SFX standard or deluxe?

[EarleyMan]

Hi,

I'm about to purchase the latest version of SFX for my theatre. However, there are two editions available, standard and deluxe. The deluxe edition has a few more features but I'm just not sure I'd ever use them. Can anyone recommend to me one of these versions and tell me why? Just looking for some other opinions. Thanks much!

 

[seanandkate]

Go for the deluxe. The standard is still plenty capable, but the limit that many people don't think about is the number of simultaneous cues in the standard edition: six. You don't think you can eat up 6 quickly, but you can. It's not just 6 wave files playing simultaneously, it also includes wait times and fade times which can really add up in a complex sequence. That being said, if price is an issue, I used standard for a decade, and there were only a handful of situations where I needed to adjust cueing to make sure that a seventh cue didn't start and bump out the first cue in the sequence that might still be doing something.
And even though you may not need the other features now, they might solve a design problem later that you can't even anticipate in this point in time. Feel free to PM me if you have more questions.

 

[DaveySimps]

Stage Research has changed a bit with the new version 6 of SFX. The standard version has more features than it use to have. Unless you really need a lot of MIDI stuff, I would say the standard will suit you well.

~Dave