Playing Cues for a Show

Pre-Season / Pre-Show

Set up the computer and associated equipment as described in the previous section. In tech week (or before) you will need to determine the level required for each cue. Generally speaking, try to set your cue levels such that the sound desk faders can be run at 'unity' or '0'.

Determine a cue's level from the Edit window for the cue. The sound desk fader should be set to the optimum position as mentioned earlier, and then use the cue's 'Level' fader and 'Pan' control to set the required cue level and pan.

Bear in mind that a number of factors will affect the level of the sound reproduced. You need to ensure that the only variable will be the level of the fader. Other controls that can affect the level include:

•Gain control on mixer channel

•Equalization

•Group faders

•Master faders

•Stage Monitor levels

The size and placement of the audience will also have an impact on the sound level, unless you have a really super theatre with seats that absorb sound to about the same level as a person.

The above list is not exhaustive. The important thing to do is to run thru a few cues before every performance to make sure they sound right. Check all speakers.

On your PC, do the following:

•Disable Windows sounds (eg the sound played when Windows is started). To this, we recommend setting the Windows Sound Scheme to 'No sounds'. If you have Windows 11 than also clear the checkbox 'Play Windows Startup sound'.

•Pause the task scheduler. (If you don't know how to do this, select the Windows Help and enter: task scheduler.)

•SCS should preferably be the only program loaded and/or run during the show.

•Disable any programs that may kick into life during the show.

During the Show

You may need to dim your monitor, or alternatively try switching the SCS color scheme to 'SCS Dark'.

When you are running the cues, if you intend to use the right mouse button to start and stop cues then position the mouse pointer somewhere where you can see it easily.

SCS treats a mouse double-click as a single click. If it did not and you accidentally double clicked to start a cue that is followed by a stop cue, then the cue would stop straight away, and all you and the audience would hear would be a short burst of sound. To avoid this problem, a click is ignored if it occurs within 0.4 second of the previous click. If you want to reduce or increase this 'double-click timeout' then you can do that under General Options.

Status Line

If you use MIDI control to activate cues, then the Status Line at the foot of the screen initially displays the MIDI control method, and then displays information about MIDI control messages received.