Having spent the summer programing shows on the smart
fade, I would not recommend it. If you are running a festival type event with a bunch of subs, you will be fine with it. If you are programing shows that run for weeks on end as I was, with over 100 cues per show, your life will be a living hell. Yes it is cheap, but you pay for it in the end.
My issues with the board
a) Patching - Patching is not easy on a small
lcd display with a scroll wheel. It takes much longer than it would on any other board.
b) No offline editor - When I first got to the board, I thought maybe there was an offline editor that will make it easier because I will have a keyboard. Well there is an offline program, but its just a flash video that allows you to
play with it, but not do anything worth while.
c) Cuing - If you intend to do any cuing at all, especially if you will have large amounts of cues, stay away from this board. First off, every
cue needs to be written as a "memory" which is the same as a
submaster. Second, to make a
cue stack you go through and hit the subs in the order you want them to be for your stack. At this
point you can only have whole number cues. Then if later you decide to delete a
cue that was a whole number, it drops every
cue after it down (so
cue 41 is now
cue 40) meaning that you have to go through and remark your script. After the
cue stack is built, you can add decimal cues, but only after you make the initial stack.
Bottom
line is, unless you have all the time in the world, and very basic designs, don't go with this board.
*Rant over*
PS - I once got a
call from the artistic director of the theater, as he was trying to put light onstage, and i quote "What do I do now!? I turned on this board and it looks like a christmas tree!!"