Judge Posted July 9, 2013 Share Posted July 9, 2013 I am yet to be convinced. I have used a Sapphire Touch and an MA2 with this feature. So far it seems to me like a solution to a problem that didn't exist. This is maybe due to my style of operating though. I never have a whole heap of faders up at any time.Would genuinely like to hear from those of you that think this is a brilliant and welcome feature on new generation lighting desks, and why.Cheersj Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lxhipster Posted July 9, 2013 Share Posted July 9, 2013 I personally find Motorized faders particularly useless on lighting consoles. Compared to audio consoles, we don't really have a need to adjust parameters of each fixture on a fader in a live situation thus requiring so many faders etc. For me, the only usage for them is to put things like Smoke Machines, Backstage Lights, House Lights, Signage etc on a separate page and then once in a while go back to them and adjust it but for that alone I can live with putting these on a separate line on a separate console and save tons of money. Other than that I don't really have a need for them in my daily usage and found it to be annoying as there are one more delicate sets of hardware in the console that is very easy to break and requires regular calibration/maintenance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judge Posted July 9, 2013 Author Share Posted July 9, 2013 Thanks lxhipsterHaving done a fair bit of FOH sound myself I can totally see how on digital sound boards they are fantastic. But on a live mix you have loads of faders up at any given moment - then you can change page and adjust some percussion or BVs or whatever and then go back to your main mix. But lights is a different story entirely. Is it a case of "we are doing it because we can" Have Avolites done it because MA did? Has the Hog4 got it because Avo and MA have. really, is there a demand for this amongst LD's? Eh sorry, just realised the typo in the heading - fafers indeed. Cannot find a way to fix this. But you know what I mean :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jivemaster Posted July 9, 2013 Share Posted July 9, 2013 Seen motor faders in use for monitors as a battle of the bands event Soundchack was 2 minutes then each band played one song. But the Monitor mix was set on the soundcheck and recalled for the performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted July 9, 2013 Share Posted July 9, 2013 As a sound convert, I can think of quite a few instances where they'd be useful. I hate it when you switch pages and need to adjust something where the fader isn't actually showing the level on that page and you have to remember the one with the flashing light or screen indication is the held over one. Surely, zapping to a new page, having that pages fader positions reset, so you can adjust, then flip back is exactly the same as sound people now find so useful. I can't see any sensible reason to NOT have them, if the price point is in budget. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bleasdale Posted July 9, 2013 Share Posted July 9, 2013 Hog 4 has them because Hog 3 users moaned for years that the Hog 3 didn't have them. The only con to them is they require a tad bit of maintainence over their life - and they cost more. I'll be buying another console this year - the one I'm getting has motorised faders, and for busking across multiple pages its great, like Paul says, with held over playbacks it's much clearer on pages changes. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peza2010 Posted July 9, 2013 Share Posted July 9, 2013 motorised faders are the way to go, aslong as the console has the processing power if that makes sense? think of the pearl for example, have playback 1 up, switch page, to run playback 1 on that page you have to lose the use of it from page one. with motorised faders, and the ability to run pg 1 pb 1, and pg 2 pb 1 simultaneously and your laughing. no more having to think carefully about where to put stuff. (of course all of the above is irrelevant to cue stack programmers, but personally most of my work is busking) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJ bradderz Posted July 9, 2013 Share Posted July 9, 2013 In my view motorised faders are handy when busking, but I dont think they're a necessity. I wouldn't choose a desk purely because it has motorised faders, but it would be nice to have them there. E2A: however when busking you need to be careful with things like B/O as you have to go to each page to kill all playbacks (if you know what I mean) so they're good but bad at the same time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
niclights Posted July 9, 2013 Share Posted July 9, 2013 I disagree that they are the way to go just for the sake of it. The resistance from the motors even in the very best ones compromises the manual action. Whether this is a problem is down to the individual and the application but personally I place a high value of the quality of the physical controls and their feel. Therefore I will choose non-motorised and compromise on the number of active playbacks rather than compromise on my controls. Assuming I'm in a fortunate enough position to choose of course!However for the larger shows where you really need more physical playback faders then they are useful. And there is plenty of scope for switching to control other parameters, just like audio boards. I should point out that regarding Avolites and the Sapphire Touch you can choose whether you want held-over or non held-over. If you choose non held-over then, perhaps with the exception of masters jumping to their level on load show, there are no flying faders. Currently held-over playbacks are only permitted on Avolites consoles that have motorised faders precisely because identifying what is on and where along with the need to level-match is far from ideal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lxhipster Posted July 9, 2013 Share Posted July 9, 2013 I always have a Fader fight with the motorized faders and sometimes ended up killing the motor. Not really a good thing when you are busking when the band decides to go crazy and you have to do a flash and trash and fader dance manually with your molefays, conventionals and strobes. I did a rock show a week ago on a Maxxyz and ended up fighting with the faders so did really have to tone down a bit otherwise the motors would definitely break. Maybe Chamsys and Avo (minus the ST) fits more with these applications (: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dmxlights Posted July 9, 2013 Share Posted July 9, 2013 Yes they do have there uses. As Lxhipster said you can feck up the motors very easy when you need to a just things fast. I BCF2000 and I have snapped the belt that is used to drive the fader by moving it up and down very quickly when I was doing the lighting for a local school play and it happened when I was doing the fx of lighting. I did not even bother fixing it as I just put the fader down to 0 when powering up and its been fine. I don't think I would be jumping to buy a lighting desk with motorised faders any time soon. I know they have there uses I don't see much use for them in lighting consoles yet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wol Posted July 9, 2013 Share Posted July 9, 2013 Is it just me, or does anyone else get the impression that people don't know how to use flash buttons in this thread? :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bleasdale Posted July 10, 2013 Share Posted July 10, 2013 I always have a Fader fight with the motorized faders and sometimes ended up killing the motor. Just out of interest... Why/how are you "fighting" with levels YOU set? If anything, you spend longer moving faders around to match levels when changing pages without motorised faders.... Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted July 10, 2013 Share Posted July 10, 2013 They're not 'essential' - but remember the same questions being raised in sound topics years ago. The ability to swap active pages, but NOT to be able to nudge up or down faders means you don't set up the desk to be able to use it like that, just being able to drop a held over or having to use other methods to adjust it. The idea of fader flips to access other pages must be a great advantage rather than the present system. Also you could design a link system - so you could select groups of faders that, for example are up, and then bring them all down relative to each other. If you are busking - and have one hand busy, maybe with flashing manually, slowly dropping even two faders out of hand span is difficult - a couple of prods and one fader can drop 6. Seems great to me. Modern automated faders are no less responsive in feel to manual ones. My audio desk and my magicq feel very similar - and reliability is much better nowadays, and if one ever does fail, it's not a show stopper, you're back to how you used to be - surely? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomHoward Posted July 10, 2013 Share Posted July 10, 2013 These comments about breaking fader motors and motor resistance - the Yamaha faders are exceptionally light and fail on resistance so they don't break, are they using older design faders in the lighting consoles? We've thought about this at work before as we have an LS9 next to a Bullfrog - and in theatrical the uses are different as sound tends to be one send to one output, for which faders need to move, but theatrical lighting control is all HTP, with any given output fed from the sum total of many sources (subs, memories, manual control), so motorized faders could be useful on subs when changing pages, but other than that for manual control & adjusting the manual faders to follow the playback output it really needs the layout of the whole desk re-thinking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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