Hello all and happy 2026. I use VST Live 2 for a cover band. We run backing tracks, process audio for FX tracks routed back to physical mixer, and send midi signals for lighting cues. I have been using a wolfmix dmx controller but would much prefer to move to chamsys magicq given its additional flexibility. I’m trying to understand the best way to deploy magicq. I will probably buy one of the small controllers and use a second laptop controlled by midi Time code. I would love to use the same M3 Max laptop to run instances of VST Live and Magic Q simultaneously, but I question whether that will run (although without a visualizer running I doubt MagicQ uses many resources). I’m going to test it for fun and will report back. Otherwise, I can just use a separate laptop receiving MTC.
But I also wondered if there may be an easier way to do it. The bigger question is whether I can just listen to my backing tracks or a click where we have no tracks and busk/record DMX signals into the DMX tracks of VST Live 2 or 3 (?), record them for each song, and just play those recorded DMX signals back from VST live through a DMX dongle as part of the live performance. Theoretically that would avoid the lighting computer. I can probably keep within a single universe if necessary. Has anyone tried to do this? I recall early on there were some complaints about stability. Also, if I can record the signals into Live, is there a way to set up a few intensity faders to control the intensity of the various lighting groups? Some shows require more brightness than others, etc.
If anyone is in a similar boat, would love to hear what has worked best for them. I have 4 large megapointe movers, 2 large bee eye moving lights, 10+ LED pars, and a couple of strobes. Thanks for your thoughts and having a look!
Program light show on magicq or wherever you feel to, send midi commands or Mtc then output the light show from light software/console on artnet to record via “artnet in”the show on a Dmx track in VST live. Then with a simple usb to Dmx interface you can playback your show directly from VSTLive, no other equipment needed!
I play gigs with lights via VSTLive among all the other features (processed stacks, backing track, iem outs etc etc) and it works great (apply reduce events after Dmx track recording to reduce recorded points frequency and make lighter load of Dmx tracks).
Edit: in VSTLive 3 Dmx tracks faders act as general dimmers, but they act on every channels, including movers, gobos, strobes etc…. So we still need devs to add a way of flagging channels as “fixed value” to exclude them from master dimmer.
Thanks Ciro - I remember you helping me two summers ago on an issue. So it sounds like VST 3 adds faders for DMX but there is no provision for intensity faders for specific groups of channels (faders that go from 0-200% would be amazing so you could do additive or subtractive fading of groups of channels based on venue). How do you address intensity - I am assuming you’ve found settings that work across all of your shows? I have some really bright moving heads that are probably too much for indoor shows without a dimmer. Will need to figure out a way to control that but love the idea of being able to leave the lighting console at home and record lighting into VST live. So cool!
A solution could be to use a dmx track for the not intensity channels (strobe, gobos, master dimmers, X and Y movers etc), then a track for each group of light you wanna dim separately.
This way you could use each track fader to manage the intensity of the group of lights.
Example:
dmx track 1 - movers and all not intensity channels - leave fader at 0
dmx track 2 - main wash fixtures color channels - track fader to set wash lights intensity
dmx track 3 - moving heads color channels, track fader to set moving head intensity
The downside is that you have either to record three times each song enabling only the related channels in the console , or record one time then cut and paste the needed channels in various tracks.
This until @Spork and @musicullum will add a way to flag channels as “non dimmerable”.