Playbox

Organizing live events can be challenging, especially when there are a lot of details to take care of. Keep in mind that a live performance can be pretty much anything from an arena concert to a rudimental street play. Obviously, sound will play an important part in both situations.

Now, during a concert or a rave, a band or a DJ will usually control every note that comes from the stage, but during a play that requires more than the actors’ dialogue, someone should be backstage, in charge of all that extra audio. If you’re trying to figure out the best way to actually play all the sounds and sound effects on cue, then you could give Playbox a try.

Playbox is an open-source program that allows you to add audio files as cues that you can play at any time with just one click. Basically, you get a minimalistic interface where all your cues are displayed. Click one and it plays; you can then pause it, mute it or click on another cue to start playback for a different file.

It’s all very basic, but the program’s strength lies in its simplicity. When you’re organizing a show at a breakneck pace, a tool that allows you to quickly organize and play sounds can be truly beneficial.

When creating cues, make sure that you assign proper names and colors. Color coding is the closest thing that the program has to categorizing; remember that all your cues will be in one window and that you can’t really move them around or rearrange them (so the order in which you create them is also important).

Also, the application allows you to open a separate window called Stage Displayed; here, the name of the currently playing cue will be displayed in big red letters. While Playbox is far from revolutionary, it offers you enough to assist you with some of the sound logistics of a live show.