Q Light Controller+

I do home karaoke shows and want to sync some simple light effects to the beat in the music... For example, a chase across 4 fixtures that simply moves faster or slower based on the music.

Sequencing effects to tracks ahead of time would allow for better effects, but since you never know what the playlist will be, live beat detection is really required. Also, the karaoke sound system will not easily be directly connected to a computer, so cheap microphone beat detection will be easiest if possible. I understand the compromises for live mic beat detection, but if QLC+ can somehow get beat data that is as good as what's built in to a sound-reactive fixture, it will be good enough for my purposes.

I'm super new to all this stuff so I would appreciate it if someone would check my head here. As far as I can tell, these are the options for getting beats into QLC+. (Oh by the way, I'll be using Windows but I guess some of these options are platform-agnostic, so I posted in the General forum.)

• Use QLC+ version 4 "audio triggers" -- looks like a simple volume threshold, right? (https://www.qlcplus.org/docs/html_en_EN ... ggers.html)

• Use QLC+ version 5 which has beat detection (but I don't yet know if beat detection is in the current version.)

• Generate a beat signal with some other software, and send it to QLC+ via OSC (for example https://github.com/scheb/sound-to-light-osc)

• Buy Lightjams and forget QLC+ for this purpose (last choice, of course)

If anyone has tackled this I would love to hear your thoughts.

On a FB group there was a report that with the latest version, on Windows, the audio widget did get right (sufficient) audio level in. So the standard QLC+ approach may be right?
Have to test it tough...

That is encouraging, thanks. I'll try that first.

If of any help I ran some tests with Mixxx / Sonic Pi / Hydra, Pure Data / QLC+, Aubio Beat Detection, DMX Lighting, OSC, Midi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvyG7D-vqbc
It can work with live music, as just have to capture microphone and feed into aubio. I'm using jack audio on Linux.