Cues Plugin Questions

Support
1

I’m trying the Cues plugin, and overall it works fine and I love it, thanks for this feature.

I have a few questions, if there is a way to achieve specific behavior:

  1. Auto-Speak Song Titles and Auto Speak Song Stop Descriptions combined
    If I use both together, the Song Title and the Stop Description overlap and I can’t hear both, is there something simple I can do about it, like the Setting “Finish Speaking Section Names During Count-Ins”. My workaround would be to put a delay in the name of all cue files that are used for Stop Descriptions, so they wait for example 1500ms, but this is manual and I need to do it again, when I use new Stop Descriptions.
  2. Song Titles with “Delay after Song”
    When using the Delay After Song feature in my setlist, the Auto-Speak Song Title gets fired when the playhead starts again, not at the moment when the playhead jumps. So e.g. when I set a delay of 10 seconds after the song, the next song gets announced at the end of this waiting time, but I would love to announce it immediately, so the musicians can prepare. I solved it by not using the “Auto-Speak Song Title”, but using my SONG track with the name: “SONG +OSC [/cues/say] [single]”. This works, but when using an online voice, the audio files doesn’t get automatically created and I need to be sure to at least once jump to the song before the show.
    So I found a workaround, but I wanted to ask if there is a different one I do not know yet.
  3. Different Cues on different Tracks
    Is there a way when using multiple instances of the Cues Plugin to decide what cue gets announced on which? My setup uses different tracks to fire different cues to different musicians. For example I would like to use /cues/say, but then define a specific plugin instance, so e.g. a cue “Change Guitar” just gets announced on a track that is routed to the guitarist and not the whole band. In my current setting I use a custom Max for Live device for cues and I use different Ports for different cues, maybe there is a way to achieve something similar with the Cues Plugin.
  • OS and Version: Sequoia 15.6.1
  • Version of AbleSet: 3.1.5
  • Version of Ableton Live: 12.4.6
2

Hey @vonta,

Thanks for the detailed write up, and glad you’re enjoying Cues!

1. Song titles and stop descriptions overlapping

When playback stops at the end of a song, AbleSet jumps to the next one, and since that jump happens while playback is stopped, Auto-Speak Song Titles announces the next song right away and that may cut off the stop description.

There’s a simpler workaround than adding delays to your cue files. Since a stop description usually means you’ll have some time between songs anyway (to tune, talk to the audience, etc.), you can let those songs stay at the end instead of jumping to the next song.

  1. Click the edit button in the Setlist View.
  2. Open the three dots menu of the song that has the stop description.
  3. With Stop After Song enabled, set Behavior to Stay at End.
  4. Save the setlist.

AbleSet will now stop, speak the full stop description and stay at the end of the song. The next song’s title is announced once you move to it (e.g. with Next Song or by selecting it in the setlist), so nothing overlaps. The tradeoff is that you need to jump to the next song yourself, which is usually what happens after a stop anyway.

I’ll pass along the idea of an option that waits for the stop description to finish.

2. Song titles with Delay After Song

There’s currently no option to announce the next song at the start of the delay, so your +OSC track is the best way to do it right now.

About the online voices: /cues/say generates a phrase the first time it’s needed, and online voices need an internet connection for that. Once generated, the phrase is saved in your project’s AbleSet > Cues folder and works offline from then on. If you’d rather not depend on that, you have two options:

  • Custom recordings: add your own mono WAV files to a folder named Custom inside the Cues folder, named exactly after the phrase (e.g. Song Name.wav). AbleSet will play those instead of generating anything.
  • Local voices: Jenny and your Mac’s default voice are generated on your computer, so they don’t need an internet connection.

3. Different cues on different tracks

At the moment there’s no way to tell AbleSet which instance of the Cues plugin should play a given cue, so /cues/say can’t send “Change Guitar” only to the guitarist’s track. For cues meant for a specific musician, I’d keep using your Max for Live device alongside the Cues plugin for the general announcements.

I’ll pass this one along too, it’s an interesting use case!

Hope that helps!