There is actually a lot more to the difference and I'll try and be as comprehensive as possible although I'm sure to leave something out.
Prior to the 500 series,
Strand manufactured the LightPalettes (for US), the Genius Pro style consoles (for the UK and EU market) and the Galaxy desks (used in EU and Asia). Anytime a software change was requested, it had to be rolled through all versions that apply. In order to simplify the code,
Strand decided to make one
console for the worldwide market. This was the 500 series and why there are 3 pages of setup options. One of those options is, what I
call, "The Big
Switch" that changes between LP mode and GP mode.
This change makes lots of changes. Some systemic and some are just display preferences.
LP mode is more for the US market and there are many systemic changes that are made to the
desk to think the way the US market does. GP was always the format that allows the
desk to work more the way the UK/EU market works as this is based on
preset desks...not memory desks.
After the departure of
road boards and autotransformers, the Broadway market went straight to memory consoles skipping the generation of
preset desks so Broadway designers needed memory desks to work the way that autotransformers worked. (Channels stay where they are until given an instruction to adjust -
tracking). The West End did not. They went through the generation of
preset desks and by doing so, needed memory desks to be a computer version of
preset desks. That's the reason for
Tracking Off in GP mode so that every
cue is essentially a
block cue. That's a
preset desk format. Many in the UK/EU today do not use
tracking as they are not comfortable with it.
So this all goes back much further than the Expression series and why I have always found amusing that
Strand (a British company at the time) was the one making desks that "thought" the way the US market users did (LightPalette) and
ETC was populating the US with a generation of Expressions which thinks more like a
preset desk and is closer to a UK thought process. Obviously, Obsession was a US based product for the US market.
-
Tracking options:
Tracking On,
Cue Only
-
Cue Types: All
Fade, Cross
Fade,
Block Cues (Soft and Hard)
- Standard channels are colored cyan.
- NEXT/LAST will automatically take out the previous
channel and set the
current channel at full.
- When recording cues with subs, the
cue will take over and all channels have to be "released" back to the subs.
GP is for the UK/EU market and include the following options/responses.
-
Tracking options:
Tracking On,
Cue Only,
Tracking Off
-
Cue Types: All
Fade, Cross
Fade, Move
Fade,
Block Cues (Soft and Hard)
- Standard channels are colored white.
- NEXT/LAST will leave the previous
channel at its
current level and
advance the
channel that is selected but not change it's
level.
- When recording cues with subs, the subs will stay in control making it easier to work in this manner.
In addition to these changes, throwing the Big
Switch will reset some of the user setup options (
channel layout,
channel control options,
blind cue options, what happens when you go into
preview...) so several things change.
If you have a show recorded
in one method and you
switch to the other, just make sure that the
Cue Type didn't change and everything works as expected.
In certain situations, you may need some time to sort this out but in many situations, it will likely not affect the recorded data.
If you have any specific questions about this, let me know.
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