This is the first wall everyone hits. You open LumaDeck, the visuals move on their own… but they're not moving to your music. That's normal: you haven't given it anything to hear yet. It takes five minutes to fix, and there's only one thing you need to understand.
LumaDeck doesn't play sound: it listens. The engine analyses the audio signal in real time — the energy, the low end, the hit — and uses it to drive the shaders, fire the accents and make the screen breathe along with whatever you're playing. With no audio source connected, SYNC supplies an internal beat at the BPM you set.
So today's job is just one thing: telling LumaDeck where to listen.
The Master keeps SYNC beside one Audio button. Open Audio to choose a microphone, interface or system input; SYNC is also the first option in that picker.
The key idea, and the one that unblocks almost everyone: LumaDeck listens to audio inputs, not to the output of your speakers. It hears through the mic, or through whatever reaches it down a cable or a system input. With that clear, pick your case.
Open Audio, choose the built-in microphone, allow the browser when it asks, and turn the room up. Your laptop's mic picks up the music in the air and LumaDeck starts moving with it. It's the quickest plan B. The downside is that it also picks up the room — the crowd, reflections and everything else around it.
If you have a mixer or a controller, the cleanest signal comes from there. The typical setup: an output from your mixer (or the booth/rec out) goes into a USB audio interface, the interface connects to your machine, and in LumaDeck you open Audio and choose that interface. Now LumaDeck hears the programme directly, without the room mixed in.
At a live show, always go Line from the mixer. Keep the mic as your safety net for when you arrive at a booth you don't know and there's no time to cable anything up.
This is the one that stops most people. You're playing from the same machine LumaDeck is running on — your DJ software, a playlist, whatever — and you want the visuals to follow that, without pushing the sound out of a speaker just to feed it back in through the mic.
The trick is a virtual bridge: a small piece of software that takes your computer's output and presents it as an audio input. Once installed, it shows up in the Audio picker like any other device, and LumaDeck hears it just like an interface. Every system has its own:
Many machines already ship with it: right-click the sound icon → Sound settings → More sound settings → Recording tab, and enable Stereo Mix. If it isn't there, a free bridge like VB-Cable, or Voicemeeter if you want to route several sources, does the same job. Then, in LumaDeck: Audio → pick Stereo Mix (or the cable).
macOS won't let you capture internal sound out of the box, so you use a bridge. BlackHole is free and the standard: install it, then create a multi-output device so you keep hearing through your speakers and send the signal to BlackHole at the same time. In LumaDeck: Audio → BlackHole. Loopback does the same with more control if you prefer.
Here you get it for free. Every audio output exposes a Monitor that is, literally, whatever is playing. Open pavucontrol (or qpwgraph to patch by hand), and on the recording tab assign LumaDeck the Monitor of your output. In LumaDeck: Audio → the monitor. No paid software at all.
The moment the signal comes in, you'll see it: the audio meter and the spectrum start dancing with the music, and the visuals react to the energy and the hit of each track. If that's moving with your set, LumaDeck is hearing you. If not, check the device selected under Audio and confirm that it is receiving signal in the system mixer.
Mic and Line react to the signal they receive. SYNC follows the BPM you set without listening to the room. Choose the path that matches the setup, and prefer Line when you control the booth feed.
Open LumaDeck, connect your audio and build your first visual. No sign-up needed.
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