Audio-Triggered Playbacks on ChamSys MagicQ

Why MagicQ Is Worth Covering Separately

MagicQ occupies a position nothing else quite does: a fully capable console platform whose PC/Mac version is free. That single fact changes what is possible for education, small theatre, and anyone who wants to prove a design before committing budget.

It also means the entire automation chain can be validated on one laptop, with no console in the room and no hire cost — and because the OSC surface is the same on the free version as on an MQ-series console, that bench test actually predicts the venue.

The Control Surface

MagicQ exposes a remote-control OSC surface that CueSync targets directly. Two capabilities carry almost everything:

Playback activation and cue stepping. Activate a playback, step a cue stack. Discrete events — the console owns the look, automation decides the instant.

Playback fader levels. Faders take continuous values, which is the natural target for an audio energy envelope or a frequency band.

No console-side scripting is required for either. That is worth stating plainly, because a rig whose automation depends on bespoke console scripts is fragile in a specific and predictable way: it breaks when someone loads a different show file, and the person who wrote the script is rarely in the building when it happens.

Discrete and Continuous Are Different Tools

The most common mistake is building a whole show from one of these.

Only cue steps produces a slideshow. The rig snaps between states on section boundaries and does nothing in between, which reads as mechanical no matter how good the individual looks are.

Only fader levels produces something that breathes but never lands. Energy rises and falls convincingly and no moment ever arrives.

The combination is what reads as designed: levels carry the motion between moments, cue steps deliver the moments themselves. Map an energy envelope to two or three playback faders, and reserve cue steps for the handful of instants that actually matter.

Beat Phase, Not Just BPM

A cue that fires on the correct beat but the wrong position in the bar looks like a mistake rather than a decision.

CueSync locks to beat phase rather than tempo alone, so a cue mapped to a downbeat lands on the downbeat rather than merely somewhere in the right tempo neighbourhood. On a rig where the console is doing the fade, that timing is the whole difference between automation that looks intentional and automation that looks approximate.

Setup

1. Enable the remote-control OSC surface on MagicQ and note the IP and port.
2. Add a MagicQ OSC output in CueSync pointed at that address.
3. Map discrete triggers — beat, phrase, energy — to playback activation and cue steps.
4. Map a continuous parameter to one or two playback faders.
5. Prove the chain on MagicQ PC/Mac before the console is in the building. Full configuration is available without a subscription, so the wiring can be validated on a bench.

Compatible systems: MagicQ MQ-series consoles, MagicQ Stadium, MagicQ Compact, MagicQ PC/Mac (free).

The Honest Boundary

None of this programs the desk. Every playback fired here was built by someone in MagicQ, and the console remains the source of truth for what a look is. Automation decides when, never what.

That boundary is what makes it usable on a real production: because MagicQ is receiving ordinary OSC rather than being remote-controlled at a lower level, an operator's actions always win.

Further Reading

• How to Trigger ETC Eos Cues from Live Audio — the same pattern on Eos
• Audio-Reactive Cues Over OSC — the QLab equivalent
• What Is Music-Driven Lighting Automation? — the category
• ChamSys MagicQ Integration — protocols, compatibility, setup