Audio Output Patch

Before we move on, it’s important to address how we hear audio played in QLab. In order for any computer to play audio, whether that be from YouTube, Spotify, or QLab, it needs to have what’s called an “Audio Device”. This is the part of your computer that sends the sound elsewhere. On your laptop, that could simply be your built-in speakers. On your phone it would be your headphone jack. You can purchase external audio cards that connect to your computer via a USB cable. You could even use a virtual sound card such as Dante that sends your audio over your local computer network.

You can learn more about audio devices and how to set them up in a later chapter or in one of our other courses. But for now, know that your computer could have several different audio devices connected to it at any given moment.

On a Mac, you can see all the audio devices by going to System Preferences, then clicking on Sound. Under the Output tab you’ll see which devices are connected to your computer and which one is currently in use. Here you’ll see my internal speakers, my Dante virtual sound card, an external Scarlet 2i2 device that I use for audio recording, and even a few Apple TVs that I could connect over airplay.

QLab can play to almost any device that appears in this list. And more importantly, it can utilize several devices at once; it doesn’t even matter which one you have selected in your System Preferences.

You can select which device to use under the Audio Levels tab in the Inspector. On the left you’ll see the Audio Output Patch drop down. From here you can select any of your available devices. You can only select one output here though, but different cues can utilize different outputs.

Want to know more about making sure your Audio Devices appear in this list? Or want to know how to configure you’re your Audio Outputs? Feel free to click on one of the links below.