How do you make it start? And then how to you make it stop?
This is the page to read to read if you're trying out Box Of Stops and not hearing anything. As with any organ, unless everything is connected, it won't play.
In fact there's not too much to check, but it's always worth eliminating the obvious.
Where does the sound come from?
Box Of Stops is designed to use the on-board sound of a Midi keyboard and/or a Midi synthesizer. It then plays back multiple sounds on these, taking advantage of the fact that there are lots of channels available in Midi. Please see here for more detail about the playback mechanism.
By default Box Of Stops will send all output to the first available Midi device. If this is not what is wanted for some or all of the stops, please look into setting the output device on a stop.
Volume
If either the Master volume or the volume on the bank you are playing are zero, or very low, naturally this will stop the sound coming through.
It's also worth noting that stops have their own volume controls too, but these are preset - it's unlikely you have accidentally knocked a stop volume to zero.
Stops
The next most obvious reason for no sound is if there are simply no stops pulled. This can happen, particularly if you've just changed Registration, but is easy to check on the screen.
Is Box Of Stops detecting my notes?
If you're in doubt if your notes are even getting through to Box of Stops, the simplest way to check this is to look at the Logging output. Especially if you restart Box Of Stops from the command line, you can easily see each note you hit going by on the screen.