MA Lighting Launches dot2 Series of Consoles

Having seen the demo, the target market is colleges, big churches, and the rare crazy budgeted high school. It does up to 8 universes. It's not for a theater like mine with 4 revolutions and a few LED's. It's for a theater who doesn’t have quite enough gear to need a full size Ma and also doesn’t have a professional programmer running the console. It's not for Broadway. It's for the mid range market. It would be excellent in a college because it has all the power of a full MA, but is structured to be much easier to learn. Anyone with programming experience (but no Ma experience) could quickly learn to program a show without anything but the console guiding them through. It would be great in a large, but not mega, church. If I had 10 movers and a couple dozen LED's and not a lot of time to program, I would be seriously interested in it.

gafftaper said:

Having seen the demo, the target market is colleges, big churches, and the rare crazy budgeted high school. It does up to 8 universes. It's not for a theater like mine with 4 revolutions and a few LED's. It's for a theater who doesn’t have quite enough gear to need a full size Ma and also doesn’t have a professional programmer running the console. It's not for Broadway. It's for the mid range market. It would be excellent in a college because it has all the power of a full MA, but is structured to be much easier to learn. Anyone with programming experience (but no Ma experience) could quickly learn to program a show without anything but the console guiding them through. It would be great in a large, but not mega, church. If I had 10 movers and a couple dozen LED's and not a lot of time to program, I would be seriously interested in it.

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I think this is on the money. Trying to train church volunteers, coming from express/expression, to program on MA2 is very frustrating. There is not enough time to learn the basics when you don't have dedicated staff. This is going to be a better solution than a command wing in that situation. Same thing for colleges, where you have multiple students working on different productions and projects. They need to learn a lot of different things in limited time, a easy to use interface will be important. Learning to program a desk should not overshadow learning everything else.

I've been told its a great choice if you are running up to about 30 moving lights, some leds, dimmers, etc., after that the MA2(even a command wing) is a better choice.

@MikeJ I Don't think it's necessarily the jump from Express to Ma2. A rig with 15-20 movers can be run with a modern more conventional fixture focused board, but it gets harder when you start dealing with that many fixtures. Yet there's not really a need for a Ma2. Having a budget for 15-20 movers means you probably have one lighting expert on staff, but it also suggests that you may rely on students and volunteers. Dot2 makes sense right there in that midrange market.

ETC and Strand have both made a run at the MA/HogI market in the last 10 years or so. Now MA is firing back at some of their mid range consoles. It'll be interesting to see if the market accepts it or gets snobby about it not being as good as a full MA. As I often rant about, don't bash it because it doesn't do what you need. Always use the right tool for the right job folks! There is a slice of the market that this product makes sense for. The hard part is going to be convincing those people to leave their current favorite programing language and brand loyalty behind.

I think a lot of this boils down to the fact that MA2 is not an easy console to just step up to and run. It's true. It's basically a build-a-console. It will do whatever you want it to do, but if you don't know how to ask, you can't even get started. This even applies to screen vews - you have to put down all of your screen views manually. There are no prebuilt screens that pop up with these presets and those presets and a smart menu and some MAtricks. It's very necessary that you have a semi-working knowledge of the board before stepping up to it if you want to program a show.

The .2 appears to be the exact opposite. I'm not going to say for sure until I mess around with the .2 onPC software, but this seems like a great console for a lot of situations. I think limiting it to 30-40 movers is a bit under for this desk, especially given the 4096 output capability. I'd like to see the fanning and grouping tools, but if they're at least somewhat there, this could easily control more, and nicely. Definitely more static LEDs. I think this is going to be a board that will make it in to rental houses, and it'll be one that they can send out knowing that they don't have to give someone a class beforehand in order to send it out. The actual "street cost" on the Core will probably be around the 12k mark, and the XL will probably be in the 15-16k range "street price". I can't remember the time I paid MSRP/"List Price" for anything other than parts. In that price range, you're very close to a fully tricked-out ION - fader wing, touch monitors, pushed up parameter count.

And this console is designed to be able to busk movers very easily, with a set of (albeit limited compared to full on MA2) button functions like toggle and also faderless playbacks. The Programmer nature of this desk is also great for busking, because I can't remember a time when I was programming a busking show where the fact that I was using a programmer-based desk didn't make programming much, much faster. But at the same time, the default master cuelist and the "Store Look" functionality that the console has will mean that colleges and well-funded high schools will be able to use it as a theater desk. I'm seeing more and more high schools put in lots of LEDs and a few moving lights when they upgrade, and they aren't given a console that will tell them how to control them. This console actually tells you what to do. That is slick. It's also MA hardware, which means it's top-of-the-line components and will stand up to the abuse that kids will dish out.

The 3D functionality is also huge. This is fantastic for schools and colleges. This means that you can sit kids down in front of a nice, big rig of movers and let them have at it without owning that nice, big rig of movers or paying for a nice, expensive visualizer that wouldn't get approved anyway. It comes with the desk.

@soundlight From the demo videos I watched, it looks like, Align tools(fan) and MAtricks are there and easily accessible by default, where in MA2 usually its most convenient to create macros for different grouping selections alignments, and such. This is a place where advanced users thrive, with the unlimited configurations of MA2, but really throw average users for a loop. A lot of users would rather just have the most commonly used features readily available by default. Hopefully this will be the strong suit of the dot2. I'm sure running a large show on this desk will work fine, but it will probably feel more cramped, just as working on any smaller surface, so that is not unique to any particular desk. Any old external monitor goes a long way in making the works pace feel more useful;I almost always keep my fixture sheet on one screen.

I do like the Button wing, It would be nice to have one to use with the Command wing.

MikeJ said:

Genuine question here, what is a Non-programmer based desk? And what is the big difference(s) compared to a MA, HOG, or Vista for example?

