OSC and MIDI Networking
Control protocols are how devices send each other commands — a playback system triggering the lighting, a tablet running the console, a show controller cueing everything at once. OSC, short for Open Sound Control, is the modern option. It rides on UDP over the network, uses readable, namespaced address patterns like /cue/12/go, and carries flexible data, all of which makes it easy to route between different pieces of software and across platforms.
MIDI is the older standard, and despite its age it is still everywhere. Classic MIDI is a slow serial link running at 31.25 kilobaud, but carrying MIDI over a network or USB removes its old cabling limits, and MIDI Show Control along with ordinary notes and control-change messages remains a dependable common language for triggering and automation between gear that has spoken it for decades.
What matters most about both is that control paths are show-critical even though they carry no audio or video at all. A dropped OSC packet or a stalled MIDI link means a cue does not fire — and to the audience watching, a control failure looks exactly like a dead speaker or a black screen. The signal is invisible, but its failure is not.
Control failure is show failure.