Submasters: faders, pile-on, Flash

Submasters are a row of faders, each of which you assign a scene or a group of fixtures to, then bring its brightness up smoothly with a dedicated handle. This is the heart of a “live” mix: raise the “Moving heads” group fader and the heads add brightness on top of everything else; lower it and they’re gone. The light is the sum of all the raised faders (that’s what pile-on means: faders add brightness, they don’t subtract it).

📍 Where: Live → central zone, the “Submasters” block (a grid of faders).

How to assign a fader:

  1. Press the button in the fader’s corner (or right-click the fader). The assignment menu opens.
  2. Choose what the fader will control:
Menu section What it assigns Fader color
Assign a scene Any of your scenes Blue
Assign a group A system group (PAR cans, Moving heads, Lasers, Strobes, Fog machines…) Green
My groups Your custom groups and subgroups Purple
Clear Remove the assignment Grey
  1. Raise the fader — the assigned scene/group fades in by brightness.

Flash (⚡) — an instant burst. Below each fader there’s a lightning button: hold it and the fader instantly jumps to maximum; release it and it returns to its previous level. Perfect for accents on the beat of the music. The first faders can also be “flashed” from the keyboard with keys 1–8 (see 07.25).

A scene fader brings in not only brightness, but color and position too. Next to the heading there’s a “scene color: release / sticky” switch — it decides what to do with the color and position when you drop the fader to zero:

Mode Color/position behavior
release Active while the fader is raised; drop it to 0 and whatever is underneath returns
sticky Remain even after the fader is lowered, until another source or Reset overrides them (just like on big consoles — LTP mode)

In both modes the brightness is always controlled by the fader itself.

💡 Tip: there are 16 faders (two rows). On short windows the second row is hidden so it doesn’t crowd the screen — make the window taller to see them all.
💡 Tip: groups assigned to a fader have Solo and Mute buttons available — see 07.17.
Fig. 07.16.1 — Submasters with the assignment menu and the Flash button
Fig. 07.16.1 — Submasters with the assignment menu and the Flash button