What's your budget? How many dimmers? Are you using all conventionals? How many
DMX toys are you running off this?
My college is getting a new theater this summer so I'm well studied up on the subject and I've seen a lot of demos. Unfortuantley, you are about a year or two too soon as all of the lower end
ETC boards are going to be replaced in the near future. Until then if you insist on going
ETC your choices are limited:
You could go with an old
ETC board that has the Emphasis server band-aid attached to it. I'm not all that impressed with that
system. From what I've seen a few years ago instead of going for a redesign they said let's attach emphasis to the
system as a patch to get us through a few more years while we do an even bigger redesign. I haven't used it but I know an old school L.D. who hates it because it's not really a low end
ETC board and yet it also isn't a high end board. Emphasis is a high tech band-aid to provide a few more functions. He complained that there are a lot of features some of them very basic that are a big hassle to deal with.
Unless you are using a TON of intelligent lighting,
EOS is probably not for you... it's also like $35k-$40k.
EOS is one of those Connan O'brien "what if they made it" scenarios. It's what would happen if an Obsession had a baby with a Whole Hog/GrandMA. It's a great board for the Broadway/Vegas market but it's probably over kill for your needs. They are planning the
release of an "
EOS Jr" soon that will be stripped down a little, smaller, and cheaper but it'll probably be too late for your needs.
Congo/Congo Jr. are great boards. I've used them both in 3 different demo's now and been very impressed. I heard some criticism when it first came out about the use of the reverse programing language... but from what I've seen it takes 20 minutes to learn the new syntax. The Europeans have been using this syntax for years and it supposedly cuts your programing time down quite a
bit. Congo's pretty cool and I would definitely get a demo. I really like the flexibility of Congo. It literally has a
switch that turns off all the high-end intelligent features and makes it the worlds largest two scene
preset board if you want. I like the fact that you don't need a
mouse to do anything (unlike the
Strand boards... more on them later). It was designed with the idea that your hands should be able to learn where the buttons are and you should be able to program looking at the
stage and the monitors, not looking back and forth between the keyboard and the
stage. I think it was successful. Congo starts at about $23k and Congo Jr. starts around $15k. There is basicly no difference in features between the two models, it's mostly just less buttons, a smaller case, and less channels/universes. I tell you for that $15k you are getting a TON of features that kick the
butt of similar priced products out there.
If your willing to look at
Strand I think you'll be very pleasantly surprised. The new
Palette/
light palette consoles are great. The software is a new variation of the Horizon
system. So it's REALLY intuitive and easy to work with. No matter which of the new boards you buy its all the same software. So it's just matter of choosing the interface and number of circuits/universes you need. I'm getting the Classic
Palette for my theater. It's a great option for a space that is mostly conventionals. I think if you take a look at the software (you can download it and try it out from the
strand website) you'll agree that it's way ahead of what the low end
ETC software is like these days. The sad thing is for us
ETC guys that this is a little peak into what
ETC will probably do with their new consoles... but we have to choose now, not wait for the future.
I'm satisfied with the
Strand console I'm getting... not thrilled but satisfied. It uses the
mouse and keyboard a lot which doesn't make me the most happy. I'm hoping through a big fund raising drive that we are having (including selling naming rights to the theater) that we get a big chunk of cash to spend on intelligent gear. If we do I'm going to go buy a Congo Jr. to go with my
Strand board. If I were you I would take a hard look at
Strand... but probably end up buying Congo. Get some Demos!!