Light to music: how it works

The program can “hear” the music and move the light to its rhythm: chases step on the beat, effects pulse in tempo. The heart of this system is BPM (beats per minute): the program detects the tempo and matches everything that moves to it.

📍 Where: the “SOUND” button in the program header turns on the “hearing”; sound settings are in the panel under the visualizer and in the Live sound monitor (the ⚙ gear).

How the program learns the tempo — three ways:

Way How
Automatically from sound Turn on “SOUND” — the program listens to the music and catches the tempo on its own (sources are in 10.02)
TAP by hand Tap the rhythm on the TAP button or the T key (at least 2 taps) — see 07.22
Enter a number Click the BPM digits and type the tempo (if you know it exactly)

Two sound-reaction modes (the “By tempo / By beat” switch in the sound settings):

Mode What happens When to choose
By tempo The program averages the beats and runs chases on an even, computed tempo — even if it goes quiet for a second, the light won’t stumble Ordinary music with a steady beat (recommended)
By beat Every caught beat (kick) immediately advances the chase by one step — the light literally “jerks” on the beats Live performances, a ragged rhythm, when you need a hard tie to the beats
💡 Tip: start with “By tempo” mode and automatic detection — in most cases that’s enough. The fine settings (10.03) are only needed if the detector stumbles on your material.
⚠️ Note: for a chase to react to the tempo at all, it must have BPM sync turned on (see 05 Chases). Chases with a manual step time live by their own seconds.
Fig. 10.01.1 — The “SOUND” button and the tempo panel
Fig. 10.01.1 — The “SOUND” button and the tempo panel