WLED's audio-reactive effects usually need a microphone on the controller or another device that listens to the room and sends the data over the network. Music Assistant can now be that sender. On 25 October 2026 the Music Assistant server merged a new WLED Audio Sync plugin that analyses the music it is playing and sends it to WLED using WLED's own Audio Sync protocol.

The plugin was written by Will Tatam (netmindz). According to OHF Daily it is his first contribution to the Music Assistant server. It is marked as experimental and is planned for Music Assistant 2.11.0.

How it works

The plugin is built the same way as the existing Philips Hue Entertainment plugin. It depends on the Sendspin provider and takes its visualiser data: loudness, dominant frequency, a frequency spectrum and beat detection. The plugin turns that into WLED's Audio Sync packets and sends them 40 times per second.

Each plugin instance is one sync zone, and a zone is defined only by a UDP port. There is no device IP address or discovery to set up. Packets go to the multicast group 239.0.0.1, where WLED always listens, so any number of WLED controllers can join a zone. You set the same port in each controller's audio sync settings.

Each zone appears in Music Assistant as a virtual player. To make the lights react, you group that player with a real speaker and play music on the group.

Settings

A new zone suggests the lowest free port, starting at 11988. The other settings are:

  • Light timing, 100 ms by default, makes the lights react slightly earlier so they stay in step with a speaker that has its own delay.
  • Sensitivity, 6 dB by default, sets how strongly effects react.
  • Light response chooses how quiet and loud parts are scaled: Balanced (square root, the default), Punchy (linear) or Smooth (logarithmic).

You can add several instances with different ports, for example one zone for the living room and one for the kitchen.

When you can try it

The change is merged into the development branch and carries the 2.11.0 milestone, so it should show up in beta and nightly builds first. The current stable release, 2.10.8, came out before the merge and does not include it.