Sound fx..

[astuart]

What are the favoured methods for running sound fx for festival plays.. tapes, Cd's , Mini disks, computers( if so which program do you use?)

[jgh]

At St Serf's our preferred option is a dual CD deck which has auto pause and instant queuing (designed for disco use). It can sometimes be quirky with home made CDs, so we always recommend to teams that they try their CDs either at the Technical meeting or at the time of their set move in.

We also have a DVD/CD drive which is more tolerant on home made CDs so can often play ones which out preferred deck can't.

One group in our festival uses their own computer, but we just provide a jack lead to link it to the mixer, so do not know what software they are using.

Fortunately it has now been a few years since groups have wanted cassettes!

[Martinbutler]

Th preferred method in Fife is minidisc, although I prefer to use my laptop. I run a programme called Sound Cue System 10 which allows me to modify cues, loop them, link them, run simultaneous cues etc etc. It was a great deal for around £65. If anyone's interested, I can look up a link for it.

[astuart]

In Inverclyde for the festival seven out of eight team used Sound Cue System, the other used cassette tape. One team had to run a cd for background music along with SCS.

[adminscda]

I personally prefer MD. Laptops can be fine but I found in rehearsal that it was easy to slip with the mouse and either not play the sound or go somewhere totally different! Also, we all know how computers can just freeze for no particular reason!

I like MD over CD as it is so responsive - it doesnt have to "wind itself up" to start playing!

[jgh]

Our dual CD drive obviously has some sort of look ahead, as pressing the "go" button does give instant results.

It is a shame that MD technology did not become more main stream.