Q Light Controller+

Hi guys,

I notice that the audio triggers don't appear to be working as expected on the Mac. Even at full volume, the trigger meters only register a small audio level. I have uploaded some screenshots here to demonstrate...

This is the song playing in the audio software...

http://www.chrismoses.co.uk/qlc4.png

...and in QLC+...

http://www.chrismoses.co.uk/qlc3.png

I would expect the VU meters to be somewhere near the top? Perhaps a mathematical anomaly in the code somewhere that is dividing the volume level down to a very small amount?

Many thanks,
Chris

Ran into same problem. Mac won't internally play music files into the audio spectrum trigger program. You are seeing the internal mic, pick up the internal speakers. That's why it shows something, but very low.

Try plugging your headset output back into your mic input on the side of the computer. Turn up headphone volume and mic volumes as needed. It will now work correctly.

A slight correction to the above. There might be an electronic mismatch just plugging directly from headphone back into the mic input. I ran mine through an active headphone splitter. Others, on this site, might be better talking to that possible concern.

No this was listening to the audio directly, not via the microphone. I use a virtual sound distribution driver to re-direct audio from one program to another. I have my audio player playing its audio directly into QLC and the result is still very low... the issue is somewhere in the QLC source code.

Here's QLC+ 4.9.0 on OSX 10.10.3 with audio triggers from a microphone plugged into a C-Media USB card. Levels reach the top.

To everyone:
- please stop crying for bugs if you're not 100% sure they're bugs
- please stop writing posts without names. It's totally useless to read "I've got a device", "I run a software" or "I have a fixture". Write names of everything otherwise WE CAN'T HELP
- Mac OSX users: please learn how to use your Mac. Otherwise buy a PC. You spend less money and Windows is easier to use

- Mac OSX users: please learn how to use your Mac. Otherwise buy a PC. You spend less money and Windows is easier to use

Massimo, QLC+ is a fantastic piece of software with which you've done a fantastic job, but I've gotta give a hearty LOL to this comment. Windows easier to use... good one. And yes, you might spend less money, but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for--the Raspberry Pi comes to mind.

Now, back to the actual topic at hand. I will say that I've seen lower than expected audio levels using the built in audio on my Mac Mini as well. If you take a look at the attached screen shot, I think I can show you what the OP is talking about. You can see that the system control panel shows the audio level about 3/4 the way up where it's barely registering in QLC+. Again, it's not an issue for me, but I do think there might be some discrepancy at work beyond a misconfiguration of the OP's system. Just my $0.02.

OSX is a *nix based OS and as long as Mac users use the graphical interface, they might be able to do everything they need.
At the first problem, one should need to open a terminal and give manual commands to resolve the mess that Apple (or Adobe or whatever) serves in your plate.
And that's where the difficulties come up.
If one knows only how to click icons and resize windows, I believe he knows just 10% of his OS.
The real power of OSX is under the hood, thus my sentence (I know, I like to provoke... )

In this sense, Windows is easier because you can reach almost every parameter with the graphic interface. Even drivers details or the windows registry.
They don't really have the concept of terminal (in fact it is emulated in Windows), so they avoid users to seriously compromise the system.

Now, as for audio triggers:
1- the volume bar you highlighted is a fake and doesn't really work properly. Yesterday I played with it and setting it to 10% or 90% didn't change the levels at all (OSX is not perfect either...)
2- the Mac Mini doesn't have an amplified input
3- my screenshot shows that if the signal level is good, then QLC+ processes the whole range of data

I found a ridicolous forum post where they say you need some iPhone headphones to have microphone input (cause they have a multifunction jack)
See also here: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18961?locale=en_US
The other jack you can find on the Mini is a line-in non-amplified input, so you need a HiFi or a signal amplifier to have a decent input level.
Otherwise you use a USB microphone or a USB audio card, like I did.

To summarize: shame on Apple for having led their users to a point where they don't really know what's going on with their OS. Shame on users if they don't realize this and try to fill the gap.

