Features

Every layer of the console, explained.

What sets LMX apart

Programming

Command line and graphical console programming

Type it or click it. Both drive the same console.

There's a full graphical console here - patch tables, a programmer, cue and fixture inspectors, an effect editor and fader banks - and a proper command line next to it. The syntax is console-style, with autocomplete, usage hints and did-you-mean suggestions on every command. Type something and the GUI follows; click something and the command line shows what you did.

The first tab in the programmer is Quick Access, which shows a tile for every palette, preset, SFX and target that applies to whatever you've got selected. Click a tile to apply it, click again to take it off, or right-click to put it on a fader and bring it in at a percentage.

Select by range or by group (FIXTURE 1 THRU 8, GROUP 2 + 3) and fan values across the selection. Wings and blocks let a bar fan symmetrically from its centre, or a twelve-lamp bar move in six steps. BLIND lets you build the next look without changing anything on stage, and HIGHLIGHT and SOLO help you check you've got the right fixture.

The command line in the manual
The programmer
GROUP 1 + 3INTENSITY 75 ; RED 100 ; GREEN 30PALETTE 4 AMOUNT 50STORE CUE 12.5 "Bridge" FADE 3.0cue 12.5 inserted between 12 and 13

Patch & fixtures

DMX patching, GDTF fixture import and a fixture editor

Patching a rig shouldn't take all afternoon.

There are 400+ fixture profiles bundled in, and you can import GDTF files from the manufacturer or download them from GDTF Share without leaving the app. The patch wizard, clone with auto-addressing (CLONE 1 4 AT NEXT), bulk renumbering and readdressing, and fixture exchange handle the tedious bits. PATCH REPORT prints the whole address table with overlap warnings, so you find a clash at the desk instead of up a ladder.

If there's something unusual on the plot, the built-in fixture editor covers custom gear, multicell and pixel fixtures, multi-head units, wheel slots and mode variants, and it validates the profile so a broken one can't make it into your show. The 2D layout editor lets you lay the rig out on a plan too, with snap-to-grid, selection boxes and venue objects.

Patching and fixtures in the manual
Patching
ADD FIXTURE 1 TYPE "Rogue R1X Spot" AT 1/1CLONE 1 2 AT NEXTPATCH REPORTuniv 1: 1-14 R1X Spot · 15-28 R1X Spotno address overlaps

Cues & tracking

Tracking cue lists with cue parts, follows and blocks

Cue stacks that behave the way a hardware desk's do.

Cues store what changed, and values track forward until a later cue restates them, so an edit to cue 1 carries through the rest of the ballad. Put a BLOCK on a cue wherever you want tracking to stop. Decimal numbering (STORE CUE 12.5) slots a cue in between two others without touching anything after it, and when you do want to renumber, cues, palettes, presets, SFX and master frequencies can all be renumbered without breaking any cross-references.

Cue parts split a cue into sections, each with its own fade, delay and release times, and UPDATE CUE can merge or replace per part, labels and timing included. Follow, delay and jump cues let the stack run itself, whether that's a half-second follow in a scene change or a loop that keeps the foyer lit all evening. Premove moves dark fixtures into position ahead of their cue, with a configurable lookahead and fade, and you can turn it off per part when you want the move to be seen.

Cues and tracking in the manual
Tracking
STORE CUE 1 "Wash up" FADE 2STORE CUE 2 "Add spots"UPDATE CUE 1change tracks through cue 2 automaticallySTORE CUE 10 "Clean slate" BLOCKcue 10 restates - tracking stops here

Playback & executors

Playback: cue list GO, faders, executors and pages

Run a theatre stack, busk a club set, or do both.

Run tracked cue lists with GO, STOP and GO PREV, or load cues, cue lists, presets, palettes, single capabilities and effects onto faders and mix the show by hand. Each fader has a merge mode (blend, HTP or intensity), a flash button and an optional OVERRIDE flag that sits above even the programmer, which is handy for keeping working lights up while you program.

Faders are arranged in pages, and each page is a separate set of playbacks, so you're not rationing one bank between two acts. A fader left up on one page keeps running while you work on another. Grand and group masters, emergency lighting and blackout sit on top, and the layer order is fixed: premove < cues < faders < programmer < override faders < global masters. If you're ever unsure which layer is winning, SHOW LAYERS tells you.

Playback, faders and pages in the manual
Executors
LOAD 1 1 AT FADER 1LOAD SFX 2 SELECTED AT FADER 4 MODE htpFADER 4 65FLASH 1 ONLIST FADERSf1 cue-list 1 @ FL · f4 SFX 2 @ 65% htp

Effects engine

Lighting effects engine with waveforms, chases and BPM sync

Edit an effect while it's running, and keep it on the beat.

