ION is almost here!

Maybe I am not making myself clear here,

Given the choice between a Pallete and an Express, I would have chosen the Palette as well.

The Express is a great board for doing strictly conventional fixtures. Easy to learn, easy to program (even advanced concepts) and the best technology that 1993? had to offer. But that's just it. It is an older desk. It is on the way out for the things that Gaff wants to make it do. There are much better options out there now for those things. He had a choice to make at a specific point in time and his options were the Pallette and the Express(not the expression) - I think he made the right one - and my employer would probably not like me saying that.....
 
Yeah Jmabray's nailed it Charc, it's completely different technology. There's nothing "wrong" with an Express(ion), they were the best of their time, it's just pushing 15 year old technology.

Simple case in point. If you want to run an I-cue on an Express you have to patch it into an existing dimmer channel. If your older theater has 48 dimmers... you now have 46 because it takes two dimmers to run an I-cue. There's nothing wrong with that... but you can see how a little bit of intelligent gear starts eating dimmer at a rapid rate even in a theater with a lot of dimmers. The Palette... and all the new consoles have fixed this. It now takes one channel to control all the attributes of a single instrument. You can take a Source4 and load it with a Seachanger, gobo rotator, infinity animator, and hang it on a Right Arm... the Palette (and the new ETC consoles) look at that as ONE lighting instrument with a lot of dmx attributes. It eats one dimmer... and a lot of dmx channels that we'll assign from a second universe. You want to run a dozen intelligent instruments that all consume 30 dmx channels? No problem. On an Express? VERY hard to do probably impossible depending on how many dimmers you have.

So If I had the choice right now... full size Congo... back then then it was Palette... give us a few months to actually see ION... might go that way. EOS? Cool but half of it's features are way over my budget needs. Unfortunately, you've got to make the decision at a specific moment in time and my decision was made over a year ago. And as I've been saying down the road who knows how it all sorts out. No offense to our ETC friends but you can't stay king of the market forever... eventually someone else will come along and challenge them. It's HUGE gamble rolling out a new product line. What if Strand's line is just better? We'll know in a couple years what the industry embraces.
 
gafftaper said:
Unfortunately, you've got to make the decision at a specific moment in time and my decision was made over a year ago.
Click to expand...


But this is where great specification writing comes in. If you wrote the specifications, it's really really easy to say something to the effect of, "Console will have all the features above, and will be the latest console release by dimmer manufacturer at time of installation."

You can then choose what specific console you get when it comes time to install your system. It's a trick that all of the "big" Consultants like to play on the manufacturer's when the do their systems. The manufacturer's know this and they price their bid accordingly.

Not that this helps you right now, but all those of you who are out there that may be working on a new space.....
 
jmabray said:
But this is where great specification writing comes in. If you wrote the specifications, it's really really easy to say something to the effect of, "Console will have all the features above, and will be the latest console release by dimmer manufacturer at time of installation."
QUOTE]

You wouldn't catch me writing a spec. like that. You could very, very easily end up with a one-off from some no-name or bottom feeding company.

Case in point: When the performing arts center at SUNY Purchase, NY was built (30+ years ago), the lighting consultant - Marty Aronstein, thought he had the spec's locked down with Kliegl controls and dimmers. The control was to be Kliegl's new Performance desk and was written to be the newest and latest. As per State of NY law for bidding on public projects, the clause "Or approved equal" was included in the boiler plate. Ward Leonard - the famous manufacturer of auto-transfomer systems "proved" they could do everything the Performer could do, thus they won the bid - for ALL 4 theaters.

Mind you they had NEVER built any kind of control system that ran on anything less then 120 volts internally, no preset systems, nothing with anything resembling a computer chip, nothing.

Needless to say, NONE of the control systems in ANY of the theaters ever worked as per specification. WL ended up going bankrupt over this deal.

I'd much prefer an older piece of gear that works, is known to work, has the software bugs mostly resolved, is available locally in rental shops, with ALL of the above in place.

Remember that there are a lot of companies out there (USA in this case), Lehigh, Beringer, Elation, Leprecon, etc.. who likely have the ability to generate an Eos clone. But do you want their one and only version ?.

SB
Click to expand...
 
