Alright.... I'll bite ETC....

I THOUGHT I had tested the Ovation against a 300hr lamp, but I found that someone has mixed up a bunch of 2000hr LL lamps into my lights, so that could be wrong, I'll have to do it again sometime.

I heard a report that the 4wrd was BRIGHTER than an ovation.

FWIW, You could buy a 4wrd and a used S4 for less than a full Ovation unit.

Any reports of how they run on other brand dimmers including Triacs?
 
This is kinda the holy grail in a big way. Someone 'ought to dig up a thread from about 5-6 years ago where people said LED could never replace the Source 4!

You are exactly right! This new life be of lime LEDs has changed LEDs place in lighting dramatically. The fact that LEDs being used as generic fixtures could change everything. Ten years from now a pice of r-05 could be an antique! I'm excited to see where these products go.


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I just received my S4 4WRD today. I ordered one to try it out. I took it out of the box and turned it on. Not too crazy about the RJ45 to DMX cables that are needed (sucks for touring shows). Lighter and not as big I was expecting. I'll get to play with it and compare next week.
 
I had a demo of it today. At full it's a perfect match for the HPL 575 long life lamp. It's very hard to tell the difference. Dim it a little and you go oh crap, no amber drift. Dim it a lot and you are quickly reminded of how much you love the amber warm goodness of incandescent lights. That said, it dims beautifully and smoothly when on DMX control. It's a wonderful flat field. Then we switched to dimmer control instead of dmx and things got ugly. It was VERY steppy as you dimmed it down. Turn it on at a moderately fast pace and it pops on instead of fades on. Turn it from 0-7% and it wait 2+ seconds as it slowly turns on. There apparently is a capacitor in there that has to charge up for it to kick on or something. The sales guy said yesterday he had a lot of time and they were able to tweak the dimming curve and set the board so off is actually 3% (keeping a little juice in the capacitor) and it wasn't steppy at all and the slow response on was fixed as well. We unfortunately didn't have time to see if we could get it to play well with my system.

So, on one hand I was very impressed with the quality and quantity of light at full. Dimming via dmx was perfectly smooth. On the other hand there is some work to be done when using dimmed power. And I was reminded how lovely the ability to glow the stage in amber goodness at 30% is. I have worked with this particular sales guy for years and trust him when he says that he got it dialed in and working perfectly. However he also admitted that it may not be possible to adjust the curve on every system to make it dim correctly. So for those with older boards and dimmers... particularly not ETC, you may not be able to dim it the way you want.

For some of us this is a no brainer purchase at a great price. For others it may be a dimmer curve nightmare that can't be fixed. So as with any product, call your dealer and get a demo to see if it'll work for you. As for me, I'm interested but more interested to see where it goes in future variations.
 
How do you set the address? I can't see a display or buttons in any of the photos. Also can it run at 208/240v?

It's interesting for installs, but obviously not meant for anything else with RJ45 connectors. I toured once with stage bars that were RJ45; did you know that the pins on a male 5 pin dmx will slide right in to an ethercon connector? I didn't, but stagehands across North America figured it out time and time again.
 
How do you set the address? I can't see a display or buttons in any of the photos. Also can it run at 208/240v?

Address and function modes can be set using the two buttons and screen mounted next to the data connectors. This version only runs 120V but a new version that can do 240V is going to be out soon.

David
 
Has anyone had a chance to see these on camera? I got an iPhone slo-mo video at 240fps which showed a flicker, but I'm wondering if anyone has seen any issues with pro/pro-sumer cameras. We're looking to upgrade our profile units, but we bring in a lot of outside video teams so I'm hesitant to just throw a bunch of these up in the air without having seen them on camera. Is the full Source 4 LED miles beyond this? Thanks!
 
ETC Just published a video which compares the S4WRD and a regular S4. That might help you out.

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I Not too crazy about the RJ45 to DMX cables that are needed (sucks for touring shows). .

RJ45 is absolutely the wrong connector for this fixture and it's baffling that they went to this.

I have 3 to 5 pin XLR adapters on my Studio spots and had to tie-wrap them to the fixture handle to prevent wandering.

I mean come on ETC, every other fixture on the truss/pipe that moves or is LED is using 5 pin XLR and you all think RJ45 is a good idea ?
 
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I've kept quiet on that issue hoping to see a good reason. Some fixtures are shipping with RJ45s for ethernet connections. I can see that XLRs take a bit more space. But none of that really adds up in in my book.

The standard(s) is clear that RJ45s are for protected locations. This is the kind of logic that got us 3pin DMX.
 
Just speculating but I think the target market for the 4WRD is retrofits, architectural installs and as a direct competitor to the Altman Phoenix and others in that space, so some significant percentage of the market won't be using the DMX dimming at all. I'm pretty sure ETC would like us to consider the Colorsource and LED II instead. Speculating a little further, if the future of control is sACN then an RJ45 connector could be the right answer a decade or so from now.
 
Just speculating but I think the target market for the 4WRD is retrofits, architectural installs and as a direct competitor to the Altman Phoenix and others in that space, so some significant percentage of the market won't be using the DMX dimming at all. I'm pretty sure ETC would like us to consider the Colorsource and LED II instead. Speculating a little further, if the future of control is sACN then an RJ45 connector could be the right answer a decade or so from now.

Ethercon may be an answer, RJ45 by itself is to fragile to stand up to the kinds of environments stage lights get used in.
 
Ethercon may be an answer, RJ45 by itself is to fragile to stand up to the kinds of environments stage lights get used in.

Certainly the rental market, touring shows, and roadhouses needs a robust connector. I don't think the 4WRD is aimed at that market. There are many locations where the lights don't move around much. RJ45 is cheap to replace, easy to fabricate, and the receptacle is seldom the bit that fails.
 
I THOUGHT I had tested the Ovation against a 300hr lamp, but I found that someone has mixed up a bunch of 2000hr LL lamps into my lights, so that could be wrong, I'll have to do it again sometime.

I heard a report that the 4wrd was BRIGHTER than an ovation.

FWIW, You could buy a 4wrd and a used S4 for less than a full Ovation unit.

Any reports of how they run on other brand dimmers including Triacs?

I double checked. The Ovation WW version, is equivalent to a long life, I cannot find the published CRI right now, but I believe it was higher than 90.
The 910FC color mixing version(competition to the color source spot), while less output than the WW also has a 90+ CRI, Both models have a retail of $13XX, with lens.
 
Just speculating but I think the target market for the 4WRD is retrofits, architectural installs and as a direct competitor to the Altman Phoenix and others in that space, so some significant percentage of the market won't be using the DMX dimming at all. I'm pretty sure ETC would like us to consider the Colorsource and LED II instead. Speculating a little further, if the future of control is sACN then an RJ45 connector could be the right answer a decade or so from now.
No, because the lights will still just take DMX over that connector, not sACN.
 
There are a few reasons for the RJ45 connectors, I will let someone 'in the know' at ETC confirm or deny this, but the biggest issue with using a DMX connector is the extra space it would require. One of the requirements when building the unit was that it must be able to pass through the yoke without interference. Also, this unit is seen as a retrofit item, so in most cases they expect the item to be installed and cables connected and left for years.
 

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