Changing the Levels of All Playing Cues

The feature described below is only available for Audio File cues, not for Playlists or Video cues.

When a cue is playing it is possible to manually change the level of the cue by dragging the appropriate level slider displayed in the cue panels. However, you may have a couple of cues playing simultaneously and/or using more than a single output and you want to adjust the overall level of these playing cues, especially during rehearsals. Using the Master Fader may not be desirable as that would affect non-playing cues as well.

There are two keyboard assignments that can be used to simultaneously adjust the levels of all outputs of all playing cues. The defaults for these keyboard assignments are:

          Decrease Levels Of Playing Cues:          Shift+F11

          Increase Levels Of Playing Cues:          Shift+F12

If you prefer to use different keyboard assignments then you can set different assignments under Options - Shortcuts. However, it is recommended that you do not use letters, numbers of symbols because these same shortcuts are also available in the Editor for adjusting the levels of all devices in Audio File Cues and Level Change Cues. When you're using the Editor, the field currently in focus (ie where the cursor is positioned) may be a text field such as a Description, and if you were to assign a letter, number or symbol to one of these shortcuts then you would not be able to use that letter, number or symbol in the Description (or other text field).

When you use one of these shortcuts, the actual dB change in the level is as set in Options - Shortcuts against dB Increment for Increase/Decrease Shortcuts and can be in the range 0.1dB up to 1dB. The default is 0.3dB.

Using these defaults, if you press Shift+F11 then the levels of all outputs of all playing cues will be decreased by 0.3dB. Hold the key down if you want a larger decrease. Similarly Shift+F12 can be pressed to increase the levels 0.3dB. Such changes are regarded as manual changes so the Save Settings drop-down menu will be updated. This means you can make the adjustment permanent via the Save Settings menu.

A few important points to note:

Adjustments will only be made to cues currently with a status of Playing or Paused, so cues that are Fading In or Fading Out will not be adjusted.

Increases or decreases outside the dB range (-75dB up to 0dB) will be capped, but SCS will remember the number of key presses to note the indicated dB increase or decrease. Changing from one direction to the other (eg changing from increasing to decreasing) will calculate back from the latest remembered dB increase or decrease. That may all seem complicated so an example should help explain the reasoning behind this. Suppose you set the dB Increment to 1dB, have 2 playing sounds that have respective levels of sound1: -7dB, sound2: -4dB, and you want to increase the levels. Using the Shift+F12 key to increase the levels, you will get:

oInitial playing sounds:          sound1: -7dB,          sound2: -4dB

o1st key increase:          sound1: -6dB,          sound2: -3dB

o2nd key increase:          sound1: -5dB,          sound2: -2dB

o3rd key increase:          sound1: -4dB,          sound2: -1dB

o4th key increase:          sound1: -3dB,          sound2: 0dB

o5th key increase:          sound1: -2dB,          sound2: 0dB

Then you decide the level is too high and want to take it down again. Using the "Shift+F11" key to decrease the levels, you will get:

o1st key decrease:          sound1: -3dB,          sound2: 0dB

o2nd key decrease:          sound1: -4dB,          sound2: -1dB

oetc

Note that the 1st key decrease did not decrease the level of sound2 (it stayed at 0dB) because SCS was reversing the sequence of the increases. So if you continue to decrease the levels this way then you get back to the original levels of sound1 and sound2, ie -7dB and -4dB respectively.

SCS cancels the 'remembering' of the decreases (Shift+F11) and increases (Shift+F12) for an Audio File cue if a Level Change cue that affects the Audio File cue is activated, or if you make a separate manual adjustment to the cue's level by dragging the level slider.

The history is cleared on saving the settings (eg by Shift+F10).

 


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