I'm currently running
Multiplay Cue Software on my PC, which has one headphone
jack. I would like to use the grouping settings in
Multiplay, which allow different cues to be routed through different outputs, but I'm not sure what the limitations on this are. I have been considering a 5.1 or 7.1 USB external sound card, and I was wondering if
multiplay would recognize each output on this card as a possible separate output? Would the software see each of these individual jacks as a different output, or would it recognize the entire card as one output? If so, is there another software option that may be able to differentiate between the card's outputs?
Thank You! This would make my
system much easier to manage!
Nothing like responding to a really old thread..... But I have been so delighted with resent results in this area that I thought it was till worth sharing.
First off, I'll preface the remarks with the fact that I am using
Cue Player Premium Plus and have been absolutely delighted with the program for many many years. That said I can
play files back in Windows Media and get the same results re multitracks.
The task at
hand was live musical productions with
orchestra on
track, 20-30 live mikes, plus allowing some additional vocal reinforcement. We use a combination of purchased tracks, and locally created tracks. The production we just closed had about thirty actors with body mikes. (Some significant transmitter swapping during the run since we have only 22 transmittters. We do have enough mike elements that we didn't have to swap them) In all, there were about 110 music
track cues and eightteen or so sound FX managed by
Cue Player without any issues whatever.
I'm sure everyone is familiar with the hazzards of turning on wireless packs that are out of view offstage, or even wired offstage mikes you can't see so the challenge was to maintain a full vocal sound while actors were either offstage, or for some other reason able to sing in less than full voice. ...for example skipping rope for five minutes. We decided to record the cast in ideal conditions singing with the tracks. Problem is of course, just mixing a fixed amount of extra voice
track with the music isn't effective. If there is more than needed, the sound is artificial, if less than needed, the vocals get lost. Sometimes the best amount is none. Every show is different.
I toyed with the concept of creating AC3 surround files and using the surround channels routed separately to the board to allow vocal reinforcement to be controlled separately as needed, but the slight sacrifice in quality along with the hassle of endoding and decoding the surround seemed pretty clunky. I also considered having
Cue Player start multiple files and route the output to the different surround channels or even different sound cards, but that seemed risky in terms of encounting sync problems if something grabbed a few too many clock cycles, or the hard drive had a
momentary glitch reading multiple files.
In the end, I found by accident that my sound editor was capable of creating something called a six
channel uncompressed interleaved .wav file. Hmmm, compression and associated
distortion drop out of the equation. Since its interleved, the hard drive reads straight down the file, not hopping all over getting pieces of six different files. Full fidelity on all channels, no cross talk...whats not to love. Big files, but with TB hard drives I could live with that. Popped that file into
Cue Player, plugged in my USB external (C-media) sound card, and presto!!! Six perfectly and permanently synced files playing back with one tap of the space bar. In my case they were vocal, but could have been surround FX or localized sounds on
stage. I'll admit it was a little more complex task the first time, but there was the dying PC and the
switch to Win7 thrown in to complicate things. Reproducing the setup takes ten minutes.
I'd love to hear how anyone else has dealt with the issue, but this is worth a try if you haven't been happy. Beats the heck out of the cost of the 8
channel IO boxes, and at least for now, it seems much more efficient. We used to do this with a second sound operator running Digital Performer on an additional computer with 8
channel IO. Add in redundant backup and you have to find room in the booth for four computers! Cost, complexity and potential for error are all much less this way.
Let me know what you think!