Small band lightjams and live audio

[Rupert Dunn]

Matthieu,
Very impressed with your program. I am still very much a ‘muggle’ but am getting there. I’m running the lights for a small covers band. I’ve (with your help) set the lights to react to the general music volume and to change colour driven by the beat. Here is my question:-
1. Let’s say I’m setting the analyser for a PAR wash light set to pick up the guitars. Through the configuration I set the frequency range to focus on the guitars and set the lights to follow the maximums. Can I then select another set of PARs that I’d like to follow the kick drum, go back into the configuration change to a completely different frequency range and set this different PAR set to follow the kick yet retain the other guitar frequency settings?
2. There are times when the guitars, piano, vocals and drums are mic’ed up. Can lightjams input different channels at the same time? Let’s say 8 audio channels that I can use to trigger different light effects? I expect I will need other hardware? Do you have any experience of what I might need? The band has a ‘digital’ desk with USB, 1/4 inch and DMX outputs. Thanks in advance. R

[isaac]

Hi Rupert,

1.Through the configuration I set the frequency range to focus on the guitars and set the lights to follow the maximums.  Can I then select another set of PARs that I’d like to follow the kick drum, go back into the configuration change to a completely different frequency range.

If you change the Upper and Lower Freqs in the Music Configuration, it will affect all the sound that is coming through that input, so your best bet would be to leave it at the whole range in the configuration menu and use try to isolate the instrument you want by choosing the correct 'bands' that correspond to it.

When assigning music input to the power of a source, there are 20 bands (in detailed view) which should be enough for that. You could probably select/add multiple bands together also using formulas if you need to.

2. There are times when the guitars, piano, vocals and drums are mic’ed up. Can lightjams input different channels at the same time? Let’s say 8 audio channels that I can use to trigger different light effects? I expect I will need other hardware?  Do you have any experience of what I might need?

Yes, but you would need a sound card with multiple inputs connected to your PC, Lightjams can handle that without problems. Each input would only be one instrument , so you would have a perfect 'view' of each without 'interference' from others.

In your case, if your 'digital desk' has enough outputs, you would send each instument to a different input port of your sound card, if not, you would have to connect each instrument to your sound card first and from there send the signal to the 'digital desk'.

[Rupert Dunn]

Thank you very much Issac. Re pt 1: could you let me know what the formula is for combining ‘detail’ frequency bands in the analyser? Re pt 2: I guess I need to get into my sound card. I have a very basic windows laptop (I know next to nothing about its configuration). What sort of sound card/sound hardware would you recommend?

[Mathieu]

>>  could you let me know what the formula is for combining ‘detail’ frequency bands 

Take a look at the help page for the formulas: https://www.lightjams.com/commandline.html. Combining frequency bands can be as simple as adding them together with the addition operator (+).

>> What sort of sound card/sound hardware would you recommend

Something like a Motu 8pre: http://motu.com/products/motuaudio/8pre

[Jack]

I'm trying to do something like what you are doing, in an as simple as possible way. I am building a lighting setup for a singer with guitar. So, two mics.

I use a Behringer U-Phoria UMC1820 interface for it.

It can take 8 inputs (mics) and outputs the sound over usb to a pc. Using an ASIO driver on the pc for the UMC 1820 makes Ligthjams see the inputs.

Lightjams kind of reads the usb stream and decodes all audio signals to seperate lines.

From there the lights can be controlled. Pretty challenging for me to get it all to work.