> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.screenshepherd.live/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# The microphone
> Telling ScreenShepherd which channel your singers come in on.
This is the setting that matters most. Get it right and most other things look
after themselves.
Find **Audio input** on the front page of the ScreenShepherd window.
Under **Device**, pick your audio interface from the list. That is the box
your microphones are plugged into. The list shows how many channels each one
has.
Under **Vocal channel**, pick the channel the lead vocal arrives on. The
meter beside it moves when someone sings into that microphone.
On a big desk, look at the line underneath. It tells you which channels have
anything arriving at all, something like **Signal on channels 1, 2 and 3**,
and says when the rest are silent. That turns twenty-four channels into a
handful worth trying.
Press **Check**. The screen dims and asks you to sing a line of a well known
hymn into that channel.
Sing it. The words light up as they arrive. When it says **That channel
carries the voice**, the **Check** button becomes a green tick, and that is
how you know you picked the right one.
**Stop** gives up on a channel so you can try another.
**It must be the vocal channel, not the main mix.** A main mix has the whole
band in it and the singing gets lost underneath. This is the single most
common thing to get wrong.
## More than one singer
If two or three people lead together, press **Add another vocal channel** for
each of them and check each one. ScreenShepherd follows whoever is singing.
Three is the most. The button tells you why when it cannot add another, usually
because the interface has no spare channels.
To change a channel later, use its own picker. To remove one, press the **×**
beside it.
## Checking a microphone during a service
Click the meter on the Control Panel. Every vocal channel gets a row, with its own level, so you can see at a glance which microphone has gone quiet.
## When it stops hearing anything
Under **Audio input** it says the input cannot be heard, and the **Device**
box says the interface is not here.
Unplugging the interface, or moving it to a different socket, can leave the
saved choice pointing at nothing. Pick the interface again from the list.
Stopping and starting will not fix it.
Account button in the top right → **Settings**. Under **Microphone
access**, press **Open system settings** and allow ScreenShepherd.
The interface is there but silent. Check the cable, the phantom power, and
that the desk is actually sending to this output.
## When the check will not pass
Try each channel in turn. It is nearly always the wrong channel rather than
a broken input. Make sure someone really is singing into that microphone
while you check.
Sing the whole line, clearly, into that microphone, then check again.
You are probably on a main mix rather than a vocal channel. Or your second
leader's microphone has not been added yet.
You cannot check while it is listening. Press **Stop** on the Control Panel
first.
The green ticks last for this session only. A tick that outlives the cable it
was earned with would be worse than no tick, and checking again costs one line
of singing.