Control/Dimming Conventions of constructing solely LED Based facility

My point was not that LEDs produce heat, all lights do... is that the way they handle heat from the circuitry is with fans, some noisy, some less so. But when multiplied by lots of LED fixtures, even a little fan noise (all at the same or very similar frequencies) is going to be VERY audible. Especially in a church type setting. Usually the HVAC is bad enough, add a sound system and a 60 cycle buzz from the volunteer band member's equipment and a lot of LEDs and you get a pretty loud ambient room.

Phil
 
Gaffer brings up the difference between design/build and consulting firms. We can and do function both ways. Some people like one approach or the other. There are pros and cons to both approaches.

Also keep in mind that most large companies subcontract out their installs. So the people you are dealing with may or may not be the people that actually do the install.

The ETC S4 isn't there for me yet. And for the cost, even theaters that are only dark one day a week will need 8-10 years or more to recoup the investment.

We do a ton of LED work (we have our own line, including LEDko units) and I still think for 9.9 out of 10 applications LED ERS units just aren't ready yet.

By the way none of our units except moving lights have fans.
 
So the consensus would probably be that LED's aren't effective enough as front light. So we'd probably want some kind of dimmer system on our Cat, or FOH or whatever that may be. How is the LEDko throw from about 20ft away, as like Backlighting or even main wash lighting? And would it be agreeable to say that a Seachanger, on a Right Arm, with a DMX iris might be a fairly effective combination as spots and specials from the front? That is to say that it would do everything an LED on a Right Arm could do and have a better throw then something like an LEDko or an LED S4?
 
I believe that a S4 with a Seachanger exceeds the weight capacity of a Right Arm (It's at least is too close for my comfort). The Seachanger adds a lot of length to a S4, meaning it's probably too long of a fixture to be able to give you much if any tilt when positioned in a Right Arm. Finally, perfect balance of a fixture is critical for a Right Arm's proper operation, trying to get a Seachanger perfect would be VERY difficult due to the length and weight. I had Seachangers and Right Arms at my old theater and always went with an I-cue instead if I needed a Seachanger to move, it was just easier.

Note: Right Arms are awesome and I generally prefer them to I-cues, so don't take this as any sort of bad mouthing of that product. I just wouldn't use one with a S4/Seachanger.

I agree with Esoteric, I wouldn't buy an LED ERS for a few years. The price is going to be way too high to make them at all practical for a while, and the outputs were a little low. I haven't seen the LED S4 in person, but I did see the Strong Neeva and the Prisim RevEAL at LDI 2010. Both were very cool but the output was not high enough and the price was way too high to consider.
 
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I believe that a S4 with a Seachanger exceeds the weight capacity of a Right Arm (It's at least is too close for my comfort). The Seachanger adds a lot of length to a S4, meaning it's probably too long of a fixture to be able to give you much if any tilt when positioned in a Right Arm. Finally, perfect balance of a fixture is critical for a Right Arm's proper operation, trying to get a Seachanger perfect would be VERY difficult due to the length and weight. I had Seachangers and Right Arms at my old theater and always went with an I-cue instead if I needed a Seachanger to move, it was just easier.

Note: Right Arms are awesome and I generally prefer them to I-cues, so don't take this as any sort of bad mouthing of that product. I just wouldn't use one with a S4/Seachanger.

I agree with Esoteric, I wouldn't buy an LED ERS for a few years. The price is going to be way too high to make them at all practical for a while, and the outputs were a little low. I haven't seen the LED S4 in person, but I did see the Strong Neeva and the Prisim RevEAL at LDI 2010. Both were very cool but the output was not high enough and the price was way too high to consider.
I believe that a S4 with a Seachanger exceeds the weight capacity of a Right Arm (It's at least is too close for my comfort). The Seachanger adds a lot of length to a S4, meaning it's probably too long of a fixture to be able to give you much if any tilt when positioned in a Right Arm. Finally, perfect balance of a fixture is critical for a Right Arm's proper operation, trying to get a Seachanger perfect would be VERY difficult due to the length and weight. I had Seachangers and Right Arms at my old theater and always went with an I-cue instead if I needed a Seachanger to move, it was just easier.

Note: Right Arms are awesome and I generally prefer them to I-cues, so don't take this as any sort of bad mouthing of that product. I just wouldn't use one with a S4/Seachanger.

I agree with Esoteric, I wouldn't buy an LED ERS for a few years. The price is going to be way too high to make them at all practical for a while, and the outputs were a little low. I haven't seen the LED S4 in person, but I did see the Strong Neeva and the Prisim RevEAL at LDI 2010. Both were very cool but the output was not high enough and the price was way too high to consider.

Yeah, I would be very nervous about putting a S4 with seachanger on a right arm.

