LivePlay vs Stadium Sound

LivePlay is a free desktop audio playback app for live shows, designed for live sound operators managing cues. Playlists and cart buttons support cue groups, fades, loops, crossfades, and next-cue actions. Cues can route to channels on one or more audio interfaces. Mixing and monitoring tools include audio buses, EQ, gate, compressor, auxiliary sends, output meters, loudness targets, and a master limiter. Playback control works through mouse, touch, keyboard, MIDI, HTTP, and WebSocket. Media can be added by drag-and-drop or YouTube audio import, with waveform display and LTC timecode output. A desktop controller can connect to a local or remote audio server over a network. LivePlay runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows and is released under AGPL-3.0-only. The Free plan costs nothing with all features and no licence fees, subscriptions, or paywalls. Remote control uses plain HTTP and WebSocket; installers are unsigned and macOS builds are not notarized.

Stadium Sound is a soundboard for stadium and arena PA operators managing walk-on music and sound effects. Tracks can be grouped into named banks and queued across banks in an ordered playlist. Audio is decoded when loaded, so clicking a track starts playback without buffer spin-up. Monitor Mode routes a preview to private headphones before venue playback. The track editor offers a waveform, draggable in and out points, intro trimming, and player-name fields for walk-on cues. Operators can assign keyboard shortcuts, scan loudness in LUFS, flag tracks outside a target, and normalize the library in one click. The app tracks play counts and can export CSV reports for audio logs. It imports Sports Sounds Pro .set files, including banks, track names, and file paths. Playback control is available through Bitfocus Companion, a phone or tablet web remote, or OSC. It is free, with desktop and browser versions listed for macOS, Windows, and web. The maker notes that OSC is unauthenticated and that the web remote pairing URL contains a persistent token.