I recently started volunteering at a local church, and yesterday, I got a chance to use the ETC Express that lives in the secondary auditorium. I'm sure that it's a good console to know, and it's my first experience with ETC. For some reason, programming on the Express seemed extremely cumbersome. I think that I've narrowed it down to two things.
First, I am not familiar with the channel plot, so I had to look up each channel in the paperwork (hooray for LightWright). Second, the HTP nature of the Express's channel faders really bothered me. I understand the point of having submasters as HTP, but the HTP default for the channel faders seems illogical. It is especially annoying when programming the pair of i-cues that are in the venue. Not being able to bring the values down from a cue's value without using the keypad is frusterating, and the same thing goes for channels that control dimmers.
Also, if you want to see a sequence of cues, you have to pull down all your faders and reset them later because the cues do not necessarily take precedence over the faders. Because of this, I had quite a time going back in the cuelist and presetting some of the color scrollers. I eventually just settled on doing that in blind. I believe that the express can be set to LTP, but why would HTP be preferred? I must not be seeing something that the engineers at ETC saw.
First, I am not familiar with the channel plot, so I had to look up each channel in the paperwork (hooray for LightWright). Second, the HTP nature of the Express's channel faders really bothered me. I understand the point of having submasters as HTP, but the HTP default for the channel faders seems illogical. It is especially annoying when programming the pair of i-cues that are in the venue. Not being able to bring the values down from a cue's value without using the keypad is frusterating, and the same thing goes for channels that control dimmers.
Also, if you want to see a sequence of cues, you have to pull down all your faders and reset them later because the cues do not necessarily take precedence over the faders. Because of this, I had quite a time going back in the cuelist and presetting some of the color scrollers. I eventually just settled on doing that in blind. I believe that the express can be set to LTP, but why would HTP be preferred? I must not be seeing something that the engineers at ETC saw.