Daily Listening

This page covers only one thing: how to listen every day after import and playback already work.

You do not need WASAPI, DSP, or a remote library first. Remember these five entries:

Entry	What it is for
Songs	Find a track, search, and play it
Albums	Listen to a whole album in order
Queue	Line up a few tracks for tonight
Playlists	Keep a group of tracks long-term
Liked / History	Find favorites or what you just heard

The bottom player is the source of truth. A title, a moving progress bar, and audible sound mean playback started. Selecting a row in the list is not the same thing.

Three parts of the screen

Area	What to look at
Left sidebar	What you want to do: find songs, open albums, open settings
Center list	The current page: songs, albums, or playlists
Bottom player	The current track, progress, and volume

Common first-week mistakes:

1. Clicking a track only selects it and does not start playback.
2. Opening Albums and thinking the songs disappeared. They are just grouped differently.
3. Treating Queue and Playlists as the same thing. The queue is temporary; playlists stay.

The shortest playback path

Follow this and you are listening within a minute:

1. Open ECHO.
2. Open Songs on the left.
3. Type part of the title, artist, or album in the search box.
4. Find the row you want.
5. Double-click it, or press play.
6. Check the bottom player: title, artwork, and progress should switch to this track.
7. Confirm you can hear sound.

If search finds nothing, check these first:

What you typed	Why it can miss
The full, correct title	The title in the file’s tags is actually wrong
The artist’s English name	The tag has the name in another script, or the other way around
A shortened album name	The tag has the full album name
Words from the file name	Search reads tags first, not file names

When a search misses, shorten the query. Two or three distinctive characters usually work better than title plus artist plus album plus year in one box.

Listen to a whole album

To hear a complete album, do not add tracks one by one from Songs.

1. Open Albums on the left.
2. Search for the album name.
3. Open the album.
4. Check that the track order is 1, 2, 3.
5. Play from the first track, or play the whole album.

If one album is split into two or three tiles, fix Album and Album artist so they match in Library first. Do not rebuild the database.

Queue vs playlist

These two are the easiest to confuse.

	Queue	Playlists
Best for	What you want to hear tonight	What you will reuse later
Kept long-term	Usually a temporary list	Yes
Typical use	Eight tracks before sleep	Commute, headphone test, quiet evening
Fixing mistakes	Clear it and reorder	Remove a track or reshuffle the group

Put songs in the queue

1. Find the song in Songs or Albums.
2. Right-click it.
3. Choose add to queue.
4. Open Queue on the left.
5. Confirm the songs are all there.
6. To reorder, drag within the queue or use the context menu.

The queue is for “these few tracks right now”. Do not dump a year of favorites into it — you will never find anything later.

Build a long-term playlist

1. Open Songs.
2. Search for the first track you want in it.
3. Select it, right-click, add to playlist.
4. If no suitable playlist exists yet, create one with a name you will still understand later, like Commute, Night, or Sorting.
5. Keep adding the other tracks.
6. Open Playlists and open the one you just made.
7. Check the songs are all there.

Start with two or three small playlists. Do not create 30 empty categories on day one. Playlists exist so you can find music, not to prove you are good at taxonomy.

Likes and history

When you hear something you love:

1. Click like in the list or the bottom player.
2. Find it later under Liked on the left.

When you forget what just played:

1. Open History.
2. Scroll back through time.
3. Once found, like it or add it to a playlist.

Liked means “I definitely want this again”. History means “I just heard this”. Do not use history as a playlist — it grows forever and is a poor filing system.

How to search well

Try this order in daily use:

1. Search the two or three characters of the title least likely to be misspelled.
2. If that misses, search the artist.
3. Then the album.
4. For Chinese songs, try simplified or traditional; if cross-script search is on in settings, both usually match.
5. Still nothing: open Songs, sort by artist or album, and scan by eye.

A search miss almost never means the app ate your song. It means the tags and the name in your head disagree. Fixing the tags beats cycling through search terms.

Small operations while playing

What you want	How
Pause / resume	Bottom play button, or system media keys
Next track	Bottom next button, or system media keys
Jump to a moment	Drag the bottom progress bar
Turn it down	Check ECHO’s bottom volume first, then Windows volume
See lyrics	Open Lyrics
See only the current queue	Open Queue

If the progress bar moves but there is no sound, do not reorganize the library. Use the no-sound checklist in Quick Start or see Audio Output.

The most stable daily routine

On a workday:

1. Open ECHO.
2. Go to Playlists and open Commute or Daily.
3. Let it play.
4. Want to slip a track in? Search it and add it to the queue.
5. Like any newly imported song you enjoy.
6. In the evening, file new songs from Inbox into playlists.

Save library organizing for the weekend with Library. Keep listening and organizing separate — do not batch-edit a whole library’s tags while music is playing.

What not to do while listening

Not forbidden — just unnecessary while listening:

Skip this for now	Why
Rebuild the database	Listening problems almost never need it
Enable WASAPI Exclusive / ASIO	Get stable sound first, then explore advanced output
Build many playlists during a big scan	The list is still changing; sorting goes wrong
Split one album across ten playlists	Harder to maintain later
Clear the library because the display looks wrong	Fix tags first — see Library

Next

Next goal	Page
Fix split albums, artwork, or tags	Library
Folders on disk are still a mess	How to keep music folders tidy
Tracks jump in volume	Why some songs are much louder
Lyrics missing, wrong, early, or late	Lyrics
Change headphones, DAC, or exclusive output	Audio Output
Connect NAS or Jellyfin	Remote Sources
Learn one thing a day	First Week