Build waveform effects - sine, sawtooth, square, pulse, random and others - on any attribute, from pan and tilt to intensity, colour, zoom, iris and gobo. Or build step chases with colours, gobos and a different intensity per step. Spread, wings, blocks and phase control how the effect moves across the rig.

Effect templates aren't tied to a fixture type, so you can apply one in the programmer, record it into cues and presets, or put it on a fader. Edit the template and every running copy changes with it, live, without restarting or losing phase, so you can tune an effect while it's on stage in front of you. Link effects to a shared master frequency and one command changes the tempo for all of them, which is useful when the band plays it faster than they did in rehearsal: UPDATE FREQUENCY 1 BPM 128.

Effects (SFX) in the manual
Effects
ADD SFX 1 pan SIZE 60 WAVEFORM SINE SPREAD 1 WINGS 2APPLY SFX 1 AMOUNT 70 FREQUENCY 1UPDATE SFX 1 SIZE 90running instances updated · phase continuousUPDATE FREQUENCY 1 BPM 140every linked effect re-locked to 140 BPM

Palettes & presets

Colour palettes and multi-attribute presets

Store a look once and reuse it across the show.

Palettes are scoped by type (intensity, colour, gobo and beam) and apply to whatever you've selected. RGB and CMY are converted automatically, so one “Deep Red” looks the same across a rig of mixed fixtures. Presets capture a complete multi-attribute look per fixture or group. Recall one in full, apply it to the current selection, or blend it in at any amount, and layer several together if you like.

Both are live references. Cues and presets that point at a palette follow any edit you make to it, so if the director wants the whole second act warmer, you update one palette and you're done. Nothing to re-store, and no hunting through forty cues.

Palettes and presets in the manual
Palettes
STORE PALETTE 1 TYPE colour RED 100 NAME "Red"PALETTE 1 AMOUNT 50STORE PRESET 11 "Lead Vocal Spot"UPDATE PALETTE 1 TYPE colour RED 90 BLUE 10every cue referencing palette 1 updated

Visualiser & XYZ

3D lighting visualiser and XYZ position targets

Program the show before you've set foot in the venue.

The built-in 3D visualiser is hardware-accelerated and renders beams, colour, gobos, haze, shadows and reflections over GDTF-accurate fixture models, with procedural people and truss for scale. You can build a cue stack at the kitchen table and walk into the venue with the show already roughed in. It keeps up while you work, too: the pass that used to make the desk sluggish with the 3D window open now takes under 2 ms on a 496-fixture rig. If you'd rather have it on a second screen, it can run on its own machine fed over Art-Net.

The visualiser can also preview a blind edit. Either merge it into the live scene so you see it in context, or view it on its own with everything you're not holding darkened, while Art-Net, sACN and USB carry on sending the real look to the rig.

Calibrate a mover against four known points on the stage and LMX works out where it's really hung and which way it's pointing. From then on you aim at named places like “Vocal spot” or “Drum kit” instead of raw pan and tilt values, and a cue can hold a live reference to a target, so if the target moves or the fixture is re-rigged, every cue re-solves itself. The Target window lets you edit positions while the show is running, which is how you can drive a follow spot from the desk.

The 3D visualiser in the manual
XYZ workflow
TARGET CREATE 12 NAME "Centre stage" POS 0 5 0CALIBRATEAIM FIXTURE 1 AT TARGET "Centre stage"TARGET CAPTURE "Centre stage" SELECTEDSTORE CUE 20 "Centre special"cue 20 re-solves if the target moves

Output & show control

Art-Net, sACN and USB-DMX output, plus MIDI control

Gets DMX out over Art-Net, sACN or USB, and takes MIDI in.

Art-Net and sACN (E1.31) run at a steady 44 fps, with priority and routing set per universe. FT232R USB-DMX runs at the fastest rate the wire can sustain, with a configurable guard time after each frame, which is what fixed the flicker on fixtures at high addresses. If you ask for a rate your adapter can't manage, LMX says so instead of sending short universes to the rig. Each protocol reports its own health: live send rate, error counts, and an immediate warning if a USB interface drops out.

MIDI mapping covers faders, encoders, GO and flash buttons, and note messages as well, so grid and pad controllers map fully. Velocity-sensitive pads can drive a fader or an attribute, and feedback lights a pad while its flash button is held. If you don't know the CC number, Detect mode waits for you to move the control and fills the mapping in for you.

You can also map any command to a keyboard key, and script the repetitive parts with macros, which support loops and conditionals.

