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Stardust

Pit Mixer

📋 Planned · v0.10.0

Silent pit, IEMs everywhere, the MD gets whatever mix FOH bothers to send back. That’s the gap. Pit Mixer turns Pit into the MD’s own monitor console.

The use case

Modern MT pits are silent. The musicians wear IEMs. Sound design is at front-of-house. The MD typically receives a single stereo mix from FOH, which is fine for the band’s overall blend but useless for an MD who needs to hear specific musicians at specific levels for cueing — the drummer’s hi-hat for click sync, the violins’ lead lines for tempo cuing, the conductor’s talkback dialed in clear over everything else.

MainStage doesn’t address this — its audio I/O assumes single stereo in/out. Most MDs solve it with a tiny analog mixer + DIs, which adds cables, latency, and a single point of failure.

Pit Mixer makes “I run my own monitor mix” a first-class app feature. The MD’s laptop becomes the IEM mix engine.

Where it lives

A dedicated screen in Program mode, under Setup (mixer config is rig-level config, not per-show authoring). Lives in its own surface in the sidebar rather than nested inside another screen.

Per-channel controls

Each input channel gets:

  • Meter — peak + RMS, color-coded green/yellow/red
  • Gain — input trim in dB
  • Pan — for stereo IEMs
  • Mute / Solo
  • HPF / LPF — basic filters with adjustable corner frequencies
  • Send level — to the MD’s IEM bus
  • Channel label — “Drums OH L”, “Bass DI”, “Violin 1”, “Conductor talkback”, etc.
  • Stem assignment — for grouping (drums / strings / brass / etc.) — drives per-bus widgets

Routing model

USB inputs ──→ Pit Mixer channels ──→ MD's IEM bus
                                  ↘ (optional) main mix bus
                                  ↘ (optional) Pit recording bus

Channels route to one or more output buses. Default routing: every channel goes to the MD’s IEM bus; main mix and recording are opt-in per channel.

State is persisted per show — different productions have different orchestrations and different bands, so per-show settings beat user-global preferences.

Hardware compatibility (v1.0)

USB Class-Compliant multitrack is the v1.0 hardware scope.

✅ Supported in v1.0

ClassExamples
Digital consoles with USB multitrack outBehringer X32 (32ch), Allen & Heath SQ (32ch), Yamaha QL/CL/RIVAGE, Midas M32, PreSonus StudioLive, Soundcraft Ui
Multi-input USB interfacesFocusrite Scarlett 18i20, MOTU 8M / 16A, RME Babyface Pro / Fireface UCX II, Universal Audio Apollo
USB audio aggregatorsmacOS Aggregate Devices, Linux PipeWire combined devices

Anything cpal can open as a multi-channel input device works.

⚠️ v2.0+ only

ClassWhy deferred
Dante / AVBRequires Audinate licensing + drivers. Significant engineering investment + ongoing fees
MADI / AES50Requires specialty interface hardware that’s expensive + niche
Wireless IEM protocol integrationConnecting to existing wireless IEM packs — vendor-specific protocols

This isn’t a permanent no — these protocols cover the high end of the market. They’re deferred because USB multitrack covers ~95% of MD setups and we want to ship the working core before tackling the harder stack.

Not in scope ever

Full FOH-shaped mixing. Stardust is not trying to be a FOH console. The Pit Mixer is specifically for the MD’s local monitor mix — not for mixing the show for the audience.

Touch / fader hardware

A v1.0 stretch and a confirmed v1.x deliverable: bind hardware fader controllers (Behringer X-Touch, Mackie Control, Korg nanoKONTROL) to mixer channels via the existing MIDI Learn flow. Faders, knobs, mute/solo buttons all map to specific channels.

Performance Lock interaction

When Performance Lock is on, the Pit Mixer is still adjustable — you need to tweak levels mid-show. What’s blocked:

  • Adding / removing channels
  • Changing bus assignments
  • Changing routing matrix

What stays adjustable:

  • Gain / pan / mute / solo / send-level on existing channels

The MD can dial in levels during the overture without unlocking the show.

Per-channel widgets

Each Pit Mixer channel is available as a widget in the Perform layout:

  • Mini channel strip — meter + gain + mute / solo
  • Meter only — for ensemble-level overview
  • Send to IEM slider — one-knob “more of this in my ear”

The MD can build a Perform layout that’s nothing but Pit Mixer widgets — Pit becomes a digital monitor console with the patches running alongside.

What it doesn’t do

  • No FOH console replacement — by design
  • No outboard EQ / compression beyond basic HPF/LPF in v1.0 — channel strip stays light. Plugins on input channels are post-v1.x.
  • No talkback routing in v1.0 — the MD can label a channel “Talkback,” but Pit doesn’t generate talkback itself
  • No automatic ducking — no auto-attenuate-strings-when-vocals-loud in v1.0