We are doing two facilites this year so far with mixed rigs. One space has two theaters. The smaller space is using Selecon PL1s with diffusion as top and back washes with ETC Source4 JR front light and specials. The large space is using Selecon PL3s as tops and backs with ETC Source4 front light and specials. Both spaces will have a few LEDko units assuming I like them when I get my demo. Both spaces will split a single 96 Sensor Rack.

Another, larger space we are doing is using Seledor Vivid tops and backs with ETC Source4 fronts and Elations new LED Cyc unit. They are replacing 3 CD80 racks with a single ETC Sensor 96 rack.

We just did a small professional theater with 24 ETC Source4 front lights with a small Sensor rack and then 64 of our Visioneer RGBAW 3W LED PARs.

If I like the demo of the LEDko in fall we might be doing a 100% LED rig (it is a 20x20 perfromance area with a max throw of 24').

Mike
 
I just did a little checking of photmetric data:

-Take a 3200 degree 28-40 zoom LEDko. Zoom it to 28 degrees at a 10 meter/33' throw distance. You have 299 lux/28 Foot Candles.

-Take a 26 degree Source four with a 750HPL lamp at 9.1 meters/30' and it's putting out 2108 lux or about 196 Foot Candles... at 18.1meters/60' it's still brighter than the LEDko at 527 lux/49 Foot Candles.

-So what happens if you take that 26 degree S4 and put in the dimmer long life, HPL575X lamp it still puts out 94 Foot Candles at 30' (more than triple the output of the LEDko).

-As a rule of thumb I usually figure a fixture needs to put out about 100 lumens to be useful for theatrical purposes. To get the LEDko up into that neighborhood it needs to be at least 6 meters/19' away. At which point it puts out 830 Lux/77 Foot Candles. 5 meters/16'= 1195/111 Foot Candles

SO, I wouldn't try using a LEDko for a throw much longer than about 5 or 6 meters/16-19 feet... which is pretty short in our business.
 
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I just did a little checking of photmetric data:

-Take a 3200 degree 28-40 zoom LEDko. Zoom it to 28 degrees at a 10 meter/33' throw distance. You have 299 lux/28 lumens.

-Take a 26 degree Source four with a 750HPL lamp at 9.1 meters/30' and it's putting out 2108 lux or about 196 lumens... at 18.1meters/60' it's still brighter than the LEDko at 527 lux/49 lumens.

-So what happens if you take that 26 degree S4 and put in the dimmer long life, HPL575X lamp it still puts out 94 lumens at 30' (more than triple the output of the LEDko).

-As a rule of thumb I usually figure a fixture needs to put out about 100 lumens to be useful for theatrical purposes. To get the LEDko up into that neighborhood it needs to be at least 6 meters/19' away. At which point it puts out 830 Lux/77 Lumens. 5 meters/16'= 1195/111 lumens

SO, I wouldn't try using a LEDko for a throw much longer than about 5 or 6 meters/16-19 feet... which is pretty short in our business.

Good post. What source is in that LEDko though? I am looking at one with a 90W single LED source.

Mike
 
Two more LED ellipsoidal comparisons for you. I can't find photometric data on the LED S4 yet so no comparison on it.

Round 2
Strong Neeva:
Take a 22 degree adjustable color temperature white only model with a 50 watt source:
At 20'/6.1 meters has an output of 209 Lux/19 Foot Candles

VS
19 degree Source 4 with the lower output HPL575X long life lamp:
At 20'/6.1 meters gives you 4423 Lux/411 Foot Candles

Round 3
Prism RevEAL Profile: tuned to create 3250K white
19 degree at 32.8'/10 meters gives you a very respectable 1302/121 Foot Candles

VS.
19 degree Source 4 with the lower output HPL575X long life lamp:
at 32.8'/10 meters gives you 1614/150 Foot Candles

Sorry but unfortunately the manufacture's websites don't all have matching photometric Data so some of the comparisons are a little weird but clearly close enough to give you a clear picture of the situation. Of the three LED ellipsoidal options LEDko, Neeva, and RevEAL, RevEAL is the closest to producing what we are used to from a S4 with a 575 long life lamp. If I remember right from LDI, they cost somewhere in the high $2k to low $3k range each. :shock:

Nothing that I know of is even close to the output of a Source Four with a 300 hour HPL 750 lamp, so if you've got a long throw, forget it. Finally, remember that we are doing 3200k white light comparisons here, comparing to deep saturated colors is an entirely different issue that we just don't have the photometric data to look at.
 
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Good posts. I wonder how the RJ unit compares?

Yeah, for anything more than 20' (and even a lot of the time less than 20') conventional ERS units are the way to go.