Massimo,

First, please don't take offense to anything I post here. I know this is totally off topic and I'm only posting it for our mutual entertainment. That said, I think that your argument is correct in some sense but I'm not sure it's best made when talking about a "consumer" OS. By and large, I think that OS X is very good (and in fact, much, much better than Windows) in exposing only the things that need to be exposed to the user. While it is true that the real power is "under the hood", so to speak, I think it's fair to draw out the car analogy here and say that the vast majority of users want simply to be able to turn a key (or these days, push a button) and have their car drive as opposed to knowing how to tweaking every (or any) parameters of their car's engine in order to get the most optimal performance for their drive. For most people, computers are no different.

That said, there is definitely a point where slapping a GUI on some, but not all, of the parameters does break down pretty quickly and I think the best example of that is OS X server. Taking something like BIND and trying to make that something that looks friendly and easy is, I firmly believe, impossible. On my server, nine times out of 10 it takes me MORE time rather than less to figure out what it is that the GUI is doing to my zone files (many of which I built by hand) and how to prevent it from stomping on them if I make any little change in the GUI. To a lesser extent, that's also true with Apache. Every damn time I update OS X Server, I have to go in and replace a backup of my Apache config file and one site file in order to make this one Ruby on Rails app work again on one of my sites. There's no way to do it in the GUI and, worse yet, there's no indication that it's stopped working. THAT is definitely not friendly or easy. However, those annoyances aside, I much prefer to do my hosting on my Mac than I do on the virtualized Debian machine that runs Asterisk install because it's just easier.

Now back to the topic at hand: You're definitely correct about the Mini not having a whole lot of gain on the audio input, but I will say that this doesn't prevent audio analysis from working in other apps. Again, I don't really use this feature all that much, so it's no skin off of my back, but I can definitely get a good strong signal in Modul8 (which I know you're familiar with from our past discussions) using the same signal that appears really low in QLC+. In Modul8 (just for example) there is a gain control for the audio input. Is it possible that QT isn't exposing the option to adjust the gain of the input in the same way that other apps might? I really don't know, so feel free to tell me to shut up at any point now...

George, no offense at all. You know me a bit and you know I like to talk straight, so let's talk straight

I surely get your point about the car example, and to continue it I'd say: when you have a problem with your engine where do you go ? To a body repair shop or to a mechanic garage ?
That's exactly what happens here. A computer is a complicated tool and when there are OS related questions, users come here, where we just deal with an Arbre Magique
And moreover, most of the times, saying "my car doesn't start anymore".

Got my point ?

As for the Windows/OSX differences...I don't like them both. They surely have their pros and cons, but being into computer since I was 10 years old (a now a developer), I like to know what my computer is doing, so I choose Linux.
Microsoft and Apple created "ignorant" users (no offense to anyone) in the sense that as long as they're able to do what they need to do they're happy, otherwise, call the help desk, because they have no idea how to fix their computers.
They're used to wait 5 minutes for a PC to start. They're used to laugh when a blue screen appears. They're used to format their hard disk once a year because the OS is not usable anymore. They're also willing to buy a new computer because the new version of the OS is too slow.

This is ridicolous for me, because I know there is an alternative called Linux that doesn't lead you to all the above.
I saw computers with Windows XP returning from the realms of the dead when installing Linux.

I'll stop here, because these are pure point of views. If I had to use only Photoshop 8 hours a day I would probably use a Mac too

Now back to audio triggers. I understand there might be tricky cases like the Modul8 one you mentioned, so my position is always the same.
If I can be in the condition to do the test myself, I can see what's wrong, otherwise I take as reference what I've seen so far: Qt and QLC+ seems to work as expected on input audio data.

MAYBE there's some issue with different sample rates, channel numbers or data format.
QLC+ requests to Qt input data in this format: 44.1Khz, mono channel, 16bit samples. (typical of a microphone)
If just one of those don't match, then you would probably experience what seems like "low audio", but instead is wrong sampling of data.
Now, could you please check if from Modul8 you can tune those parameters and see if QLC+ works better ?

Thanks !