Lighting Board Questions

zackw250

Active Member
I am relitively new to the lighting world, and the lighting desk I grew up on and currently operate is a Hog 1000.

I am about to do some contracting work, and some of my customers budget's aren't big enough, and there setups don't requrie a Hog. So I was looking at ETC & Leprikon controllers, and one thing I noticed is ALL THE FADERs!! WHAT IS UP WITH THE FADERS, what do they do? On the Hog we have playback masters, but no faders.

Second, can someone tell me what the following settings / features mean? I know its a stupid question, but coming from a Hog background I have no idea.... this is a board I just used for an example!


Leprikon LP 1600

Channels: 48/96

Two Scene Preset Mode: YES

Preset Faders: 48

Preset Memory: 576

any advice would be greatly appreciated!
 
First of all, the deal with all the faders is that most of them control an individual channel. The rest are mostly submasters and then crossfaders and grandmaster. One reason for a fader per channel is that when programming cues w/ convenional lights, it is nice to be able to grab a fader and tweak the look.

Channels: 48/96

This is the amount of channels per page of faders (or directly accessible by faders.) The first number, in this case 48, is the amount of channels per page per scene in 2 scene preset mode. Thes second number, 96, is generally the total number of channel faders and channels per page in single scene mode. Not that this number is not always a direct representation of the max amount of channels. An ETC Express 24/48 has a max 96 seperate channels, accessible through pages. In single scene mode on this board, page one would be ch 1-48, controlled by channel faders 1-48. Arrow over and you are in page 2, ch 49-96, controlled by channel faders 1-48.

Two Scene Preset Mode: YES

Two scene preset mode is a way of running a show manually. There are two banks of faders, each bank a scene. Both banks control the same channels. A scene is preset in a bank and then the banks corresponding crossfader is set to max while the other is set to 0. While that bank,or scene, is active, the other scene can be set in the other bank of faders. Then you can crossfade the two and repeat the process. That is how the show is run.

Preset Faders: 48

I belive this is the total number of channel faders. Half is in one scene, half the other. The rest of the channels are accessed through paging.

Preset Memory: 576

Most likely the max # of cues, chases, macros, etc.

So there you go.
 
bdesmond said:
On some boards (strand and I believe ETC come to mind), that 48/96, the second number is also the max # of channels the board's software supports. Generally, you give the manufacturer some cash, and they give you an unlock code for more channels in return.

Are you sure, because we have an Express 48/96 at school, and it has more than 96 channels (although that's the number of channel faders on the board). For instance, our house lights range from 111 to 140-something.
 
Acually if for example the console has 48/96 in it's name, that means that it can be set up like a 2 scene preset console. For example, instead of programing cues... what you can do is if you have 48 dimmer or less (for this example) you can set your console as a 2 scene preset and it will put the same 48 channels on the 2nd row of faders/channels and then what you can do is set up a look on the top bank and set up a differnt look on the 2nd bank and crossfade from one to the other. This is how conventional consoles used to be run.

You can also patch in 1092 fixtures into a console with one DMX output
 
I've always seen it where the first number is the number of faders you have with two scene capability for programming and the second number is for when you flip a switch causing the scene X faders to turn into the first half and the scene Y faders to turn into the second half.
 
Radman said:
Not that this number is not always a direct representation of the max amount of channels. An ETC Express 24/48 has a max 96 seperate channels, accessible through pages. In single scene mode on this board, page one would be ch 1-48, controlled by channel faders 1-48. Arrow over and you are in page 2, ch 49-96, controlled by channel faders 1-48.
Are you sure this is how that works? I was under the impression from ETC's literature and a limited amount of time actually playing around with a 72/144 (max. channels 192) that channel numbers above the second number were accessible only through the keypad. ([Ch] 165 [@] [Full].)

If what you say is true, what happens when you "arrow over" and there are still sliders up? Does the slider suddenly bump over to controlling a completely different channel? Or does the initial channel "stick" until the slider is brought down and then back up, like when loading another Submaster page?
 
Why are things so confusing? On the Hog board, your only limited to the # of DMX universes you have plugged in (usually 2), which means 1, 024 channels.
 
Toul said:
If what you say is true, what happens when you "arrow over" and there are still sliders up? Does the slider suddenly bump over to controlling a completely different channel? Or does the initial channel "stick" until the slider is brought down and then back up, like when loading another Submaster page?

It "sticks" until you bring it down, then the new sub loads in.

What isn't being mentioned is how you normally don't have channel 1 running in sub 1, channel 2 running in sub 2, and so on and so on.

My school has an ETC Express 125. This board has 24 submasters, and 125 channels accessible from the keypad. You can have a total of 1,024 dimmers (2 DMX universes), they will just get patched into the 125 channels. I can run 10 pages of sub masters, or put 10 or 20, or all, if I wish, the dimmers on one submaster.

Its late right now, so I hope this post makes sense.
 
1,024 channels of DMX get patched into 125 channels? How does that work. What is a sub-master fader? ZW
 
CHANNELS

On ETC boards the numbers 48/96 for example represent the number of physical faders on the board, the faders you can control manually without using the key pad; it can be configured for each row of 48 sliders to run channels 1-48 (two scene mode) or for the first row to run channels 1-49 and the second row to run channels 49-96 (one scene mode).

The board is capable of handling more channels than the 96, it's just any channel above 96 you have to set the levels with the key pad.

SUBMASTERS

The submaster faders are another row of physical faders on the board, on a 48/96 I think there are 24. A submaster allows you to record cues, if you will, on a an actual fader. There are only 24 sliders but there are multiples pages of sliders; so those 24 sliders, on page one, control submasters 1-24, on page two those 24 sliders control submaster 25-48.

For example, after focusing and patching all of your lights you might assign similiar instruments to the same submaster (i.e. all the backlights, all the cools in this area, or whatever) that way you can record cues faster b/c you can bring up those lights faster. The same idea goes for if you want to run a really simple show; I just record a bunch of submasters with the looks I want to use and I run the whole show by adjusting my submasters instead of running cues or having to adjust all of my channel sliders, it also saves you from having to operate in two scene mode.

PATCHING/DMX

As far as patching dimmers to channels go, the board, as mentioned, can handle up to 1024 DMX channels. If your setup is just a whole bunch of dimmers (with no moving lights) you can patch as many dimmers to a channel as you want. My understanding is each dimmer has a DMX address. One of those DMX channels tells the dimmer what level it should be at etc. With the 48/96 moving lights can be used but they do take up channels very quickly. The ETC boards also have two DMX outputs, one for DMX channels 1-512 and the other for the remaining 513-1024. Depending on how large your setup is you may only use one of these.

For example, in our setup we only use the 1-512, but we really only have 96 dimmers in a rack back stage, so we're aren't even fully utilizing that 512.

Clarification: The 48/96 has a total capability of handling 1024 DMX channels, which really means it can control 1024 dimmers, total. If you use moving lights this gets more complicated, but that is as simple as it is. You can patch as many of those dimmers, as many of those DMX channels, to a channel as you want.
 

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