Evans Poulos
Active Member
Good afternoon everybody! I run a small multiuse theater for a local park district and we're looking to buy our first computer for the theater. We have an old EPC board with a midi USB dongle that visiting lighting designer uses from time to time that works well. We would like to be able to automate the light board, run sound, run projections and a variety of other things. We have a very tight budget obviously being a park district.
At first blush I would think to get a Mac Mini and Q lab and just get on with my life but we don't do anything else apple in the district at all so I'm wondering if there's a good windows alternative or if perhaps we should think about getting the Mac Mini but also getting a decent PC for playback control and other things any suggestions.
I'm actually very curious to find out if anybody has successfully operated to show using Q lab running in a virtual machine on windows that would be an ideal situation for me I think.
Right now I have about 60 tungsten light, 10 ETC LED pars, a 16 channel Mackie analog board, CD player, DVD player, VHS player, cassette player... you see why I am trying to combine things here right? And then I wonder why some idiot always brings his phone to try and run sound for a show...
Anyway I'd be very grateful for any and all advice you can give me. I have about a $2000 budget right now
At first blush I would think to get a Mac Mini and Q lab and just get on with my life but we don't do anything else apple in the district at all so I'm wondering if there's a good windows alternative or if perhaps we should think about getting the Mac Mini but also getting a decent PC for playback control and other things any suggestions.
I'm actually very curious to find out if anybody has successfully operated to show using Q lab running in a virtual machine on windows that would be an ideal situation for me I think.
Right now I have about 60 tungsten light, 10 ETC LED pars, a 16 channel Mackie analog board, CD player, DVD player, VHS player, cassette player... you see why I am trying to combine things here right? And then I wonder why some idiot always brings his phone to try and run sound for a show...
Anyway I'd be very grateful for any and all advice you can give me. I have about a $2000 budget right now