I wouldn't use LEDs to light people just yet. They are great with saturate colors, lighting painted drops or cycs, lighting walls at weddings, lighting bridges, and many other specific uses. But they are not yet good at making a pleasant white and they make skin tones look sickly. Additionally there are no fixtures out there that are truly a 'point source' that are bright enough to resolve a gobo.
If color changing is the primary need, I would recommend you go with SeaChangers or Color Strollers. These are alternatives that will still leave you the ability to have a true 'white' on stage. And if you are dead set on LEDs, and want to get a good quality fixture that will last you into the future. Be prepared to spend upwards of $900 a fixture on Colorblasts or Seladors. There are a few LED lekos out there that can mimic a source four, and those are pretty good too. But to compete with an ETC S4 or even an Altman, you need to drop a good chunk of $$$.
Also, regardless of which way you go, be prepared to get DMX cable to run to all of the new color changing fixtures. Some have power supplies, some don't, but either way you should be prepared to run out data cable to every point the fixtures are at. And depending on the topology of the data run, you may also need an Opto-Iso (a fancy but necessary Y-cable for DMX). (...unless you want to go really fancy, and do it all via the computer and art-net, and get some artnet nodes... but probably not.)
Regardless, I would stress the fact that this isn't a little upgrade. I would contact your local lighting vendor. Tell them what you are thinking about doing and if they are a reputable company they will come out and take a look at your system for no charge. They will be able to help you figure out what gear will best suit you needs and make sure your initial guess at numbers (which will probably not be less than $10,000 for 10 really good LEDs and the infrastructure to make them work) encompasses all of the equipment necessary to make it work. The last thing you want to do is spend a couple thousand dollars on LEDs to find out after the fact that they won't work without a bunch of infrastructure that you now need to purchase.
A couple of other thoughts:
For the DMX – USB protocol, I would take a look at ENTTEC’s DMX USB Pro. We are a dealer for them, and that company is really great. Despite their low price, they make high quality hardware.
An Express can run LED fixtures just fine. Patch Red to one sub, Green to another, and Blue to a third and off you go. An express is a better ‘training’ board because it is more in line with larger more complicated boards. So if the students learn on an Express they will have an advantage over someone who learned on a PC based solution.
Express’ don’t crash. Computers do.
Hope any of this helped.
If color changing is the primary need, I would recommend you go with SeaChangers or Color Strollers. These are alternatives that will still leave you the ability to have a true 'white' on stage. And if you are dead set on LEDs, and want to get a good quality fixture that will last you into the future. Be prepared to spend upwards of $900 a fixture on Colorblasts or Seladors. There are a few LED lekos out there that can mimic a source four, and those are pretty good too. But to compete with an ETC S4 or even an Altman, you need to drop a good chunk of $$$.
Also, regardless of which way you go, be prepared to get DMX cable to run to all of the new color changing fixtures. Some have power supplies, some don't, but either way you should be prepared to run out data cable to every point the fixtures are at. And depending on the topology of the data run, you may also need an Opto-Iso (a fancy but necessary Y-cable for DMX). (...unless you want to go really fancy, and do it all via the computer and art-net, and get some artnet nodes... but probably not.)
Regardless, I would stress the fact that this isn't a little upgrade. I would contact your local lighting vendor. Tell them what you are thinking about doing and if they are a reputable company they will come out and take a look at your system for no charge. They will be able to help you figure out what gear will best suit you needs and make sure your initial guess at numbers (which will probably not be less than $10,000 for 10 really good LEDs and the infrastructure to make them work) encompasses all of the equipment necessary to make it work. The last thing you want to do is spend a couple thousand dollars on LEDs to find out after the fact that they won't work without a bunch of infrastructure that you now need to purchase.
A couple of other thoughts:
For the DMX – USB protocol, I would take a look at ENTTEC’s DMX USB Pro. We are a dealer for them, and that company is really great. Despite their low price, they make high quality hardware.
An Express can run LED fixtures just fine. Patch Red to one sub, Green to another, and Blue to a third and off you go. An express is a better ‘training’ board because it is more in line with larger more complicated boards. So if the students learn on an Express they will have an advantage over someone who learned on a PC based solution.
Express’ don’t crash. Computers do.
Hope any of this helped.