Mike
 
The Altman LED, is out there, but it's only a 25 watt lamp, so it's not worth a lot of digging to try to find the photometric data.

The Lightronics LED looks like another strong candidate with a 100 Watt source, I don't see any photometric data on the website.

The Robert Juliat LED has an 85 Watt source so again it's a stronger candidate as a full replacement, but again I can't find good photometric data.

From the data that I see right now, we need a fixture with something like a 125-150 watt LED source to be a true replacement fixture for a standard incandescent ellipsoidal. Now I don't know about you, but I often run my shows with a max around 75%-80%. So some of these brighter fixtures could compete with that. However, do you want a fixture that can't give you that extra bump for the curtain call? I don't.
 
Or for the end bump of songs in musicals.
 
I just met with the Arts Director, he showed me the building plans. Auditorium will seat 1000 + A balcony they'll add on later, and the stage is 40 x 100.... I kept trying to mention how ridiculousy wide a stage that was, but he was determined that the church band needed that much more room then their 30 x 30 stage they use now... Also we looked at a cat position having an average 30ft throw, which would unavoidably call for 750's with Sea Changers and possibly a few Varilite 2500's. I might have considered pushing 20ft with an LED ERS if I was feeling rebellious. 30ft, there's no way. Also, we talked about using Chroma-Q Color Force 12's as possible borderlights and maybe even back lighting, however they'd probably be 20-25ft above the stage, is that pushing their throw?
 
Wow that's huge, again, no insult to you, but I don't care if you are the greatest High School theater technician ever, you need a theater consultant. I've been doing tech theater for nearly 30 years. If I was attending a church and they asked me to design a lighting system that big, I would still bring in a theater consultant to work with me. We are talking about a multi-million dollar facility here. You can certainly afford a few thousand dollars extra to get a consultant in there and design the lighting and sound systems correctly. Who is designing your sound system? Someone in house again? Your theater consultant can provide you with a professional acoustic expert. You need this even more than you need the theater consultant. Your acoustic expert should have been on staff working with the architects months ago to make sure the building is designed in a way that doesn't screw up your sound. Are you installing any rigging equipment? Don't trust an architect to get that right!
 
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Wow that's huge, again, no insult to you, but I don't care if you are the greatest High School theater technician ever, you need a theater consultant. I've been doing tech theater for nearly 30 years. If I was attending a church and they asked me to design a lighting system that big, I would still bring in a theater consultant to work with me in a limited role. We are talking about a multi-million dollar facility here. You can certainly afford a few thousand dollars extra to get a consultant in there and design the lighting and sound systems correctly. Who is designing your sound system? Someone in house again? Your theater consultant can provide you with a professional acoustic expert. You need this even more than you need the theater consultant. Your acoustic expert should have been on staff working with the architects months ago to make sure the building is designed in a way that doesn't screw up your sound. Are you installing any rigging equipment? Don't trust an architect to get that right!

Agree 100000%. We get called in all the time to work with people who (nothing personal) have a lot more experience and knowledge than any high school student could ever hope to have.

Heck, when the University of Texas remodeled the Payne Theater they brought in a theater consultant to work with 9 practicing members of staff with over 400 years of experience between them and a full technical staff that had toured with Cirque Du Soleil, U2, Garth Brooks, and numerous US tours of Broadway shows.

You need a theater consultant on this project.
 
Water cooling would be the ideal method of cooling but it does seem rather impractical having to run waterline to a chiller and back again. However it would do the trick.
 
I just met with the Arts Director, he showed me the building plans. Auditorium will seat 1000 + A balcony they'll add on later, and the stage is 40 x 100.... I kept trying to mention how ridiculousy wide a stage that was, but he was determined that the church band needed that much more room then their 30 x 30 stage they use now... Also we looked at a cat position having an average 30ft throw, which would unavoidably call for 750's with Sea Changers and possibly a few Varilite 2500's. I might have considered pushing 20ft with an LED ERS if I was feeling rebellious. 30ft, there's no way. Also, we talked about using Chroma-Q Color Force 12's as possible borderlights and maybe even back lighting, however they'd probably be 20-25ft above the stage, is that pushing their throw?

Thats impractically large and the band will look silly on there... IMO. My guess is you are going to need hundreds of lighting circuits, LEDs are just not going to cut this in any way, shape or form... Get the consultant to help you figure this out, because you might (will) not want all your lights to have seachangers, or all of your tops, sides and foot lights be the same kind of LED. Also, thats a heckofalota LED units you will need.
 
No offense taken. At our high school our inventory is over 100 instruments including 60+ Source Fours for our 70 x 30 stage. I'm sure moving lights could cut everything down for them but I'm not sure by how much. Can anyone recommend a theatre consultant near Southern Maryland/ Baltimore/ DC?
 

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