Five minutes to first light.
No setup wizard, no accounts, no cables. Luxaudica's whole promise is that the defaults are already beautiful — this page just gets sound flowing in and pictures flowing out.
1 · Open the app
Drag Luxaudica into Applications and open it. You'll see two things: the visual window (black, waiting for music) and the control panel (the mixing desk). Everything in these docs happens in one of those two places.
Runs on Apple Silicon Macs. If your Mac has a notch or came out after 2020, you're fine.
2 · Give it something to hear
Luxaudica taps the sound on your Mac — you don't route anything into it. At the top of the panel, pick a source:
- System audio — everything the Mac plays (Spotify, YouTube, anything). The right default for almost everyone.
- An app — just your DJ software or DAW, ignoring notification pings and other apps.
- Mic / line in — a room mic or a mixer feed, for when the music isn't coming from this Mac.
The first time, macOS will ask permission to capture audio — that's the one dialog you'll ever see. Once sound flows, the little meters in the panel start dancing. That's the app listening.
3 · Play music. That's it.
Press play on anything. The default scene locks onto the beat, the colors follow the song's key, and quiet passages actually go quiet — the visuals have the same dynamics the music does. You could stop reading here and be happy.
4 · Three controls worth knowing on day one
- Surprise me — one button, a whole new curated look. It never repeats what you just saw and it never picks something ugly. When in doubt, press it.
- The scene menu — 70+ scenes from smoke and ink to chrome and starfields. Click through a few; n steps to the next one, ⇧n steps back.
- Punch — a slider that decides how hard the picture rides the music. At zero it's graceful; turned up, beats hit. Try half-way while something with a drop is playing.
5 · Put it on the big screen
Press f for fullscreen. With a TV or projector connected, drag the visual window onto it first — the panel stays on your laptop screen, the art fills the room. Luxaudica drives multiple displays at once if you have them.
6 · Match the app to your machine
In settings you'll find three quality tiers. They trade sharpness for headroom so the motion never stutters:
- Club — lighter render load. Pick this on a fanless MacBook Air or if you ever see motion hiccups.
- Tour — the default. Full resolution, tuned for any Apple Silicon Mac.
- Festival — extra resolution and shadow detail for big projection walls, on Macs with muscle.
There's also a frame-rate cap if you want the fans quiet during an all-night ambient session — capping at 30 halves the work without changing the look's character (the motion smear is frame-rate-compensated, so trails look the same at any cap).
If something looks wrong
- Black screen? No audio is reaching the app — check the source picker and that music is actually playing.
- Visuals feel asleep? Raise Punch or Intensity, or turn on Macro reactive so the song's build-ups and drops steer the picture.
- Everything's too much? The panic control instantly returns to a guaranteed-sane, visible state — full brightness, no blackout, autopilot off. It's the "get me home" button and it can't make things worse.