Guides › Running sound for a play
How to run sound for a play on Windows
A practical method for theatre, dance and school shows — from an ordinary PC, without spending anything.
Short answer
Put every sound in a cue list in running order, give each one its fades, and run the show from the spacebar: one press, one cue. QLab is the usual tool but it’s Mac-only; on Windows you can do exactly this, free, with ZasCue.
Running sound for a show isn’t about pressing play at the right moment. It’s about deciding everything before the performance — levels, fades, what overlaps with what — so that during the show you only have one job: follow the script and press GO. Here’s how to get there.
1. Prepare your audio before tech
Put every sound for the show in one folder: music, atmospheres, effects. Trim silence off the start and end, and bring the tracks to roughly the same loudness so you’re not riding the fader all night. Audacity is free and more than enough. Name the files in running order — 01 preshow, 02 opening, 03 storm — and you’ll thank yourself at 11pm on tech day.
2. Build the cue list
A cue is anything that happens on a GO: a track starts, the music dips under a line, everything fades to silence. The cue list is those moments in script order. In ZasCue, drag your files onto the window (or use Import audio) and each one becomes a cue, numbered in order. Rename cues after the moment in the script, not the file — “Act 1 — storm” tells you far more under pressure than track07.wav.
The highlighted cue is the standby: the one that fires on the next GO. After each GO it moves to the next cue on its own.
3. Program your fades — and crossfades
Hard starts and hard stops are what make show sound feel amateur. Give cues a fade in and fade out, and they arrive and leave smoothly every time.
- Crossfade: on the incoming cue, set a fade in and tick On start, fade and stop the others. One GO brings the new track up while the old one fades away.
- Music under dialogue: add a Fade cue (Insert → Fade) that points at the music and takes it down to a lower level, rather than stopping it.
4. Chain the cues that belong together
Some moments are several things at once — a storm atmosphere plus thunder, or a song that should roll straight into applause music.
- Groups fire several cues from a single GO, and keep a long show organised by scene.
- Auto-continue fires the next cue straight away (or after a set post-wait); Auto-follow fires it when this one finishes.
- Pre-wait delays a cue by a few seconds after the GO — handy for a sound that must land after an actor’s exit.
5. Rehearse from the spacebar
Press Space for GO. That’s the whole job during the show: watch the script, and when the cue comes, press the spacebar. If something goes wrong, Esc fades everything out — press it twice quickly to cut instantly — or use STOP ALL. For a large, readable view of what’s playing and what’s next from a dark booth, open View → Operator screen.
Do at least one full run with the actual computer and speakers you’ll use on the night. Levels that sounded right on headphones are rarely right in the room.
6. Protect the show
- Save the show as a project folder (File → Save): the cue list and all its audio travel together, so you can move it to another PC.
- Lock it before doors open: Tools → Lock editing stops anyone changing the show by accident mid-performance.
- If the computer crashes, ZasCue auto-saves as you work: File → Recover last session… brings it back.
- Keep a spare copy with File → Export a copy (.json)… — one file with every cue and setting, on a USB stick.
Before the first performance
- A full run of the show on the real computer and speakers.
- Outputs chosen in Tools → Audio outputs, if you use more than one.
- Windows notifications, updates and sleep turned off for the evening.
- The show saved, locked, and a spare copy on a USB stick.
In short: prepare the audio, build it as a cue list, add fades and groups, and run the whole show from the spacebar. No Mac, and nothing to pay.
ZasCue also puts images and titles on a second screen — scene titles, a logo before the show — from the same cue list. Coming from QLab? It can open your .qlab4 shows too.
Frequently asked questions
- Can I run theatre sound cues on Windows without QLab?
- Yes. QLab is Mac-only, but ZasCue is a free QLab-style cue player for Windows: a cue list, fades per cue, and the spacebar to run it.
- How do I crossfade between two tracks?
- Give the incoming cue a fade in and tick “On start, fade and stop the others”. On GO, the new track fades up while the old one fades out and stops.
- What if I press GO by mistake during the show?
- Press Escape and everything fades out; press it twice quickly to cut instantly. The STOP ALL button does the same.
- Does it need an internet connection?
- No. The Windows version works fully offline, and your shows are saved on your own computer.
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