Sound Byte Cart Machine App app for iPhone and iPad


4.4 ( 5984 ratings )
Utilities Music
Developer: Black Cat Systems
5.99 USD
Current version: 2.2, last update: 1 year ago
First release : 30 Oct 2010
App size: 3.46 Mb

Looking for a way to play sound clips at a theater or sporting events, as a DJ, or at other events? Don’t want to lug a computer around with you? With Sound Byte, the so-called "cart machine" used at radio stations in the past is now available for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

Whether youre programming a radio show or amateur podcast, adding spice to the commentary at a local sporting event, controlling sound effects for a theater production, or simply organizing your personal playlist, Sound Byte lets you manage and control playback of your audio files.

Sound Byte is perfect for:

Radio, podcast and TV productions - have ads, announcements, songs and sound effects
at your fingertips.
Theater Productions - play any sound effect on cue.
Sports Events - jazz up the commentary for your home team with sound effects each time they score.

Sound Byte supports up to 20 racks of carts, or up to 1500 recordings total (420 on the iPhone/iPod). You can set the number of racks in use, so you don’t have to deal with empty, unused racks.

Using Sound Byte is easy - just tap a cart, and playback of the audio file begins.

You can set the title of each cart, as well as the background color. Optionally, you can have the app automatically change cart colors based on their state: empty, loaded, playing, and already played. Carts can also be numbered if you wish, and you can mark carts with a bright red border to make them easier to find, to play next.

Fade in and out times can be set, as well as the cut in and cut out times, the playback volume, stereo pan, and rate. The volume of carts can be set while they are playing, and you can set the volume up to 200%, in case you have some recordings that are at too low of a level for normal playback.

Carts can be set to loop a specified number of times - great for sound effects!

Carts can be set to flash a user configured number of seconds before they finish playing, so you can get ready to play the next one.

Interactions between carts can also be controlled - touching a cart to start it can optionally cause currently playing carts to stop playback or fade out. You can even set carts up to play sequentially, so once one ends, the next one starts playing.

Carts that have been played can be marked as such, as well as disabled, if you only want to play a cart once. You can also log the name and time of played carts to a text file that you can copy back to your computer to view. This log can also be viewed from within the app.

Several sizes of carts are supported, so you can display fewer larger carts to make playback control even easier.

Sound Byte plays sound files from your Music Library. Note that sound files stored on iCloud cannot be played, they must be stored on your device.

Sound Byte also plays sound files that you have installed in the Documents folder, which you can access via the iTunes app.

Note that the screenshots are for illustration only, so you can see how the app works. Sound Byte does not come with any sound files, youll need to supply your own.

Please see http://www.blackcatsystems.com/ipad/iPad_SoundByte_FAQ.html for a full description of how to use the app.

Buy your copy of Sound Byte now, and get complete control over playback of your sound effects and other files.

Pros and cons of Sound Byte Cart Machine App app for iPhone and iPad

Sound Byte Cart Machine App app good for

Works very nicely for school concerts and other public performances where quick and easy control over soundtracks is needed. Once set up, a banjo monkey could run this thing.
Ive tried a bunch of apps for playing songs between whistles at hockey games. Nothing else comes close. The ability to fit so many buttons on screen at once with color coding and independent start times is great. Would like a larger stop button with nothing close to it so I dont have to worry about starting another song by accident when the puck drops.
I have been using Sound Cart for about four months to play sound effects and music for minor hockey games. I find it very useful for this purpose. The app provides a wide range of colour and text options to distinguish one button from another. I also like that it gives me the option to overlay an already-played sound effect with "played", so that I dont mistakenly play something more than once during a game. The user interface is fairly basic so it is easy to learn. Overall, I think it was worth the purchase price. There arent too many apps available on the app store that offer this functionality and not many reviews for any of them, either. I took a flyer on this app and am glad I did. I dont know if this qualifies as a bug or perhaps it was my fault, but one time I found that the clips linked to all my cart buttons had disappeared. I had to relink everything again. I also find that when I am linking music to various buttons, the app starts to lag after the fifth or sixth button. By this I mean that there is an increasing delay in the process of bringing up the music library, searching for the sound you want to link, then confirming the selection. I find that restarting the app improves performance so I do this every few buttons. A few features that I would find handy for future updates to the product: 1. Provide the ability to duplicate carts. I use multiple carts, alternating between them during home games. Each cart has the same button layouts, though, with different sound effects and songs linked to each button. It would have saved me time if I could duplicate an entire cart with one click, as opposed to having to configure each one button by button. 2. Provide a volume slider. When the puck drops, I stop the music. The app has two options for this: fade or pause. Pause stops the song abruptly as you would expect and gives me the option to restart the song at the same spot if there is another stop in play right after the puck is dropped. Fading the song out would be preferable but clicking the fade button means that I cant pick the song up again at the same location - the clip is reset. A volume slider would allow me to fade the song manually and then pause it - the best of both worlds. Sure, I could click the volume buttons on my ipad but a slider would be more elegant. Overall, a great app. Kudos to the developer! Later edit: I changed my rating for this app from four stars to five. The developer incorporated the volume slider into the latest version and fixed the issue where successive links made the app slower. Thanks for listening!
I use this app for DJing hockey and other sports, and its excellent; easy to customize and colour code carts, very easy to use and configure. Id highly recommend this app to anyone involved in sports, as I use this app exclusively for hockey and very comparable to high-end desktop cart apps radio stations and other sports DJs use. One feature Id like to see is ability to create a playlist by touching carts and they play in that order. Other then that, this app rocks. :)
Great app for small theatre live performance! Best application, that I found for my needs (playing ambient sounds, sound effects, etc). Only reason, I rate it 4, because, imo, to be perfect, this app needs midi support!
I wish Id had this years ago when I was in radio. MUCH more intuitive than a stack of carts and having to remember which ones are queued back up and which have to be between breaks.

Some bad moments

Good app and works with purchased outright music on device but does NOT work with offline Apple Music subscription songs nor offline Spotify tracks. No help from support... Not even acknowledging receipt of email... Poor service!
The rack options do not save so are not useable. Would be a good app for playing music at sports events if those options worked.
Perfect for walk-up songs at the ballgame. Better than several other more expensive options.
This app functions very well-very responsive, and nice functionality. The only flaw I have found is that there is no way to clear a cut from a cart position. So if you put something in the cart, there is no way to clear out that position without putting a different cut into its place so one you put something in a position there must always be a file there. Sounds trivial, until you need to leave a blank spot and there is no way to do it.
this application does exactly what i expected it to do. it includes some nice features like programable fades, repeats, and some other useful ones. the only drag is that you can not delete or clear your carts. like the previous reviewer said, after you assign a sound file to a slot it will be there for life. Until they fix this problem, here is a workaround for it. create an audio file with no audio recorded. call it "blank". save it and import it to SoundBytes documents folder. now, every time you decide to clear a rack, assign "blank" to it. it is crude, i know, but does the job. outside of this little issue, the application is definitely worth the money.
The app lets you bring in many sound formats and lay them out on a screen for instant access and performs well in this regard. There are some features that would be good to see in the interface which could make this an outstanding app. As others have mentioned, the ability to empty out a cart is something that this app really needs, and in fact, there should be a way to clear an entire rack all at once. Being able to rearrange carts by dragging them would make life better as well. The cart options screen should give you a way to set the volume of the sound; that way you could take a single sound from your library and plug it into two different carts at different volumes, and you wouldnt have to edit them outside of the app to set the volume. Finally, while adding and deleting files from the library through iTunes is great and the way i would prefer to do it most often, being able to record sounds within the app would be a welcome feature.

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