Freesound Forums

My son is in charge of the sound effects for a high school play. I'm looking for an easy solution to play these sound effects on a PC during the production. (Most of the sound effects are ones that he downloaded from this site.)

Since timing is everything, I'm looking for software that can preload all the sound effects (typically only two or three seconds long) and then play them back one at a time in an instant with a simple mouse or keyboard click.

It needs to be ridiculously simple, intuitive, and goof-proof.

And since it's for a school production, it would be nice if it were free or very cheap.

Any suggestions?

You could use Audacity, and then place all samples after each other, with a little pause between them.
Then you play the first sample, press pause, play the second etc. etc.
You could also use VirtualDJ, its a virtual mixing deck like a DJ uses with 2CDs.
There are a few ways to play a sample with this software, but its real easy to learn.
One way is to use the actual mixing deck, load one sample in the left player(drag it with the mouse)
Then load the second on the right player.(you can add players I think 6 is max)
After you play the first sample, the second is ready to go and you can load another(third) sample into the first player. etc. etc.
They are both free to download, I think VirtualDJ is easier to understand but Audacity would be my choice to use.

If the sounds are 16 or less, you might load them into a free sample based drum machine VST like this
http://www.vstplanet.com/Instruments_photos/Full%20view/sr202.jpg
that offer clickable pads, 1 per sound.

If they're more, you might assemble them into a drumkit for Hydrogen ( http://www.hydrogen-music.org/hcms/ )
Look at this picture: http://www.hydrogen-music.org/hcms/sites/default/files/pictures/main-window.png
The names of percussions in the bigger window are customizable, and clickable in real time to play the sound.

To make it a little more simple, why not just use his favorite mediaplayer, make a playlist, and load only this playlist. This way he's comfortable with what he's doing, and are less eligible to make any mistakes, and if it should go wrong, he knows just what to do.

Kyster wrote:
To make it a little more simple, why not just use his favorite mediaplayer, make a playlist, and load only this playlist. This way he's comfortable with what he's doing, and are less eligible to make any mistakes, and if it should go wrong, he knows just what to do.

I completely agree on that.......

Yes I agree too, the only probably important thing is that the player plays the sound immediately, without initial lag, quick timing might be an issue.

On that side, it'd help if it could play sound with a single click a-la Hydrogen instead of double click, or click on track and click on play.

Only thing is, make sure that the player isn't set on continuous play, but only one sound at a time.

http://www.wizardmaster.com/bludgeonsoft/btb/
This is sort of older software, but it does precisely what you want. I have used it to trigger sound live and it works great.
I have no connection with the company or anything, but I have used it a bunch of times and is well worth the $20.

Try Multiplay, Its an audio control software. I'm a technical tutor and I use it all the time for performances.

https://www.audiovisualdevices.com.au/software/multiplay/index.php

regards

skinnytecboy wrote:
Try Multiplay, Its an audio control software. I'm a technical tutor and I use it all the time for performances.

https://www.audiovisualdevices.com.au/software/multiplay/index.php

regards

I checked out several of the suggestions and MultiPlay is exactly what I'm looking for. I highly recommend it.

Thanks to everybody for your responses!