Sound Cue Playback Tools

When I asked on the Theatre-Sound List  for suggestions of software tools that permit playback of sound cues for Theatre, I received lots of suggestions. I was asking specifically about tools that work under Windows. My primary laptop runs Mac OS and I use QLab from Figure 53, but I have a secondary laptop that runs Windows and I wanted to put it into service for playback as well. I occasionally run into situations where I need my primary system, but also have a gig needing playback. So I gathered together all the suggested products (and a couple comments from folks) for reference.

  • Richmond Sound Design’s SoundMan-Server: Charlie Richmond just about wrote the book on Theatrical sound playback technology, I recall reading a paper of his presented at an AES conference on Sound Reinforcement in 1986.
  • SFX
  • CSC Show Control not be confused with
  • SCS Show Cue System
  • CueMaster: developed by a Theatre-Sound List subscriber because he could not find a system that did what he needed.
  • Black Cat Systems Sound Byte: this is more of a “cart machine” than a cue stack, but it does have some MIDI automation. It is available for Windows, Mac OSX, and iOS.
  • MultiPlay: as of Feb. 2016 this is not under active development, so no new bug fixes and as new versions of Windows come out there are likely to be driver issues. As a note, MultiPlay was mentioned by more people than any of the others, but that may be because of the cost, FREE.
Free Version (channels)Demo / Trial Version (channels)Price Range (outputs)
Windows Software
SoundMan-ServerYes (2)No$0 (2)
lots of steps
$7554 (999)
CSCYes (2)No£0 (2)
£84 (8)
£399 (32)
SFXYes (2)Yes (upon request)US$ 295
to
US$395
including support and updates
SCSNoYes (4)US$58 (2)
US$100 (4)
US$149 (16)
US$199 (32)
US$249 (512)
+ annual support
CueMasterNoYes£139
MultiPlayYesNo0
Mac OSX Software
QLabYes (2)Yes, 20 minutesUS$0 (2)
US$199 (8)
US$399 (48)
+ rental options
iOS Applications
Go ButtonYes, 1 ShowYes, 1 ShowUS$0 (1 show)
US$99
Windows / Mac OSX / iOS
Sound ByteNoYesUS$39 (1 rack of carts)
US$79 (5 racks of carts)
US$149 (50 racks of carts)

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2 Responses

  1. Amy says:

    Thank you for putting this all in one place, and tracking all the salient features. I’m going to repost this to my blog, so that my students can explore some options!

  1. February 19, 2016

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