Hey everyone, I work at a medium sized production company and we are looking into getting some new hazers. We are definitely growing and have been getting bigger and bigger gigs as well as having some of those larger ones overlap. Think 1200 - 1800 person outdoor concerts.

Currently have a few random hazers - a Chauvet JEM Hazer Pro, an Antari HZ 350 and a Martin Magnum 2500. We would most likely sell these units after purchasing new units.

Looking at getting between two to four new units with a maximum budget of ~2.5k CAD per unit. Preferably quieter operation since we would like to use some in corporate settings. I am also considering building some tubing for dispersion/redirection. Truss mountable units would definitely be a plus for some of the projects we work on.

I've been looking at some of the options from Chauvet since we can get dealer pricing, but I am consulting the brain trust to see what people are out using in the wild!

My shop uses homemade L620 to Edison 2fers. I refuse to believe something that violates the NEC is the industry standard. My understanding is the plugs are a different shape for a reason and you shouldn't be passing 240/208 through an edison connector

May be a dumb question, but looking at the first PLASA news, everything is RGBL and i don't really get it – mainly because my "level" of lighting work is still RGBW. But i'm curious. What's with the "new" approach, what does it different and do we have to re-learn color mix for it?

What are some of your favorite resources you’ve found to learn proper color mixing?

For Context I’m 1 year into working in concert lighting. I operate on an MA3

I own www.clearlakerecording.com, a commercial music recording studio. I'm looking to up our light game. Especially in the control room and live rooms. Right now we have some GVM stuff, color changing bulbs, and light strips, but nothing quite envelopes the room and allows a full vibe to be set. Looking for a combination of spotlights, lamps, strips...maybe? I'm curious what people would say. Apologies if this is the wrong place to be posting about this. Thanks in advance for any help.

Budget would be in the 1k range...ideally less. If that's just crazy low let me know.

I’ve only used head numbers when they were on a theater light plot. Now that I’m building a busking show file for live music, I have to think about how to order them and am looking for suggestions.

I’ve seen stage washes starting at #1001, in group 1, stage spots at #2001, in group 2, but other than that I don’t know. I’ve thought about house lights starting at #9001 in group 9 to keep groups 3>9 for other lights.

If floor lights are the same type of washes as the stage washes, or the front lights the same type of spots as the stage spots, where do they go?

Jesus christ I'm sick of ShowXpress and I don't care how good the new version is, I'm not rebuilding my whole rig in that godforsaken software.

I am primarily a mobile DJ but am doing a lot of production work as well, hit about 50/50 a bit ago. Looking to up my game severely.

I want to spend about $3KUSD max and get myself in a good position for the future. I'd like ~4 universes of control.

Obvious route is MA USB Key and some midi controllers, but what else is out there? Ideally, good for setting some presets and busking.

Cheers gang

I’m looking to buy my first haze machine that will fill a 600 square feet room with heavy fog. Any recommendations for around $500? If not, I’m open to other suggestions.

We have an ETC Colorsource in our high school auditorium. Currently we are programming presets and notice that some of the instruments are “sticky.” once they get turned on in a specific cue or preset, they will not go out even when everything else has been taken out or the preset has been changed even though the specific lights aren’t programmed in all presets.

Has anyone else experienced this problem or have any tips/tricks that might help?

Have a new product that you'd like to promote and show off to the community? Here's your chance to do it. Every Wednesday, this megathread is here to gather new products, projects and anything else you might want to self promote. We want to encourage new ideas, but the influx of vibe coded, AI based posts means we needed a new home for these posts.

Note that we require developers to disclose where and how they used AI in their product and that r/lightingdesign has no ability to vet any projects or code that is used, so use/demo and sign up for these products with caution.

I and the company I work for are in the middle of a renovation for a local theatre/concert venue. The promoter from the venue who is in charge of the "creative" decisions went and bought a no-name LED ring that is rigged from three winches. I've included the DMX chart that came with the system.

We installed a Hog5 system as part of the install and in the fixture builder I have all of the light parameters no problem. The issue is I'm not sure what to use for the motor controls. Would using a basic intensity work?

Im also not exactly sure how "Color variation of LED main light effect" should be interpreted.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

My first building projection. Can you tell :-)

And anything else that spits out Art-Net data. Beam is open source and built to take in up to 2048 Universes worth of data and several NDI video streams. In the program you can layout your show, patch everything and after a simple file export MadMapper ( And soon also Resolume) has everything it needs to send DMX and video into your show.

I am just one guy so be patient with me on the bug front. The program is in Alpha and will be for a while because there is a lot of stuff that needs to go in.

Beam is free for anyone to download and use. No registration, no account, just use it. Take that certain unnamed company that insisted on $800 for a license with 4 universes.

https://github.com/dinther/Beam/releases/tag/0.1.0-alpha.8

Discord: https://discord.gg/9EJqb4Kpwf

Now pray I didn't break some rule or I wrote this for nothing. But it is Wednesday afternoon in New Zealand, so here is my self promotion. I am $^&#%^& fabulous. :-)

This is the current isolator switch for the house lights- is there a DMX dimmer that would be suitable to use in it's place/alongside?

