Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Rich Gouette]

Hi, I'm about to run sound for a musical theatre show in a week ish.
I am tasked with playing back several external sound effects during the show(timing obviously being crucial)
The board is a small powered board, that features bluetooth, a USB input.. also regular RCA-based inputs(tape), and a few
1/4" stereo channel inputs. (Rockville RPM1870 18 Channel)

I'm pretty skittish to trust bluetooth.. and the USB scares me as well, because of trying to navigate their tiny screen & find sound files...
Would my best bet be to go 1/8" sterea out of a laptop into a 1/4" stereo channel, & use media player etc?

And again, the utmost priority is that I can rapidly choose a sound file, hit play, and have minimal delay between pressing "PLAY", and the sound playing...
I very much welcome any thoughts.

Cheers,
Rich

[boburtz]

Hi, I'm about to run sound for a musical theatre show in a week ish.
I am tasked with playing back several external sound effects during the show(timing obviously being crucial)
The board is a small powered board, that features bluetooth, a USB input.. also regular RCA-based inputs(tape), and a few
1/4" stereo channel inputs. (Rockville RPM1870 18 Channel)

I'm pretty skittish to trust bluetooth.. and the USB scares me as well, because of trying to navigate their tiny screen & find sound files...
Would my best bet be to go 1/8" sterea out of a laptop into a 1/4" stereo channel, & use media player etc?

And again, the utmost priority is that I can rapidly choose a sound file, hit play, and have minimal delay between pressing "PLAY", and the sound playing...
I very much welcome any thoughts.

Cheers,
Rich

If you have a macbook, Q-Lab works great, and there is a free version for simple stuff like this. If you are on a pc, Ableton would be my choice, though it is not free.
Both have a learning curve, but if you are a technician neither are difficult to navigate.

[John Bosco]

If you have a macbook, Q-Lab works great, and there is a free version for simple stuff like this. If you are on a pc, Ableton would be my choice, though it is not free.
Both have a learning curve, but if you are a technician neither are difficult to navigate.

If you can use your phone there is an app called "Go Button", it doesn't have as many features as Q-Lab, with the free version you can have one show at a time loaded and works great for basic stuff like playing sound effects, but I've use it for ceremonies and stuff like that where the client asks you to play this before that happens, then this and that after such and such, basically I set it up and just hit the button each time I'm suppose to play something, it's pretty easy to use. It's essentially a playlist with stops built in.

[Brian Jojade]

Bluetooth: No - for many reasons.

USB - could work if your tracks are organized perfectly. Least gear needed, but potentially cumbersome interface.

So, that leaves you with external effects players.

I personally like physical buttons for this sort of thing, so getting a USB/Midi launch pad to trigger the tracks that play from a computer is a nice way to go.  Less to think about than making sure you mouse over the right track to play.

[Rich Gouette]

Bluetooth: No - for many reasons.

USB - could work if your tracks are organized perfectly. Least gear needed, but potentially cumbersome interface.

So, that leaves you with external effects players.

I personally like physical buttons for this sort of thing, so getting a USB/Midi launch pad to trigger the tracks that play from a computer is a nice way to go.  Less to think about than making sure you mouse over the right track to play.

Thanks fellas.. Brian I'm inclined to do it externally via PC
I'll look into that route..
~R

[Russell Ault]

{...} If you are on a pc, Ableton would be my choice, though it is not free. {...}

Ableton Live is a powerful piece of software that clearly has its uses, but as a technician (whose job it is to run the same show as consistently as possible for every performance) that software makes me want to both weep and throw things.

To the OP, Mac-exclusive QLab is basically the industry standard for this sort of thing, but if you don't have a Mac (and don't want to get one) I've been using a piece of Windows software called Show Cue System for the last ~15 years.

As for the rest, you're right to be concerned about Bluetooth's reliability, and personally I'd avoid using the mixer's onboard USB playback system if only because it will lack flexibility (e.g. what happens if you want to play back two different sounds at the same time?).

-Russ

[Patrick Tracy]

As someone who pretty strongly prefers Windows over Mac, I'll affirm the value of QLab. There's no other free option that does what it does, and the paid version is even better. I've run audio, video and even lights (using the paid version) on it. I bet if I tried, I could get it to advance cues on the mixer.

[Russell Ault]

As someone who pretty strongly prefers Windows over Mac, I'll affirm the value of QLab. There's no other free option that does what it does, and the paid version is even better. I've run audio, video and even lights (using the paid version) on it. I bet if I tried, I could get it to advance cues on the mixer.

Yes (to personally preferring Windows), yes (to affirming the value of QLab) and yes (to being able to advance cues on the mixer, assuming it speaks some flavour of MIDI or OSC).

I'm lucky in that I mostly work as a "house" technician in venues that provide their own (costly, highly depreciable) Mac(s) on which to run QLab, although it still means I have to fight with OSX.

-Russ

[Robert Healey]

I have a soft spot in my heart for Minidisc, but QLab is the way to go for modern theater SFX.

[Lee Douglas]

Would my best bet be to go 1/8" sterea out of a laptop into a 1/4" stereo channel, & use media player etc?

You may want to be prepared to get a computer DI or a USB audio interface for your computer.  I've had some strange noises occur when using a 1/8" TRS out of a computer into a mixer.

[ProSoundWeb Community]