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[Kevin McDonough]

I would definitely suggest having another look at Chamsys.

I was in the same position as you, as a Sound Engineer wanted something that would have a pre-programmed show and just play the cues along to midi notes sent from backing tracks. And the same as you I found that the simple software was too limited for what I wanted to do.

I'd looked at chamsys before and for a non-lighting guy it was a bit of a confusing and scary interface, however I wen't back again a bit more determined to work through it and actually realised that it is VERY easy and quick to get your head around, just looks scary at first.

I even ended up writing a very basic tutorial for other sound engineers to get their head around the interface.

http://forum.speakerplans.com/chamsys-for-dummys-sound-engineers_topic94203.html

k

[TJ (Tom) Cornish]

You hit my point exactly with the x32 Jeff however after reading your post the problem with the comparison is the roles are a bit different.  Certainly an affordable console might change things for the lighting market and drive it downward but the folks that can afford an LD are not price sensitive on the consoles.

I think it's hard to compare lights and sound as the workflows are so different.  On the audio side, knobs and faders as well as a lot of physical IO are required.  This is better served with a hardware solution.  On the lighting side, you need a few faders and a couple DMX outputs (or just Ethernet), but what you really need is a big touch screen and a few keys.  This is much closer to what PCs already are, so a wing makes a lot of financial sense.

Don't get me wrong - I'd like a GrandMA2, WholeHog, or Martin M6-sized surface for $3000, but the reality is I'm pretty darn functional with am M-Touch, a big 24" touch screen and a laptop or other PC of some kind; much more so than the various iPad-only mixers out there.

I agree it will be interesting to see what Chauvet does with Chamsys. 

[Erik Jerde]

I've got two audio guys who quickly picked up MA programming without much difficulty and now enjoy doing it and are pretty fast at it.  Probably took them less time to get adequately skilled in it than you have spent posting here about how no good solution exists.

[Stelios Mac]

I've got two audio guys who quickly picked up MA programming without much difficulty and now enjoy doing it and are pretty fast at it.  Probably took them less time to get adequately skilled in it than you have spent posting here about how no good solution exists.

I'm an audio guy.
I started with MA2 onPC when I first got interested in lighting like 3 or 4 years ago. I figured I'd just go for "the best that's out there" in the first place.
I couldn't even wrap my head around the concept of tracking at the time - My experience was pretty much limited to a Scene-setter 48.
Despite all that, I was able to figure out all of the basics following a 20 minute YouTube tutorial; I could've stopped there (I originally only intended to supplement my audio skills with some basic knowledge in lighting), but a console this powerful is kind of addictive!
You can literally build you own "console". It's what kept me interested in lighting.
Last month I had to use a Scene-setter again, I couldn't figure out how to get that bloody thing into record mode 

[Jeff Lelko]

Bummer, looks like this thread was a victim of the forum glitch that happened yesterday...  I was all ready to keep debating on what we might see as the X32 of the lighting world too!  I think I caught during the day that Sean got what he needed to start his next step in the process before the boards went down, but it's a shame that some good posts were lost... 

[Mike Karseboom]

If Luminair meets most of your needs you might try this approach for sort of a palette for XY movements.


Basically it involves creating a scenes that activate only selected parameters.  That is, only set the parameters for the xy positions or movement efx for selected fixtures and make sure all other parameters are de-selected.


Depending on your needs, this might one or more scenes that affect all movers or a combination of  these and other scenes that just affect selected movers.


You can then invoke these scenes manually or as part of a sequence and they will "layer" on the defined movement to whatever is already happening.


Then, for a new venue, you just have to tweak the XY settings in each of those scenes.  It is not quite as nice as just being able to set new maximum boundaries or have a recallable position/effect name, but it can work.


The key to this approach is:


first - a general commitment to using the "layering" (or "tracking") concept for the entire project.  That is, have some base scenes that set all parameters for all fixtures and then create layering scenes for color, position, etc. that only affect specific parameters and no others.


second - really planning ahead to minimize the number of different XY position/efx scenes you need.  Because you will need to tweak each one of those.  So you want to try and reuse them as much as possible.


There are lots of little tricks and workflow techniques that can result in pretty sophisticated shows from Luminair.  You can combine the "linked" fixtures feature, "press and hold to bump", custom sequence timings, etc. to do a lot of things.  But in mind they are mostly awkward workarounds that hare hard to figure out and easy to break. 


I like the Luminair a lot but have resigned myself to keeping things fairly simple.  For more complex shows I have been using Martin M-PC with a laptop, large touchscreen, and a couple of outboard iPads.  It is much easier do what you want with a program like this.  But as you have discovered, there is a long learning curve if you are coming from an audio only background.  I must have 100 hours into playing with M-PC and I am definitely still novice.

[Sean Mormelo]

Has anyone tried elation emulation pro software? I just found it and it seems to have all the requirements including palette presets.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Sean Mormelo]

double post tapatalk glitch

[Sean Mormelo]

Bummer, looks like this thread was a victim of the forum glitch that happened yesterday...  I was all ready to keep debating on what we might see as the X32 of the lighting world too!  I think I caught during the day that Sean got what he needed to start his next step in the process before the boards went down, but it's a shame that some good posts were lost...

Yes I thought I couldn't reply using my phone tapatalk because it wasn't showing up. I see my response here on the computer.

[ProSoundWeb Community]