DJ Lighting Without CDJs: Run Lights From Your Own Audio Files

Most DJ lighting software starts with a requirement: a CDJ, a rekordbox library, a Serato or Engine rig. CueSync does not. In the DJ and Production editions it plays your own audio files itself, analyses each track, drafts cues and runs a whole set from a queue, with no deck and no rekordbox. This guide walks the path from a folder of tracks to lights that follow the set, says what you give up without a CDJ, and says where rekordbox and CDJs still help.

What You Need

• A Mac with Apple Silicon running macOS 12 or later. There is no Windows build.
• A DJ or Production licence. Without a subscription you can run the demo show and tour the app in read-only mode. Building and saving your own shows, and connecting real outputs, need a paid edition.
• Audio files in WAV, AIFF, MP3, M4A (AAC-LC), FLAC or OGG. Apple Lossless and copy-protected M4A files are not supported.
• One output that takes the cues: a lighting desk, Resolume, QLab, or an Art-Net or sACN node. The built-in Pixel Wall follows the music by itself, without a profile, so AutoPilot does not target it. With no output yet you can still prepare tracks and rehearse the set.

1. Add Your Tracks

Open Local Audio from the View menu and drag audio files onto the drop zone. CueSync adds them to the queue and starts analysing each one at once: beat grid, phrases, energy, key and loudness. Phrase and energy data appear progressively, and cue triggers fire as soon as the part of the analysis they need is done.

2. Check the Analysis

Open Track Prep (Cmd+4) to see each track's waveform with its phrase bands. The tempo and key chips read Solid, Check or Guess instead of a percentage, so you know which readings to trust and which to look at before the show. If a track's beat grid is a guess, correct it with Override (shift the grid by a half or a whole beat) or Edit Grid on the waveform. AutoPilot will not arm on a pulse CueSync invented: it holds that track until you confirm the grid, or press Arm anyway.

3. Draft the Cues

Press Analyze all in Track Prep, then Generate cues, to turn the analysis into suggested cues, each named for its moment with the reason it lands there: an energy peak after the build, a riser before the drop. Or use File, Generate Show, Generate Show from Track to pick one of six built-in themes and review a draft of the whole cue stack. Untick anything you do not want and commit; one Cmd+Z removes the whole group. On the Local Audio screen, Prepare set does the same for every queued track that has no saved prep yet, and leaves tracks you have already worked on alone.

4. Pick a Profile and Add an Output

AutoPilot is CueSync's planner for music-led sets: it studies each track before it plays and fires your lights and video at its builds and drops. Open it (Cmd+5), pick one of the nine built-in profiles and switch it on. Loading a track then arms it, and the toast reads AutoPilot armed: X of Y moments planned. It fires those moments on your connected outputs, so add at least one under Network, Outputs that takes them. With no output that takes its moments, the deck reads Disarmed, no output and says why.

5. Rehearse the Set

With the set queued and nothing playing, press Rehearse set in the readiness strip. It steps through every track's beats against the rig connected right now, plays no audio and sends nothing, then lists per track what would fire, on which beat and bar, which moments were held back and why, and which moment no connected output takes. Export it as a CSV for your crew. Run it again after you change a profile or a mapping.

6. Play the Set

Press play, or Cmd+Enter for GO. Next track is a hard cut: there is no crossfade and no gapless playback, and the cue pipeline arms for the new track as it does at a natural end. Playback goes to one stereo output on the audio device you choose. The screen carries on if you move to another screen mid-set.

What You Give Up Without a CDJ

• Hot-cue presses as triggers. The Hot Cue Hit trigger comes from a CDJ's pads, which a file played by CueSync does not have. Pads, a MIDI controller or a Stream Deck fire cues by hand instead.
• A crossfade between tracks. Local Audio cuts from one track to the next.
• rekordbox's own analysis. Phrase analysis is most reliable for tracks analysed in rekordbox. CueSync analyses your files itself and says how sure it is, and a Pioneer track keeps the markers rekordbox wrote.

Where rekordbox and CDJs Still Help

If you already prepare in rekordbox, CueSync reads the hot cues, memory cues, loops and phrases off the USB, and a CDJ-fed set follows the deck the room hears. You can also bring a rekordbox collection in, or send your prep back, with rekordbox XML. CueSync works with rekordbox and your CDJs and replaces neither.

Further Reading

• Local Audio in the manual: the queue, Next Up, Prepare set and Rehearse set in full
• Track Prep and Generate Show
• How CueSync Detects Beats: where the beat comes from, source by source
• Check your rig in 30 seconds
• Download CueSync

Pioneer DJ®, CDJ® and rekordbox® are trademarks of AlphaTheta Corporation. CueSync is independent software and is not affiliated with or endorsed by AlphaTheta.