Planning DMX addresses
Every fixture listens to a DMX address. Plan your addresses at home and you'll save yourself a search for faults at the venue. Patch and addresses are the foundation that loops, looks and scripts are built on.
The principle
A universe has 512 channels. The address on the fixture is its first channel. How many channels it takes up after that depends on the mode you set on the fixture. A mode with many channels can do more, such as single pixels, but it also uses up more of the universe.
Example: a moving head with 14 channels on address 1 takes channels 1 to 14. The next fixture starts at 15 at the earliest.
Write a list
Before you patch, write down every fixture with its mode, channel count, address and universe:
- Moving head left, 14 channels: 1 to 14
- Moving head right, 14 channels: 15 to 28
- Uplight group 1, 8 channels: 29 to 36
- Uplight group 2, 8 channels: 37 to 44
These are example values. You'll find the channel count in the fixture's menu or manual. Sort fixtures from left to right where you can, which never hurts and helps during setup. Only fixtures you really own belong in the patch.
Same address: mistake or trick?
Overlap is the most common mistake. If part of one fixture's channels falls inside another fixture's range, both misbehave. SoundSwitch calls this crosspatching and shows it with a yellow DMX icon.
The same address on purpose is a trick. Identical fixtures in the same mode on the same address show the same light. That's how you spread many uplights across a few groups. Your room decides how many lamps go in each group. For a pair of moving heads, set Pan Reverse in the menu of the second fixture so they mirror each other.
Mode and profile must match
The mode on the fixture, the entry in SoundSwitch and the fixture profile must all agree. Otherwise values land on the wrong channels, and a head might change color when it should move. See Wrong DMX mode detected.
Step by step
- Click a fixture in the visualizer and compare “DMX” and “Mode” with the real fixture, see Fixture details and DMX monitor.
- Open “More” → “DMX monitor”. Hover over a channel to see at the top which fixture uses it.
- To show several lamps on one address, use “⧉ Duplicate”, see Duplicating fixtures.
- For uplights, the packing list names the addresses per group, and the floor plan marks copies with “same address as no. …”. Print it for setup.
- Look under “What's missing” for notes such as “… fixtures get no signal”.
Questions
Droplit controls up to two universes, see Parked fixtures and universe 2.
The visualizer warns you about more than 32 fixtures on one line. Plan a splitter in that case.
No. You change addresses in the SoundSwitch patch and on the fixture itself.
If something goes wrong
- A fixture stays dark: check the address and channel mode on the fixture. Both must match SoundSwitch.
- Two fixtures react to each other: compare their channel ranges. They probably overlap.
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