I'm working for a church who is looking to move into the world of movers. They have an expresss 24/48 and would like to stay with an
ETC board. Anyways of the two which do you think would work better with 5 movers (1 technobeam, 2 S4 revolutions, and 2
Mac 700s) plus an
array of 40 conventionals and some LEDs.
Either one will work just fine.
Yes it is true that Congo's programming syntax is different. Some people can't get over that fact and it trips them up. If you just accept is and move on to learning about it, it takes about 15 minutes of programming to get it right and after about an hour or so I was faster on the Congo than then
Express/Expression (where I have 10 years or so of experience).
What you have to understand here is that
ETC has had two different philosophies of consoles for years now. There is the
Express/Expression series - which is a "
Preset" or "
Cue-Only" style of
console. Then there is the Obsession
line - which is a "
Tracking" style of
console. (In each of their default states, that is) This is a pretty significant difference in the way each
console operates.
The
Preset style records the entire look on
stage (including values of channels and attributes that are at zero) into the
cue. Thus the cues actually look like this:
Cue 1
1 50
2 0
3 75
Cue 2
1 50
2 25
3 75
Cue 3
1 50
2 25
3 0
The
tracking style of
desk only records the changes that have been made in going from
cue to cue. Thus if you are looking at the same series of cues as above, the data actually recorded in the cues would be as follows
Cue 1
1 50
2 0
3 75
Cue 2
2 25
Cue 3
3 0
Data from
channel 1 "tracks" through and when
cue 3 is played, you still see the same look on
stage, just that the data is recorded differently.
This is a significantly different way of thinking than the
Express works. That is not to say that you can't record in
cue-only mode on the
ION, because you can, only that in it's "Natural habitat" its a
tracking desk.
Some people are going to have a much harder time wrapping their head around
Tracking rather than the syntax change in Congo world. Either way you go, the
desk will typically come with a factory certified person doing the training, so you will have that going for it. Plus you will have
ETC's support behind the product as well.
In each of their respective versions are priced about the same (more or less) so that isn't much of a consideration in the comparison's between the two.
Let me know if you have any other questions and I will try to help you as best I can.
Jeff