iPad · Live sound effect playback

OnStage

Every cue in the show on one screen, laid out as the mixer you already know — layered, looped, panned, and sent out on a single channel.

One channel per cue

A board you
already know

OnStage running a show called The Woman in Black: seven named channels — London Street, London Cars, Horse Trotting, Clock Ticking, Church Bells, Market Place, and Train Ride — each with play and stop buttons, a loop switch, a scrub bar, a pan slider, a fader, and a level meter, beside a Main Out master channel.

Why it exists

Off the disc,
onto the board

Tired of playing sound effects off CDs, running two players to overlap a cue, and swapping out a scratched disc between scenes? I was. That is why I built OnStage: fast, familiar, and reliable to anyone who has ever played a CD or operated even the simplest of sound systems.

OnStage has already been used by groups like the Sound of North Marching Band in Columbus, IN and International Thespian Troupe #57 to produce better sound effects and layering than traditional CD players let them, all in a portable package that travels easily.

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Layer, loop, and pan

Every cue gets its own channel with a level, a pan position, and a loop switch. Play as many at once as the scene calls for, and fade the master over all of them.

02 / 03

One channel out

OnStage mixes the show before it leaves the iPad, so the whole design arrives on a single channel of your own board — one cable, however many cues.

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As many cues as the show needs

Load the whole show at once. It has run in the field with forty uncompressed effects standing by.

The Edit Track popover open over the Clock Ticking channel, setting its default volume, its default pan, whether it loops by default, its title, and the color of the group it belongs to.

Set once, played the same every night

Teach it your levels

Tell a track where its fader sits, where it pans, and whether it loops, and OnStage brings it back that way every time the show opens. Group cues by color so a scene's worth of sound reads as one block down the board.

Shows are built on the iPad from the music library or iTunes File Sharing, or assembled on a Mac as a single bundle and imported whole.

Stage, field, or internet

Whether you are a sound designer for a regional theatre company, a marching band director looking to improve this year's show, or an independent podcaster, OnStage is ready to go as soon as your show starts.

The number of cues a show can hold depends on the iPad model and its capacity. OnStage has been tested in the field with shows of up to forty uncompressed AAC sound effects on a third-generation iPad.