Large HS Auditorium and Black Box Upgrade

[RickR]

I'm hearing a lot firm opinions and basic questions.

Regardless of who becomes your expert, you and the administration should concentrate on your program goals. Let the expert handle what is possible, probable and cost effective.

 

[derekleffew]

we are going to retrofit some Source 4 Pars.

The 4WRD kits are not compatible with existing S4 PAR or PARnel bodies. You would be buying a 4WRD kit plus a 4WRD Par body, at which point you might as well be buying a Colorsource PAR.

See the Retro-HPL. I don't know anything about them other than an ad in one of the trade mags. Looks to be white (3000 K) only. Appears one loses lens-change ability; beamspead is determined by the reflector, which is part of the retrofit.

 

[Les]

Our house lights are already LED but they aren't controlled through DMX, they still have to be dimmed.

LED retrofit? I have never been 100% happy with retrofit dimming in a house lighting application. I would redirect the money for those dimmer racks toward proper DMX LED house lights.

 

[froyop12]

LED retrofit? I have never been 100% happy with retrofit dimming in a house lighting application. I would redirect the money for those dimmer racks toward proper DMX LED house lights.

I guess I shouldn’t have put that option on there, I’m like 99% sure we are gonna go all LED with no dimmers. However you do make a good point that DMX controlled house lights would work better. There is some weird curve issues with our current ones.

 

[NJLX]

I'll point out that Echo Relay Panels can have low-wattage dimmers in them, if there's an LED retrofit option that fits the space better than rewiring everything to have DMX controlled house lights. Also relays and 0-10v control, if architectural-style control is easier than DMX control(the fixtures are most likely cheaper this way).


Also a reminder that you will not be the only person that designs here, and this upgrade will likely have to last for many years. Just because you don't use color in your frontlight, doesn't mean someone else won't want to.

A good consultant should be able to take all of these things into account, and design the best system for the money available.

 

[MNicolai]

Question though, if we were to go Echo for architectural, would that be able to control a small dimmer rack for the house lights?

Yes.

As others have said, line-voltage dimming of retrofit-style LED's tends to not provide the best results. Not sure I would try to bite that off in this project or not. Really depends on budget constraints because depending on the size of your venue that can add a lot of at-height labor and materials which can get expensive. Might be a 10-year plan project instead of a 3-year plan project, but something that also plays into this is how you are achieving your emergency lighting currently and if an overhaul of architectural lighting/power would need to be addressed at this time in some form anyway.

BTW, in addition to the Echo panelboards, ETC also has smaller Foundry devices that are when you need a circuit here or a circuit there, so there could be cases where it's easier to spread some of those smaller devices around rather than try to tie it all into one big Echo panel. That's where someone has to do a site survey of your project and really analyze which upgrade path is going to be the most cost-effective.

 

[froyop12]

Yes.

As others have said, line-voltage dimming of retrofit-style LED's tends to not provide the best results. Not sure I would try to bite that off in this project or not. Really depends on budget constraints because depending on the size of your venue that can add a lot of at-height labor and materials which can get expensive. Might be a 10-year plan project instead of a 3-year plan project, but something that also plays into this is how you are achieving your emergency lighting currently and if an overhaul of architectural lighting/power would need to be addressed at this time in some form anyway.

BTW, in addition to the Echo panelboards, ETC also has smaller Foundry devices that are when you need a circuit here or a circuit there, so there could be cases where it's easier to spread some of those smaller devices around rather than try to tie it all into one big Echo panel. That's where someone has to do a site survey of your project and really analyze which upgrade path is going to be the most cost-effective.

So as it Stands right now, we have this huge Strand transfer panel that whenever power is cut to the room, it switches the house lights from the dimmer racks to the generator/school power. I know that when the house lights were moved to LED, that was a very expensive project and required lots of at height work on scaffolding.

 

[MNicolai]

Yeah, that sounds like you're taken care of for now on the emergency lighting front. If the house lighting is tolerable, I would probably leave that and the Strand ELTS alone even if the dimming curves are not ideal. Or have an overhaul bid out at as an add/alternate. The more pressing issue sounds like modernizing the stage inventory and power distribution and arch controls.