SteveB said:
jmabray said:
But this is where great specification writing comes in. If you wrote the specifications, it's really really easy to say something to the effect of, "Console will have all the features above, and will be the latest console release by dimmer manufacturer at time of installation."
Click to expand...
You wouldn't catch me writing a spec. like that. You could very, very easily end up with a one-off from some no-name or bottom feeding company.
Case in point: When the performing arts center at SUNY Purchase, NY was built (30+ years ago), the lighting consultant - Marty Aronstein, thought he had the spec's locked down with Kliegl controls and dimmers. The control was to be Kliegl's new Performance desk and was written to be the newest and latest. As per State of NY law for bidding on public projects, the clause "Or approved equal" was included in the boiler plate. Ward Leonard - the famous manufacturer of auto-transfomer systems "proved" they could do everything the Performer could do, thus they won the bid - for ALL 4 theaters.
Mind you they had NEVER built any kind of control system that ran on anything less then 120 volts internally, no preset systems, nothing with anything resembling a computer chip, nothing.
Needless to say, NONE of the control systems in ANY of the theaters ever worked as per specification. WL ended up going bankrupt over this deal.
I'd much prefer an older piece of gear that works, is known to work, has the software bugs mostly resolved, is available locally in rental shops, with ALL of the above in place.
Remember that there are a lot of companies out there (USA in this case), Lehigh, Beringer, Elation, Leprecon, etc.. who likely have the ability to generate an Eos clone. But do you want their one and only version ?.
SB
Click to expand...

That of course is not the only statement in the spec, obviously. There would have to be other statements that would exclude this from happening. A manufacturer like this can very easily be excluded. "Manufacturer must demonstrate 10 years experience in manufacturing preset systems of this type. Manufacturer must have 24/7/365 support available via pager. Manufacturer must have factory authorized service center within 25 miles of the jobsite. Authorized service center must have a console in rental stock to be a backup for site."

There are several different qualifying statements that you can use.

I can't speak of NY state law, but the law that I am familiar with, says that you only have to say "or approved equal" if you specifically name one manufacturer or product. If you just call out for performance requirements for the materials, then you don't have to say or approved equal. It just has to meet all the requirements. Your mileage may vary....

Jeff
 
gafftaper said:
Yeah Jmabray's nailed it Charc, it's completely different technology. There's nothing "wrong" with an Express(ion), they were the best of their time, it's just pushing 15 year old technology.
Simple case in point. If you want to run an I-cue on an Express you have to patch it into an existing dimmer channel. If your older theater has 48 dimmers... you now have 46 because it takes two dimmers to run an I-cue. There's nothing wrong with that... but you can see how a little bit of intelligent gear starts eating dimmer at a rapid rate even in a theater with a lot of dimmers. The Palette... and all the new consoles have fixed this. It now takes one channel to control all the attributes of a single instrument. You can take a Source4 and load it with a Seachanger, gobo rotator, infinity animator, and hang it on a Right Arm... the Palette (and the new ETC consoles) look at that as ONE lighting instrument with a lot of dmx attributes. It eats one dimmer... and a lot of dmx channels that we'll assign from a second universe. You want to run a dozen intelligent instruments that all consume 30 dmx channels? No problem. On an Express? VERY hard to do probably impossible depending on how many dimmers you have.
Click to expand...

Well... you can write a personality for an icue with and express that works fairly well, I do it with elipscans all the time. I will not run more then a mirror on an express however, it simply gets to cumbersome. Also, the lowest "dimmer" number on an express is 96, and thats on the 24/48. The 72/144 can control 240 attributes/channels/dimmers/whatnot. All express consoles have two universes, so if double patch, you can control a lot of gear.

I will be interested to hear how the mallet software works out. I had a demo pallete a little over a year ago with the original software written for it. I hope this software still ships with it so you can select between the two.
 
I had a demo pallete a little over a year ago with the original software written for it. I hope this software still ships with it so you can select between the two.
Click to expand...

Not gonna happen. At least as I understand it. When The Genlyte Group bought the assets of Strand US, they disolved Strand UK and the people that wrote the code for the lightpallette all the way up through the 300 and 500 series desks were let go. (This is what formed the basis for the original code that you are talking about.) With these people no longer working for the current iteration of Strand, they had wonderful new hardware, but no way to support the software that they had written for it. Thus the decision to make what many people have playfully called the "Mallette" (Marquee software running on Pallette hardware.)

I personally wouldn't want the orginal software - there is no one to support it.