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So I'm guessing a non-programer desk, you don't build presets, groups/selections, etc, before creating cues? Or like some of the Frog desks, where you can make color presets, but updating a preset or effects, does not update the subsequently recorded cues?

I'm pretty sure I've got the right answer here, someone correct me if I'm wrong on any of this. On a non-programmer based desk, there is not a difference between programmer and executor values. For instance, in an ION, when you record a cue, it records everything that's outputting from the console. If I have some cues up in the form of submasters, it records those. If I have a cue up in the main cuelist, and I'm recording to another list, it records that. You get the idea. On a programmer-based desk, such as MA, Hog, Martin M-Series, &c, the Programmer is what gets recorded, and any active cues are not recorded.

That make sense as well. Actually, on MA you can choose what values get recorded in your store options. Either Programmer, DMX output, or DMX input, then you have a further sub-filter to choose, active values, selected fixtures, etc. There are a lot of complicated store options in general, probably 40 different combination of store options, across presets, sequences, and cues. I would be surprised there a was not a much more simple approach to this in the dot2. Most people adopt one method for the majority of programming, and only change store options for specific tasks. I've met people who have used MA for years and still don't know how some of these features work, because they have never had the need for them(or did not know they needed them, until now!).

I would assume vasts number of sequence options will be streamlined, and the available functions of buttons will also be reduced. Some consoles on the market allow a button to have 3-4 functions, Go, pause, flash, etc. MA2 has 36 button functions that can be assigned, and 12 fader functions. Not to mention that 5 faders and 15 buttons can all be assigned run the same cue stack all with different functions. This can seem daunting to new users, and I suspect that most of these functions generally go unused the majority of the time. For the high end seasoned programmer, these are a killer feature that sets MA2 above the rest, but for some users it's, just over complicating the workflow, and overwhelming more casual users.

I suspect the core workflow of the desk, will remain similar, but with many less options, and less clutter, and unlike MA2 when starting a new show, you will probably start with something besides blank screens.

MikeJ said:

I suspect the core workflow of the desk, will remain similar, but with many less options, and less clutter, and unlike MA2 when starting a new show, you will probably start with something besides blank screens.

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Thats the thing isn't it? If that is the case then it acts as a good introduction the th MA workflow, which in a lot of instances will be good for users in the long run. Of course some may never graduate up to the big desks, but even so it looks like a desk that is very smart but also not intimidating, which will translate into good sales. Its a gamble for them but I think will pay off. Probably do very well in the US especially. Over here in England we just do not have the big church market thing going on, and this will fit there nicely. Heck, its not much more than a Zero88 Orb.

I'll have hands on it this Wednesday morning and I'll get back with my thoughts then. Any particular questions anyone want answered about the desk from hands on?

Here's the demo video we shot of the dot2 at USITT.

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Thank @dvsDave ! That basically confirms most of what I imagined the desk to be. And further more, the fact that he demonstrated creating cues using command line and hard keys, when you could just as easily do it with less key strokes by directly storing to a executor, tells me that they are defiantly shooting for the ETC market.

soundlight said:

I'll have hands on it this Wednesday morning and I'll get back with my thoughts then. Any particular questions anyone want answered about the desk from hands on?

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One question that has come up is what is the timeline for a remote app, and in another forum, someone requested an app with more functionality, something like the one for the Cognito.

In a recent update of MA2, Store filter "look" was added. This allows users to set looks by playing back stored executors, plus active values from the programmer, to create new cues.
Essentially, this allows you to put each system or color on a handle, and lets use use them like "submaster" work on an Express, While at the same time you can also make programmer changes.

I would imagine this will also be available in the dot2. This should really speed things up when using a lot of conventionals, along with a handful of moving lights. Hopefully someone can confirm the "store Look" function on the new desk.

So just for clarification, does this work sort of like storing all, or if I store a look which is comprised of like my mover list in the blue cue, LEDs in Red cue, Position at 2, would storing and then playing back the look trigger all of those cues? Kind of like an embeded link?

It stores all attributes of any fixture/channel with a dimmer values above zero, being played back from a sequence. Plus it stores active values from the programer.

So it is like a "store all for selected" with dimmer above zero, being the selection. Plus store active only for things that are only brought up in the programed.

This should give the ease of programming conventionals and leds like you would "all values", but not break all of your MIB capability.

I still need to try it, but this is a huge selling point especially fire those will a lot of conventionals, it should really speed up programming.

Hey MikeJ,
Yep, StoreLook is about capturing the current look on the stage to your Cue without worrying about what's creating that look.
This means I can create the look on stage by adjusting lights in my programmer, playing back some cues, and adjusting levels with my faders. Using StoreLook will store all values for a fixture if the dimmer is above 0%, and only store a dimmer value of 0 for any fixtures at 0%. We don't store all values for Fixtures at 0% because we want to allow for tracking data to go in to the Cue where your lights might be fading out to 0.

Thanks for the clarification!

p.s. StoreLook is in the dot2 and accessed by holding the [MA] key followed by tapping the [Store] key. Simply tapping the [Store] key is a normal store where it only stores what you've touched in your programmer (aka Store Active Values).

Will Murphy said:

Hey MikeJ,
Yep, StoreLook is about capturing the current look on the stage to your Cue without worrying about what's creating that look.
This means I can create the look on stage by adjusting lights in my programmer, playing back some cues, and adjusting levels with my faders. Using StoreLook will store all values for a fixture if the dimmer is above 0%, and only store a dimmer value of 0 for any fixtures at 0%. We don't store all values for Fixtures at 0% because we want to allow for tracking data to go in to the Cue where your lights might be fading out to 0.

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Can you confirm that this feature is available in the .2 series of consoles?