Cue points

Hi.
I work for an audio hire company involved it supplying sound systems and engineers for high profile corporate events such as award shows, conferences, conventions etc. We use minidisk players to provide short stings of music. We are looking for a device to replace these players and I have been evaluation Combiwave as a replacement.

After reading the forum about the implementation of cue points I would like to add my view and a couple of points.
For me the addition of cue points is a big selling point. I understand that for many people a fade out is worth while but for me it is not essential that it fades. We run our playback devices through a mixing console anyway so the engineer fades out the track when needed. Having said that I think it is still a good idea to have some sort of end point. As many of the tracks we play need to start at a point somewhere other that the actual start of the track, (as mentioned by someone on your forum) not having to have some sort of music editing program as well is a plus.

Having spoken to some of our sound engineers it is a consensus that another useful feature would be a one key for play, stop/cue next track. What I mean by that is one key, i.e. the space bar, starts the track playing, another tap on the spacebar stops the track and automatically cues the next track ready to play (this may already be possable but I am not sure how to set it). The reason for this is purely a convenience thing. A lot of award shows we do involves playing short pieces of music for an award presenter or winner as they walk up to the stage. As this usually involves fading up a microphone as well, it is very convenient for the engineer to use just one key as opposed to having to take their eyes of what is happening on the stage to see where the next key is to press. Things in a live situation like that can happen very fast at times and the less an engineer has to think about and do, the smoother and easier the working enviroment.

I also see that you are going to implement a manual. Although I found the program very intuitive and easy to use I feel a manual would be useful. For example, I am not sure if it is Possable to assign keys to a specific task. The example I used earlier about using the space bar to start the track would be a good key for me to use but I don't know if it is Possable to reassign it or how.

On the whole I am very impressed with the program and if what I have spoken about was implemented in future versions, I would have a good case for convincing my superiors to invest in Combiwave as a playback device.