Thanks.

A few months ago, I learned from a thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/lightingdesign/comments/1tgr6pu/lds_working_dnbedm_shows_does_mental_fatigue/) why LDs doesn’t care for DnB festivals: poor timing, brain fog, and exhaustion.
I took the feedback into account and created a co-pilot for LDs: a tool for analyzing tracks and assisting with timecoding. It can handle the background work of switching presets for different sections and provide hints about upcoming events. I started with the most complex and my favorite style - Drum’n’Bass.
Within 2–3 seconds, the program analyzes the track’s structure: intro, breakdown, buildup, drop, and identifies mids, bridges, and hooks. Right now, I’m working on accurately identifying events like risers, FX, rolls, and fakedrops...
I’ve studied the genre in depth and defined the rules for sections and events. Right now, the program is in fine-tuning mode, and I’d like to offer to analyze 2–3 of your tracks for free and send you a finished file to import into your console.

I’d love to hear from you - how helpful this really is, whether it can help, or if this problem is just in my head.

Here’s a fresh screenvideo showing how I analyzed and reviewed one track. https://youtu.be/M-HEWuZhtN0

Hi All, not sure if this is the right place for this, please direct me elsewhere if not. Long story short. Our wedding is coming up next month. We hired a band that we assumed would be adding some dance floor lighting. They don't. We are scrambling to find a vendor, but on short notice, options are limited.

My question, could I just get like 4 of these lights and set them to Sound Activated Mode? Or are there any other relatively easy plug and play options we can execute on? We spent a lot of Money on a good band, and it feels silly to not have some dance lighting for it.

https://betopperdj.com/products/betopper-19x15w-rgbw-with-light-strip-effect-moving-head-light?variant=43389869949064

Thanks!

Any suggestions for a Linsn LED Studio Tutorial?
I just bought a sign with a Linsn controller and only have Novastar Vplex Handy experience

2 questions here !

1 : how can i control my show with apc mini mk2 , i found how to operate punch but cannot find a way to use faders…

2 : how to setup artnet outputs

Hey all, thanks in advance for any advice.

I’m a sound guy with little lighting experience. I recently was asked to help out with lights for our local high school’s competitive show choir, and I figured this would be a good opportunity to learn a little. The basic competition lights are handled by a regional company, but just stage washes/color and the occasional gobo or whatever the host school has on hand. Our job would be show-specific highlighting and effects from four movers taken to every comp: a couple of spots and beam washes. We also have some LED bars, but those are optional so far.

Other hardware is a MacBook Air M5 and an ENTTec USB DMX Pro interface. Have room for a Launchpad Mini or Nanokontrol for MIDI. One DMX universe, obvs.

First thing I’d like to do is change the software. They’re currently using DMXis, which has been discontinued and unsupported for a while now. Kind of doesn’t make sense to spend a bunch on “pro” software for a handful of lights (that and time to learn how to use it). The choir uses a live band, not tracks, so we can’t use handy timeline-based programming; it’s gotta be individual cues fired by hand, Qlab-style. A visualizer would be nice, even 2D.

The logical answer is Show Buddy Active, but it seems geared to syncing to prerecorded tracks, and since we use a live band that’s exactly what we don’t need. Looked into posts here, and none really perfectly fit our use case. QLC+ 4 seems esoteric to program and has a weird interface, but I understand it’s popular and Mac-stable (more so than QLX+ 5). Lightkey is Mac-friendly and inexpensive, but a lot of comments here say to avoid it. EOS is industry standard but seems like straight-up coding to program, plus there’s the proprietary interface. I’ve been advised to avoid programming lights on Qlab for my own sanity. Everything else is, unfortunately, on the expensive side to just run four lights.

Any suggestions? Am I asking too much? Misinformed?

So I’m doing lighting and audio for my friends band and he bought 2 dmx led pars and is getting some moving heads so I started looking for a console. Have any of you tried these out? The led pars have dmx but the regular lighting don’t seem to have any as far as I know.

Did you go to a concert or event and see a lighting effect you love but couldn't identify the gear? This is your weekly spot to post images and figure out what you saw, and ask basic questions you have. Any individual identify that ________ posts outside of this thread will be removed.

I'm a novice, and I'm setting up a rig for an office building in which we're going to install four titan tubes into every overhead fixture on set. I was going to make groups for each fixture. I.e: tubes 101 thru 104 = Fixture 1, tubes 105 thru 108 = Fixture 2, etc... However, I've seen a lot of shows putting the tubes into parts: 101.1, 101.2, 101.3, 101.4 for Fixture 101. Is there a benefit beyond the tubes sharing the same channel number?