Computer

SCS is available only for PC's running Microsoft Windows.

Operating System

Windows 7 or later. We recommend Windows 10 or Windows 11.

Processor

All current-day processors will satisfactorily handle SCS. We recommend using a computer with an Intel i7 or higher processor.

Sound Card / Interface

Any good or at least reasonable sound card should work satisfactorily with SCS. Please note that a cheap sound card or on-board sound processor may give satisfactory results when you listen to cues through your PC speakers, but may give less than satisfactory results when played through the sound system at your theatre.

An external sound interface connected by USB will generally provide better quality, and many such devices have balanced outputs.

If you have a digital mixer (eg an Allen&Heath Qu or SQ series mixer, or a Behringer X32), then you can use a USB connection to send audio directly to the mixer, provided you have installed the manufacturer's USB driver. The Behringer X32 also requires an X-UF or X-USB expansion card. To access all the mixer's input channels you may have to select ASIO as the audio driver in SCS (see below).

Audio Driver

The SCS installation setup file includes the necessary components of the BASS audio library, supporting DirectSound, WASAPI and ASIO.

SCS Professional and higher license level users may alternatively select SoundMan-Server (SM-S) as the Audio Driver. SM-S must be run on the same machine as SCS. SM-S uses ASIO.

Video Card

To play high 720p HD videos a 64Mb video card is required. 1080p videos require a at least a 128Mb video card.

Video/Image Display

For video/image cues to be displayed on a secondary monitor or video projector, that monitor or video projector must be configured as an extension of your desktop. Up to 4 secondary monitors/projectors are supported (up to 8 if you have SCS Professional Plus or higher), provided they can be configured in this way.

MIDI In

If you wish to control cues using MIDI input messages sent by a separate controller device, your PC or sound interface must have a MIDI input port.

MIDI Out

If you wish to use cues that send MIDI messages sent to an external device (or devices) then your PC or sound interface must have a MIDI output port. The MIDI output port can also be used for MIDI Thru to automatically stream MIDI input messages to the MIDI output port, whether or not those messages are used by SCS.

DMX Control

If you wish to control SCS cues via DMX from an external device (eg a lighting board) then you need an ENTTEC 'DMX USB PRO'. The ENTTEC 'DMX USB PRO MK2' continues to be supported by SCS but is no longer available from ENTTEC. Note that the cheaper ENTTEC 'OPEN DMX USB' is not suitable as this only supports DMX Send, not DMX Receive.

DMX Out

DMX Lighting cues are supported via ENTTEC 'DMX USB PRO' or 'OPEN DMX USB' device, or an FTDI 'USB-RS485 cable'. The ENTTEC 'DMX USB PRO MK2' continues to be supported by SCS but is no longer available from ENTTEC. We recommend the DMX USB PRO.

Disk Space

SCS including supplied DLL's requires about 50Mb of disk storage, but sound files, especially WAV files, can be many megabytes in size. Note that WAV files are the recommended format for sound files.

SoundMan-Server will only play WAV or AIFF files but SCS also supports other formats such as MP3 and WMA. To play MP3, etc files via SM-S, SCS encodes a WAV file from the original file, and stores that WAV file in an 'Encoded Files' folder.

Display Size

A screen display size of at least 1024 by 768 pixels is recommended.