QLab 5.5 available - now with object audio 🔊

[Chris Ashworth]

Hi everyone,

We’re pleased to share that QLab 5.5 is now available!

Visit QLab.app to learn more including a web-based demonstration of object audio.

This is a big FREE update for anyone who has a version 5 license.

This update includes a lot of new features, but some highlights include:

★ ADDED: Object-based audio lets you effortlessly move sounds around your system in a brand new way, routing, fading, and mixing in a fully flexible visual environment.

★ ADDED: Disarmed cues can optionally be skipped.

I also recorded three video tutorials about the new object audio features:

Intro to Object Audio in QLab 5

Setting up Audio Maps in QLab 5

Using Audio Objects in QLab 5

And of course, this highly technical visualization of Object Audio in QLab 5:

We hope you like it, and of course please write us here, or at sup...@figure53.com with any questions!

Best,

Chris

[Philip Glenn]

Skipping disarmed cues is awesome!!

Philip Glenn

On Aug 12, 2025, at 2:01 PM, Chris Ashworth <ch...@figure53.com> wrote:



Hi everyone,

We’re pleased to share that QLab 5.5 is now available!

Visit QLab.app to learn more including a web-based demonstration of object audio.

This is a big FREE update for anyone who has a version 5 license.

This update includes a lot of new features, but some highlights include:

★ ADDED: Object-based audio lets you effortlessly move sounds around your system in a brand new way, routing, fading, and mixing in a fully flexible visual environment.

★ ADDED: Disarmed cues can optionally be skipped.

I also recorded three video tutorials about the new object audio features:

Intro to Object Audio in QLab 5

<1-thumb-small.jpeg>

Setting up Audio Maps in QLab 5

<2-thumb-small.jpeg>

Using Audio Objects in QLab 5

<3-thumb-small.jpeg>

And of course, this highly technical visualization of Object Audio in QLab 5:

<visualization-small.jpeg>

We hope you like it, and of course please write us here, or at sup...@figure53.com with any questions!

Best,

Chris

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[John Leonard]

Well, that’s a fairly major upgrade, congratulations. Object audio looks to be a very useful addition to the system: looking forward to getting to grips with it.

Very nicely done, once again.


John

[Andrew Keister]

I’d like to congratulate the team at Figure 53 on a remarkable leap forward with this latest upgrade. Object-based audio is something I—and many others—have hoped for over the years, and it’s thrilling to see it implemented with such care, thoughtfulness, and technical precision.

The fact that this arrives as a mid-cycle, free update is nothing short of extraordinary. Figure 53 has always been the small company we love to root for, and it’s truly inspiring to see your team continue to innovate and make state-of-the-art tools available to such a broad and diverse community of users.

You have my admiration, my gratitude, and my continued loyal patronage.

Andrew Keister

[Chris Ashworth]

Andrew,

From all of us, thanks so much for sharing this, it really means a lot.  

We talked a lot about whether we wanted to hold this back to be a part of a v6 upgrade, but at the end of the day we just felt so strongly that we wanted people using it, that we decided it should go out into the world as soon as possible.

It’s frankly a bit of a business gamble to do that, since it was several years of work to make! But since we’re a small company and we’re not owned by anyone else, we can make decisions focused on our long-term relationship with everyone who is using QLab.

I hope it helps encourage folks still on older versions to upgrade, so anyone who is able to help us spread the word about it, we would be very grateful.

Your support really means a lot to us, thank you.

-C (and the other 17 people who have been working towards this in various ways!)

[gcooke]

+1 to Andrew's comments. AMAZING.  I have had a chance to play around with 5.5.1 this morning. Super easy and intuitive to setup and start working.

I am imagining the conversations with my students a few years from now..lol(the Qlab version of walking to school through the snow uphill both ways).

Congrats to the Figure 53 team!!!

-George Cooke

Tech Supervisor/Sound&Projection Designer

Robsham Theater

Boston College

[FL K]

Hi F53 team of Allstars,

Object Audio is fun for sure, can't wait for a show where I can use it to the fullest :)!

On another note - I noted the addition of PJLink protocol - yaaay, love it! Just a Q - could the "Passcode" field be used to put in a PJLink Password? As I sometimes come across PJ's where the local techs do not want to disable/change the pw... would be great to know if this can be possible :)!

Cheers,

Freddy

[Joshua Langman]

CHANGED: When dragging files into a workspace, new cues are now ordered alphabetically according to the way their names sort in the Finder. For example, 10.wav now imports after 9.wav instead of between 1.wav and 2.wav.

Yay, thank you!

[Andy Dolph]

yes! Thank you!

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[Greg Leeper]

Object Audio is cool!  Thanks!
Watching the youtube vids I see you can program a lot of panning or movement in advance, what if you wanted to be able to pan things live - like a live mic getting panned by a midi controller in real time - is there a way to make that happen using this system?

Thanks,

Greg

[Chris Ashworth]

Hi Greg,

Yes!

We have an OSC API available for object audio, which is covered in our OSC documentation here:

https://qlab.app/docs/v5/scripting/osc-dictionary-v5/ 

For example, here is the format for setting the position of a cue object:

https://qlab.app/docs/v5/scripting/osc-dictionary-v5/#/cue/{cue_number}/audiomap/object/{name}/position-{x}-{y} 

You can use the “live” form of an OSC message to set the live values of the object rather than editing the document:

https://qlab.app/docs/v5/scripting/osc-dictionary-v5/#live

Cheers,

Chris