Design Best White Light on a budget.

Mr.Dave

Member
Hey all, I'm relatively new to the lighting world (sound guy by nature) and am the caretaker for a small higschool auditorium (less than 500 seats). Our lighting has not been touched in ....30 years...yeah. I've spent the past several years scouting things out,,which has brought me here (with great joy).

I have an electric with 14 circuits over stage (combo of RGB strips and fresnells) and two "bars" in the the ceiling with 3 circuits each. The bars have old ellipsoidals from each circuit. Control is at the breaker box...yeah.

I'm thinking LED pars and source 4 jrs. Most events need a general white wash. Do RGBWs come close to S4Jrs? I'm trying to do the most cost effective thing...perhaps not even using anything on those 'bars' in the celing if LED pars on the stage electric will be enough..?

P.S. I'm thinking MYDMX 2.0 for control.
 
I've found MyDMX to be extremely limiting. If you want to be able to do anything more than simply programming a single scene and playing it back, you'll wanna go with something else.

The problem is you can't stack cues on top of each other.

Say you have 2 scenes, one of them is white on the left half of the stage, and one of them is white on the right half.

For a special event you point a light in a specific spot. You want independent control of this light. So, to do this in MyDMX, you will have to copy each of those two scenes, and for each copy add the extra light. So your cues will look like this:

Left + Special On
Right + Special On
Left + Special Off
Right + Special Off

Very inflexible.
 
Welcome aboard, Mr. Dave. Glad you found us!

There are so many LED products on the market these days, it's sometimes difficult to determine what constitutes a 'good value'. Inexpensive products meet budgets, but the lifetime of the unit is certainly a major factor in buyer's remorse. I do believe the phrase 'you get what you pay for' is often true, though exceptions exist for the better as well as the worse.

At first blush I would visit a local lighting dealer and see how their inventory of LED units (RGB, RGBW, RGBAW) compare with the output and color quality of the S4 Jr.

I commend you for investigating first, asking questions and doing your homework in regards to your lighting situation. Kudos!
 
Do RGBWs come close to S4Jrs?

Here is the core of the issue. An RGBAW will give you a good color match, but the second part of this question is brute output. LEDs have come a long way but if you are primarily running in white, there will be a significant difference in output. The downfall of a conventional fixture comes when you add color as all color must be subtracted from the output. By comparison, an LED fixture works on additive color mixing of deep primaries along with amber and white. In a saturated color mode (think dark blue), the LED fixtures will trounce the S4Jr (if also gelled in deep blue to match.) Conversely, the S4Jr will trounce the LEDs if all are in white and located with similar throws.
 
If you're a MyDMX fan, might I suggest the Chamsys MagicQ PC with USB dongle. Same price range, much much better. I encountered a theater, yes a full scale THEATER using MyDMX. They swore by it. Transitioning them to the Chamsys was seamless and they realized quickly how much of a joke the former was.
 
That's some weird math they have. It has 7 15w diodes (105w), but only consumes 58 watts?

The LEDs are probably rated at 15W but they are probably under-driven to prolong life and prevent droop. Not unusual, just silly marketing. Slightly more irksome is proposing them as a solution before knowing anything about the venue.
 
The LEDs are probably rated at 15W but they are probably under-driven to prolong life and prevent droop. Not unusual, just silly marketing. Slightly more irksome is proposing them as a solution before knowing anything about the venue.

If that's what they're doing though it sounds more like false advertisement than silly marketing. Bill just suggested they take a look at them, he didn't say they would work for what they need.
 
It's not false advertising to say that a product contains something and then letting people jump to conclusions about what that means. Audio companies have been doing it forever.
 
They may actually be fully driving the LEDs, even though the wattage listed doesn't add up. "Five in one 15 watt LEDs" What that says to me is each LED capsule contains five 3 watt LED elements. So, with 7 units, the maximum wattage on each primary (RGB + AW) is 21 watts. However, the capsule may not sink enough heat to have all five elements fully driven. So, primary blue may call all the blue LEDs to operate at full, same with Red and same with Green, Amber, and White. But, in color mix, you would not need to fully drive each element, and as colors get closer to white, the RGB diodes would be backed off anyhow.
So, that's a theoretical defense of what may be going on. But as said above, the marketing opens them up to some questions that will put their sales reps on the spot! As SK said above, audio gear has a long history of this "fuzzy math."
 
Here is the core of the issue. An RGBAW will give you a good color match, but the second part of this question is brute output. LEDs have come a long way but if you are primarily running in white, there will be a significant difference in output. The downfall of a conventional fixture comes when you add color as all color must be subtracted from the output. By comparison, an LED fixture works on additive color mixing of deep primaries along with amber and white. In a saturated color mode (think dark blue), the LED fixtures will trounce the S4Jr (if also gelled in deep blue to match.) Conversely, the S4Jr will trounce the LEDs if all are in white and located with similar throws.

I would beg to differ in that the ETC Selador Series 2 fixture I saw demo'd, side by side with a conventional S4 at 575 watts, was equally as bright in white.

Possibly if you put a meter on both fixtures the incandescent would measure as brighter, but to the eye, the Selador looked the equal. This was at the Layers of Light demo I attended at the ETC NYC office this spring.
 
I don't think the OP has given nearly enough info, including budget, to propose very many solutions. If you're thinking of using S4 jr's, how are you going to dim them with myDMX as the controller? If you're using LED PAR's, can you make the DMX cable runs or control via a wireless solution?
Most importantly, what are the actual distances and heights involved? Is this a proscenium stage? Is there an apron? What is is location of the electrics relative to the proscenium? ETc. Etc. Etc.
 
I don't think the OP has given nearly enough info, including budget, to propose very many solutions. If you're thinking of using S4 jr's, how are you going to dim them with myDMX as the controller? If you're using LED PAR's, can you make the DMX cable runs or control via a wireless solution?
Most importantly, what are the actual distances and heights involved? Is this a proscenium stage? Is there an apron? What is is location of the electrics relative to the proscenium? ETc. Etc. Etc.

Wireless sounds like a horrible idea. While it can work well, it has no place in a permanent installation IMO.
 
I would beg to differ in that the ETC Selador Series 2 fixture I saw demo'd, side by side with a conventional S4 at 575 watts, was equally as bright in white.

Possibly if you put a meter on both fixtures the incandescent would measure as brighter, but to the eye, the Selador looked the equal. This was at the Layers of Light demo I attended at the ETC NYC office this spring.

No question that the high end equipment will do the trick, but at $2,000+ per fixture ( ETC Selador Series 2), I suspect this was not the type of fixture the OP was planing to use in a 500 seat high school setting. I could be wrong as there were no indication in the original post, but I would suspect that the OP may have been looking for more of a $300 to $500 fixture. Of course, today's $2,000 fixture is tomorrow's $500 fixture. We are in a fast moving world when it comes to LEDs, I just don't think we are at the point where you get the biggest bang-for-the-buck on high power LEDs yet.

Agree with the post about wireless. Great advantage for application where you eliminate the constant running of DMX cables, but for a stationary install, hard-wire makes sense.
 
I'm jumping to the conclusion that we're not talking about a very high budget here. If the controller of choice is MyDMX, we're probably talking CHEAP. If that's the case OP, let us know. More information helps everyone here to answer your questions!
 

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