+click an assigned pad to open Cue Settings. It opens as a panel with a list of tabs down the left side — Appearance, Cue Pad, Audio, Playback and Triggers. Pick a tab to jump to a group of related settings; the pad's name shows at the top so you always know which cue you're editing.

Cue-specific edits are staged until you Save; Cancel discards those unsaved edits. Hot Cue markers and Beat Grid corrections are shared track edits and apply immediately. See How your changes are saved.

Appearance

The Appearance tab covers a cue's identity — what it's called and how it looks on the grid.

The Appearance tab previews how the pad will look.

• Name — the label shown on the pad. A live preview updates as you type, so you can see exactly how the title will sit on the pad.
• Font Size — nudge the name larger or smaller to fit long titles or to make a key cue stand out.
• Colour — pick from a 32-colour palette, or open the custom picker for any colour you like. There's also a no-colour swatch that keeps the pad on a neutral background while the title and duration stay readable. Colour is just for your eye — it has no effect on playback.

Cue Pad

The Cue Pad tab is where you decide how the cue plays.

Cue Pad settings show the effective values and where they are inherited from.

On this tab you set three things. A saved Cue Sequence changes where successive Restart presses begin; see Hot Cues and Cue Sequences.

• Play Mode — how a press behaves. Restart fires from the top each time you press; Piano plays only while you hold the key and stops on release; Toggle starts on the first press and stops on the next.
• Behaviour — Normal plays once and stops at the end; Looped repeats until you stop it.
• Concurrency — Multi Pad lets this cue play alongside others; One at a Time stops other playing pads when this one fires.

A line at the bottom of the tab always tells you the effective play mode, behaviour and concurrency, and where each value is coming from — the cue, its bank or the Set. For the full picture of how inheritance and exclusive groups work, see play modes & behaviour.

Audio

The Audio tab controls level, loudness and where the cue goes.

Per-cue level and routing controls. The file-path field is omitted from this capture.

• Audio File — the path of the file this cue plays, shown for reference.
• Volume — a per-cue gain in decibels, so you can balance a loud sting against a quiet bed without touching the files.
• Normalisation — a per-cue option. The built-in processing presets in 1.3.3 leave offline loudness normalisation disabled, so enabling this option does not currently apply a loudness target. Per-cue gain and Master processing still apply. See Audio processing.
• Audio Output — by default a cue inherits its routing from its bank. Switch to an override to send this cue to a specific output instead, and toggle cue to headphones to also hear it on your headphone output. The tab shows whether the cue is Inherited from Bank or running a Cue override at a glance.

For setting up your output device and headphone cue bus, see Audio setup.

Playback: Stems, Hot Cues, loops and fades

The Playback tab brings related editing controls together under Hot Cues, Stems, Loop, Beat Grid and Fades.

Stems

First set up Stems during installation or from Settings → Stems → Download Model. If Models and Storage tabs are shown, select Storage for the download. See Stems setup. Then open Playback → Stems, wait for Stems ready, and select which of the four parts to mute. Click Save to keep the choice with this Cue Pad. Other pads using the same track can keep a different mix. If the cue's stems cannot be prepared, playback uses the original mix and reports the fallback.

Hot Cues and Cue Sequences

The Hot Cues sub-tab shows the track's eight cue points. Place, move, rename or recolour them, or jump the preview to a marker. These markers belong to the track and are shared with the DJ decks and other pads using that track.

When sequencing is available, Ctrl+drag a Hot Cue into a Cue Sequence slot to set a step. The first step is the launch cue; successive playback starts move through the saved steps and return to the first after the last. The sequence is available for Restart + Normal, or Restart + Looped with One at a Time concurrency. The sequence supports up to 16 steps. With Looped + One at a Time, a step repeats until the next press advances it. The sequence itself is a Cue-specific choice applied with Save.

Loop and Beat Grid

Use Loop for IN/OUT boundaries and beat-length presets from 1/4 to 32 beats, where a usable beat grid is available. The Looped option repeats the chosen region until stopped. Beat Grid provides SET BEAT 1, left/right grid nudges, BPM adjustments, half/double tempo and RESET GRID. Grid edits apply immediately to the shared track.

Waveform and fades

• Waveform — the cue's audio is drawn as a waveform with draggable trim handles: grab either flag and slide it to set the in and out points right on the picture. Use the vertical zoom rail to work in close on a tight edit; its bottom position shows the whole file. Double-click the waveform to fit the whole file again. Play / Reset preview the trimmed region live so you can hear the result before you save.
• Trim Start and Trim End — set the same in and out points numerically (in milliseconds) when you want precision, trimming dead air or an unwanted tail. The sliders and the waveform handles stay in sync. Auto Trim finds and removes leading and trailing silence for you, and toggling it again clears the trim.
• Fade In and Fade Out — use Playback → Fades to ease the cue in and out over a number of milliseconds. Each can follow the Bank default or use an independent Cue override.

Triggers

The Triggers tab is where you wire a cue to your hands and your gear.

• Hotkey Label — type a short label (one or two characters, such as Q or F) and it appears on the pad, so performers know at a glance which key fires which cue.
• MIDI note — bind a MIDI note so a pad controller or keyboard fires the cue. Hit Learn and play the note you want; the bound note then shows on the pad. See MIDI & keyboard control.
• Exclusive Group — None or one of eight groups, which works hand-in-hand with concurrency. See play modes & behaviour.

Stream Deck, OSC and GPIO triggers arrive in a future wave; today the keyboard label and the MIDI note are the trigger surfaces this tab covers.

How your changes are saved

Cue Settings stages Cue-specific choices, including gain, fades, routing, sequence steps and Stems mute choices. Make changes across the tabs, then:

• Save applies those Cue-specific choices to the pad.
• Cancel (or closing the panel) discards unsaved Cue-specific choices.
• Clear Pad stages the cue to be emptied — useful when you want to free a pad — and only takes effect when you Save.

Hot Cue markers and Beat Grid corrections are shared track edits. They apply immediately and are not undone by cancelling the Cue-specific editor changes.

If the Set is open read-only — for example a second instance is playing back a Set another machine owns — the editor stays open for inspection but Save is hidden, with a short note explaining why. See Multi-instance for how read-only sessions work.

Where to next

• Play modes & behaviour — inheritance, exclusive groups and concurrency in depth.
• Cue pads — assigning audio and arranging your grid.
• Triggering & live — keys and firing cues on the night.