How Light Is Mixed (HTP/LTP)

In Live, a single fixture is influenced by many sources at once: a running scene, a chase, an effect, a raised submaster, a quick color, the crossfader… This raises a question: what will the audience actually see? To keep the result predictable, the program mixes the sources by two simple rules — one for brightness, and another for the remaining parameters.

📍 This isn’t a separate button but a principle behind all of Live. Understanding this logic answers 90% of the “why did the light behave differently than I expected” questions.

Brightness — the “brighter wins” rule (HTP)

For brightness (the dimmer) the HTP rule applies (Highest Takes Precedence — “the higher value wins”): if several sources ask a fixture for brightness at the same time, the brightest one wins.

That’s why brightness scene and group submasters work as pile-on: they add brightness on top of a scene rather than subtracting it. Raise a group’s fader and it gets brighter (if its own level was lower). And Flash is an instant “boost to maximum.” The Strobe assignment controls strobe separately and does not add brightness.

Color and movement — the “latest wins” rule (LTP)

For color, pan/tilt, gobo and strobe the LTP rule applies (Latest Takes Precedence — “the latest command wins”). Averaging two colors is meaningless (red + blue ≠ a muddy purple in any useful sense), so the winner is the command higher in the layer order — usually your most recent live edit.

Layer order (bottom to top)

Each next color/position layer overrides the previous one:

  1. Base — the Programmer (or a Blind mode snapshot)
  2. The smooth transition (fade)
  3. The active chase
  4. Effects (the last launched wins)
  5. Submasters — add brightness (pile-on, HTP)
  6. The scene fader’s color/position (see “sticky/release” in 07.16)
  7. The crossfader A/B
  8. A preset pressed in Live — color / gobo / position on top of the show
  9. Quick color (a filter on top)
  10. Strobe, strobe submasters, Blinder and Fog — a shared live override layer; when they set the same parameter of one fixture, the last activated owner wins, and changing its level does not change its priority
  11. Solo / Mute — kills the brightness of the unwanted groups
  12. Overall speed, the Grand Master and Blackout — over everything
💡 Tip: it’s easy to remember — “brightness: whoever is brighter is seen; color: whoever is latest sets the color.” If a live color or fader has “stuck” and won’t go away — holding Reset clears all the overlays.

One practical consequence

A preset pressed in the Programmer lives on layer 1 — and while a chase is running you will not see it: the chase sits above. The same preset pressed in Live sits on layer 8 and punches straight through the show: color and gobo change at once, while brightness is still driven by the chase. So “tinting a number on the fly” always means Live, never the Programmer.

Fig. 07.26.1 — The light-mixing layer diagram
Fig. 07.26.1 — The light-mixing layer diagram