Stream Deck control for your dLive and every dylanmaudio app — with the state back on the keys.
A free module for Bitfocus Companion. Through MIDI Bridge it runs your dLive from a Stream Deck — mutes, faders with timed fades, Scenes and Actions — and the desk’s own state comes back on the keys: names, colours, levels, the current Scene. Talk Light Trigger, Pilot Tone Trigger and Time Code Tool each get their controls on keys too, lit by what the app is doing. One module, installed from inside Companion in a minute.
Bitfocus Companion is free, open-source software that turns a Stream Deck — or a web page on a phone or tablet — into a control surface for almost anything in a show: consoles, video switchers, playback, lighting. Each thing it controls comes from a module. This is mine: one module that controls the dLive through MIDI Bridge and every dylanmaudio app on the same Mac.
What makes it worth having is the feedback. A key doesn’t just send a mute; it shows the channel’s name and colour off the desk and goes red when it’s muted — whoever muted it. Pilot Tone Trigger’s key goes amber when it’s latched on the backup. Time Code Tool’s readout goes amber in freewheel. The keys tell you the truth.
Never used Companion? This is the whole setup, start to finish. About ten minutes the first time; a minute once Companion is installed.
Download it free from bitfocus.io/companion and install it on the same Mac as the dylanmaudio apps. You need version 5.0 or later. Launch it and click Launch GUI — Companion is set up in a browser window.
In Companion, open the Modules tab, search for dylanmaudio, and install the latest version. (No internet on the show machine? Ask me on Discord for the module package and use Import module package in the same tab.)
In each dylanmaudio app you want on keys, open its menu-bar popover and turn on Allow Companion control. For the dLive, have MIDI Bridge running and connected to the console first.
In the Connections tab, search dylanmaudio, click it, and pick the app under App. Give each connection a short label — dlive, tlt, ptt, tct — because the label becomes the variable prefix. Leave the port at 0 and the address at 127.0.0.1; the module knows each app’s standard port. The connection goes green when it’s talking to the app (for MIDI Bridge: when the bridge and the console are both up).
Open the Buttons tab, then Presets on the right. Each connection has ready-made keys — mute and level keys that label themselves from the desk, Scene keys, each app’s Run and status keys, styled keys in the app’s own look. Drag one onto a key and it works. No Stream Deck yet? Companion’s Emulator and web buttons work the same way.
Scene names only exist in the show file — the console can’t send them over MIDI. The MIDI Bridge connection’s settings have a link to its own upload page: choose the .tar.gz the console writes to USB, or a Director export, and the Scene names and named Actions arrive. Only those names are kept; the show itself isn’t stored.
On the console, MIDI must be on: Utility → Control → MIDI, mode On (not Secure), Global MIDI Send and Receive enabled — the same setup MIDI Bridge already needs. The module’s full help, with every action, feedback and variable, is one click away in Companion (the ? next to the connection) and on GitHub.
Through MIDI Bridge: mute, fader (set, nudge, or fade over a time you choose), send level, main / DCA / mute-group assign, preamp gain, pad and 48 V, PEQ and HPF, names and colours, Scene recall and Go / Next / Previous, and named console Actions. Mutes and Scene changes come back the moment the desk makes them; fader levels as soon as a move settles; names and colours on connect and whenever a strip is renamed.
The module never opens its own connection to the desk. It joins MIDI Bridge alongside your DAW and the other apps, and shows up by name in the bridge’s MIDI Monitor — so you can see exactly which key sent what. It can also start, stop and restart the bridge itself.
When someone talks, your Stream Deck jumps to a TALK page whose keys all blink, and goes back to where it was when they stop. EXIT dismisses a call with a cooldown so the next one doesn’t drag you straight back. It ships as a ready-made page to import.
Run, Auto / Latch, Reset and Flip A/B, the tone generator, and a status tile that goes red on a lost tone, amber when latched on the backup and violet when Signal Integrity sees damage.
Start / Stop, Read / Generate, input and outputs, the generator’s start time and rate, and a four-key HH MM SS FF readout — green while locked, amber in freewheel, dashes with no signal.
Every preset has a short label sized to fit, on its menu’s colour, with a red bar across the top when the control is show-critical. Green when on, blue for the chosen option, amber when it needs a look. Each app also gets styled keys in its own look: its logo, its menu-bar icon mirroring every state, a round Run key and a level meter.
Each app has a Lock show-critical controls switch: while it’s on, Companion can’t stop the app or change Pilot Tone’s failback mode. When an app says no, its reason goes to Companion’s log word for word. And if an app isn’t running, its keys stay put and say so when pressed.
The module is already built for Console Control, the show-automation app I’m working on; it gets its own keys and presets the day it launches.
Each app tells the module what controls it has. A feature added in an app update shows up as actions, feedbacks and presets without a new version of the module.
Anyone who wants the show-critical controls on physical keys rather than in a menu-bar popover: FOH and monitor engineers who want talkback, failover and a timecode readout within reach; playback techs who want the backup state lit up where they can see it; and anyone who already runs Companion for video or lighting and wants the console on the same deck.
No. Companion has a built-in emulator and serves its buttons as a web page you can open on a phone or tablet. A Stream Deck is nicer to press; it isn’t required.
No. Companion is free and open source, and so is this module (MIT). It controls the dylanmaudio apps, so the paid apps still need their own licence to do their job — MIDI Bridge is free.
Any current version: MIDI Bridge 1.1.9 or later, Talk Light Trigger 1.0.7 or later, Pilot Tone Trigger 1.0.5 or later, Time Code Tool 1.1.5 or later. If an app and the module ever disagree, the connection’s status says so — update whichever is older.
Yes, for the apps — the module reaches each one on this Mac. Companion itself also runs on Windows and Linux, and MIDI Bridge can be reached across the network with a token for more advanced setups; the module’s help explains how.
The existing Allen & Heath dLive module talks to the console directly, and it’s good at what it does. This one goes through MIDI Bridge instead, which is what gives it the state feedback — names, colours, levels and mutes back on the keys, whoever changed them — and lets it share one console connection with your DAW and the other apps. Several of its value tables were derived from that module’s work, and are credited in the source. Use whichever fits your rig.
Metering — meters travel on Allen & Heath’s own network protocol, not MIDI. Scene names need the show file, because the console doesn’t send them. SoftKeys can’t be pressed over MIDI; use a console Action instead. And sends, assigns, preamps and HPF show changes made from Companion, but not changes made on the surface — the module lists those in a variable so it’s never a surprise.
It’s built and tested on dLive. Users report MIDI Bridge works on Avantis, but I haven’t tested the module there myself — tell me how it goes.
No — the module is mine. Bitfocus reviewed it and publishes it in Companion’s module store. Companion is Bitfocus’s software, and Stream Deck is Elgato’s; neither is affiliated with dylanmaudio.
Install it from inside Companion, and drop into the Discord if you hit a snag.
Dylan