Run a real night.
Everything on this page exists for one reason: at showtime, the visuals must do the right thing at the right moment, every time, with your attention somewhere else. Skim it once before your first gig; the DJ and venue trainers turn it into muscle memory.
Cues & shows — the timeline
A cue is a look with a duration: "this picture, for ninety seconds." A show is cues in a row. Build one in minutes:
- Add cues from your saved looks (or grab the current look as a new cue), drag to reorder, set each one's hold time.
- Press play — the show walks the timeline, crossfading between cues with your transition time. Loop it for installations.
- Jump anywhere: next / previous / go-to-cue work live, from the panel or remotely.
- Timecode: cues can be pinned to exact clock positions and slave to incoming timecode — the visuals hit their marks with the rest of the production. See the venue trainer.
MIDI — hands on real knobs
- MIDI learn: click a control, touch a knob or pad on your controller — bound. Any control on the panel, any standard controller.
- Pads → looks: map pads to preset recalls and play your set's looks like a drum rack.
- MIDI clock: if your DJ software or DAW sends clock, Luxaudica locks its beat to it — no audio-analysis guesswork, sample-tight drops.
- Tap tempo: no clock? Tap the tempo on a key and the beat lock follows you.
OSC — the venue's nervous system
OSC is the simple network language lighting desks, DAWs and show controllers already speak. Luxaudica listens and answers on the local network — no drivers, no dongles:
- Control anything remotely: every look parameter, scene changes, preset recalls, blackout and panic all have addresses. A lighting desk fader can ride the visuals' intensity.
- Discovery is automatic: the app announces its full control map (OSCQuery), so modern consoles list every control by name without you typing addresses.
- Ableton / AbleSet: playing to a setlist? Song and section changes coming from AbleSet drive scene changes automatically — the chorus look arrives with the chorus.
- Reaper: transport-aware — the visuals know when the DAW is playing, stopped, or looping.
- DJ decks: deck-aware beat and track info can drive the lock directly from DJ software that publishes it.
- Art-Net timecode: the lighting world's clock. If the desk broadcasts timecode, your cues follow it.
Displays — one Mac, many screens
- Fullscreen output on any display (f), panel on your laptop. Multiple outputs run at once.
- Deepest color the display supports, automatically — 10-bit wide gamut with anti-banding dither on modern hardware. Big soft gradients stay smooth on the wall.
- Pick the quality tier for the room: Club (light), Tour (default), Festival (maximum, for LED walls on powerful Macs).
The showtime checklist
- Punch set for the genre — 0.4–0.6 house/techno, higher for bass music, lower for ambient.
- Macro reactive on so builds and drops steer the picture.
- First ten gallery slots = tonight's looks, in order, on number keys.
- Crossfade ~2 s (cuts read as intentional, dissolves stay musical).
- Beat offset trimmed once from the booth — flash ON the kick, not near it.
- Reduce flashing considered for the room and the crowd.
- Know your two red buttons: Blackout (set break) and Panic (guaranteed-sane reset). Both are on MIDI/OSC/AI too.
When things go sideways
- Visuals drifting off-beat? You're on audio analysis in a loud room — switch to MIDI clock from the booth, or tap tempo.
- Frame stutter on the projector? Drop the quality tier one notch. The perf readout in the panel shows headroom honestly.
- "Make it stop": Panic. Then breathe. The look is unchanged, autopilot is off, brightness is full, and you're in manual control.