I will be honest here, when I first looked at the Marquee, there were too many stability issues for it to be any kind of real desk. (a very simple keystroke sequence would crash the desk everytime, for instance) The last time I looked at it, those had mostly been resolved and was a decent desk. It was different than what I was used to, but it definitely was not the failure that it was going to be had they not gotten the stability issues resolved.

Again, another thing my employer probably wouldn't want me to be saying, but as much as I drink (and dole out as well) the ETC kool-aid, I am a lighting geek first and foremost and try to learn as much about every desk there is out there. I also try to be as honest and fair as I can about the competition.
 
Well speaking of old technology, isn't the Strand 300 series pushing 10, if not 15 years? Don't they have an attributes system, that doesn't eat dimmers? Channel 10 = Intensity, 10.1=Intensity (.1 can be omitted), 10.2 Scroller Frame, 10.3 Pan, 10.4 Tilt (Where do fine and course adjustments come in though? As the I-Cue can actually be operated by as many as 4 DMX channels.)

I'm just saying for the last gen in boards, it was possible. (Or is Strand's Product cycle a little off from ETC's?)
 
They didn't eat up channels per say, but they did eat up attributes. They were two different counts on the desk. As I recall, one could eat the other (Attributes could eat Channels, if needed) but it wouldn't work the other way around. So if you had a total of 25 channels and 25 attributes, and you had 5 moving lights with 5 attributes each, you could still have 20 conventional channels. But if you had 30 conventional fixtures, they still had to be patched into the 25 conventional channels. Does that make sense?

You are right, it was possible - however, at the time, Strand wasn't offering the 300 series console any more - there were just releasing the pallette line and wanted to sell that....

It was a different way of thinking about channels than had been done before. Some people must have thought it was a good idea, because most of the new lines of desks work this way....
 
jmabray said:
They didn't eat up channels per say, but they did eat up attributes. They were two different counts on the desk. As I recall, one could eat the other (Attributes could eat Channels, if needed) but it wouldn't work the other way around. So if you had a total of 25 channels and 25 attributes, and you had 5 moving lights with 5 attributes each, you could still have 20 conventional channels. But if you had 30 conventional fixtures, they still had to be patched into the 25 conventional channels. Does that make sense?
You are right, it was possible - however, at the time, Strand wasn't offering the 300 series console any more - there were just releasing the pallette line and wanted to sell that....
It was a different way of thinking about channels than had been done before. Some people must have thought it was a good idea, because most of the new lines of desks work this way....
Click to expand...

I meant historically, I think. I think I was asking about when the last product cycles meshed. As in, if Strand 300/500 series were released around the same time, why didn't express(ion) have the same features? Or was strand300/500 released a few years after express(ion)?

(Just had an epiphany, I think. Someone previously posted, the ion is what happens when you take the functionality of the express out of the expression. Is this name a reference to that? Or was it a negative comment? Because: Expression - Express = Ion. And I just got that, wow I'm slow.)
 
Naw, the joke around ETC is that they ran out of name that ended in ION (Expression, Obsession, etc) so they just named it ION.....

The express(ion) line came out before the 500 series as I remember it....
 
charcoaldabs wrote:
"(Just had an epiphany, I think. Someone previously posted, the ion is what happens when you take the functionality of the express out of the expression. Is this name a reference to that? Or was it a negative comment? Because: Expression - Express = Ion. And I just got that, wow I'm slow.)"

Please forget you ever read that. It was meant to be humorous, and not in any way an attack on ETC. Likewise, "Ion" shall never again be pronounced by myself as "shun." In fact, I've predicted the Ion will do very well for many different applications. Once PRG and/or 4Wall have it, I may very well be the first renter--as long as they'll give me an Expression3 and an A/B box also.
 
Last edited:
Charc, your speaking privileges should be revoked for that crazy post. :evil:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Thatonelightguy85
Inquiry on cards included with the ion xe and ion xe 20
Replies
5
Views
536
sk8rsdad
sk8rsdad
R
New Ion xe no DMX on boot
Replies
14
Views
774
derekleffew
derekleffew
T
Simultaneous cues on ETC Ion running EOS
Replies
4
Views
383
almorton
A
Stuart R
connecting uplights to ETC Ion via wireless DMX
Replies
3
Views
752
Crisp image
Crisp image
Jay Ashworth
InfoComm 2023, Orlando
Replies
11
Views
2K
Jay Ashworth
Jay Ashworth

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)
Back