> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.luce.show/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Ambient mode: phones that follow how loud the room is

> Ambient mode listens to the room through the console's microphone and moves every phone up a ladder of colours as the crowd gets louder.

Ambient turns the room's sound into colour. The device running the console listens through its microphone, and the louder the room, the further up a ladder of colours every phone goes.

![Ambient mode with eight colour steps rising from quiet to loud, the raw input range and the hold time options](https://docs.luce.show/docs/images/modes/ambient-light.png)

## Set it up

**1. Choose the colours**

Add between 2 and 12 colours with **Edit Colors**. The quietest is on the left, the loudest on the right. Each step shows the level where it starts.

**2. Turn on the microphone**

Choose **Enable microphone** on the device that runs the console and allow microphone access. The level meter then shows which step the room is on.

**3. Fit the range to the room**

**Raw input** is the part of the microphone's scale the colours spread over. Narrow it so that a quiet room sits at the bottom and a cheering crowd reaches the top.

**4. Choose a hold time**

**Hold time** is how long a colour stays at least before the next one. **Continuous** follows the sound with no hold; the other options hold each colour for a beat at a given tempo.

The phones follow the microphone only while Ambient is [on air](https://docs.luce.show/modes/overview.md#put-a-mode-on-air).

> [!NOTE]
>
> If the browser blocks the microphone, allow it for luce.show in the browser's settings and try again. A device with no microphone the browser can use cannot run Ambient.


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