Sync tones are an important and necessary strategy for online collaboration. But man they can be annoying during playback, especially when you've got your volume set to 11, or you're wearing headphones.

So yes, do include them in your tracks, but please silence them for playback. It's really simple and may just save an eardrum!  Here's how...

When uploading a track, use the "Cue Playback" field to tell the online playback feature to skip the sync tone. Just enter a number of seconds to "skip". So for example, if your track includes a sync tone in the first 5 seconds, enter "6" to tell the player to start playing the track at the 6 second mark.

If you use the Web-based upload page, you'll see the "Cue Playback" field towards the bottom of the page. It looks like this:

If you're using the PC-based Konnect application to upload tracks, the field looks like this:

If you've already uploaded a track and forgot to set the "Cue Playback" field, no worries -- you can always go back and edit the track details and change the value.

By the way, this can be used for more than just skipping sync tones. You can also use this feature to skip silence and jump to the juicy part of a track. For example, suppose your awesome guitar solo doesn't start until 1:30 into the track. Use the "Cue Playback" field to skip the leading silence (and the sync tone) by entering the value "90" (1 minute + 30 seconds = 90 seconds).