Output and protocols in the manual
Output health
CONFIG ARTNET BROADCAST 10.0.0.255CONFIG SACN PRIORITY 120SHOW OUTPUTartnet  44.0 fps · 0 errorssacn    44.0 fps · 0 errorsusb-dmx 44.0 fps · FT232R connected

Phone remote

Remote control from your phone, tablet or laptop

Take the desk into the room with you.

LMX serves a web page to anything on the same network with a browser, so you can take the show with you: out into the auditorium to see what the audience sees, onto the stage to set a mark, or into the wings on a tech day. There's no app to install and nothing to pair. Turn it on in Configuration, scan the QR code the desk shows on screen, and your phone is connected.

It has three tabs. Playback shows the whole cue list, so you can tap a cue to take a rehearsal from that point, with GO, STOP, the grand master, and a blackout button you hold for a second instead of tapping, so a stray touch in the dark can't put the show out. Faders shows the page the desk is on, one strip per fader, with page chips and a FLASH that's held rather than latched. Targets lets you do a focus session from the floor: pick a target, capture fixtures to it, highlight them to see which lantern you've got, then drag the target across a plan of your stage with the beams following, and either keep the move or drop it.

Everything on it comes straight from the desk. Green is the live cue and amber is the one GO will fire next, the faders are the console's own faders, and the plan is the Target Editor's, rotated the way you set it at the desk. Pinch to zoom in on a crowded bar. The remote can run and focus the show but it can't store anything, so it can never record over your work, and a target you moved and then walked away from goes back to where the show holds it.

The phone remote in the manual
The remote
CONFIG REMOTE ON[LMX Remote] http://192.168.1.24:8765or scan the QR code in Configuration > RemoteTARGET MOVE 3 POS 7 5.5 1.6target 3 moving live - SAVE to keep itTARGET SAVE 3

Diagnostics & reliability

Diagnostics: trace any DMX value back to its source

When something looks wrong, find out why in seconds.

WHY FIXTURE (or INSPECT FIXTURE) traces any attribute back to whatever is driving it: which cue, which fader, which effect or which programmer value, through every layer and down to the DMX bytes on the wire. SHOW LAYERS lists everything contributing to the output right now. So instead of “that light is wrong”, you get “that light is wrong because fader 6 still has last night’s effect on it”.

When you need everything to stop, PANIC halts cue lists, releases faders, kills effects and clears the programmer, and it does the same thing every time. Undo, emergency blackout, autosave, backup-on-overwrite and showfile recovery cover the rest. Save scopes let you export just the patch, just the objects, or everything except the cues, so a rig you built once can be the starting point for the next show. Licences work offline too, so a venue with no usable internet isn't a problem.

Underneath, the engine is regression-tested with a deterministic simulation harness and benchmarked to 1,000 fixtures. It's not glamorous work, but it's what lets you stop thinking about the desk and watch the stage.

Troubleshooting output in the manual
WHY
WHY FIXTURE 3intensity 80% ← cue list 1 / cue 4red 100% ← palette 2 via preset 11tilt +12° ← SFX 1 on fader 6 @ 65%dmx: u1/17 = 204, u1/19 = 255PANIC

From patch to show

Generate groups, palettes and presets from your patch

Patch the rig and LMX builds a starting show from it.

Most desks hand you a patch and an empty show and leave you to it. LMX reads the rig you've just patched and builds a starting point from it: groups, palettes, presets, targets, SFX and position looks, all at once or just the parts you ask for. On a 496-fixture rig that's 138 groups, 54 palettes, 10 targets, 11 effects and 36 position looks you didn't have to build during the get-in.

It works out where each light hangs, so you get a group per bar, per boom and per side run, plus groups by role, fixture type and odd/even split, each ordered along the bar. Fan across one and the move sweeps the room instead of jumping around in patch order. Position looks are stored as a centre plus a fan, the same as one you'd build by hand, so they stay editable instead of being baked into numbers.

Nothing happens without you seeing it first. A preview lists everything that would be built and says why anything was skipped, and any name you've already used is left alone. So when six extra movers turn up on the truck, you can patch them and generate again to fill in the gaps.

Generate from Rig in the manual
Generate from rig
GENERATE496 fixtures read from the patch138 groups · 54 palettes · 10 targets11 SFX · 36 position looksexisting names left untouchedor tick what you want in File > Generate from Rig

Try all of it. Free.

The only real way to judge a console is to program on it. The beta build is out, so join the beta programme, download it, patch your rig, and you can have a cue stack running the same night.

New features ship regularly. See what's changed in every version.