Jester ml

[GOODN537433]

What about these behringer 24 channel lx desks I've seen advertised? Do they have fixture libraries/manual and memory control & programming options?

Do they do moving lights? 

Anyone know anything about them? 

Thanks 

[Robin D]

I was forced to use a FLX S24, having never previously seen one pre pandemic and struggled with it as I was having to 'busk it'! The big issue I struggled with was knowing what layer I was on, therefore constantly having to look at the desk.  That would be fine if you had time to sit and programme in a show, but on this occasion it was not an option. (I was asked to help after the tech and about two hours before the first show. I spent most of that time trying to work out what was what on the grid and really wanted to run it as a set of scene submasters, but there are just not enough of them. I had seen no rehearsals but knew Hairspray as had previously done it. It will be of no surprise to those here to be told it was a school! At least with the Sirius, you could set the scenes up per fader and then you simply had to know which fader was which. I am sure the FLX is a cracking little desk after a learning curve, planning and some rehearsals but it was a lot harder to busk with than my old Masterpiece!.  

The next day I took in my trusty Smartfade ML, as at least I knew my way around the desk and all the faders are in a line. I ran the rest of the run ran on that. 

To be fair to Z88, the emergency phone walkthrough I received was first class thank you.  

[indyld]

Obviously, a desk is a personal choice but as someone with absolutely no axe to grind, I feel like the FLX has got is share of negativity in comments here and on FB for this question. 

First time I walked up to FLX I found it incredibly easy to use. It had the main functions and workflows of a modern lighting desk, accessed in a way that I could generally suss out without looking at the manual. 

The fact that it isn't a Jester ML, Frog, or a Sirius or whatever throwback to affordable lighting control in the last century is its plus point. It works like a modern lighting desk, with the same paradigms as MA, Avo, Hog, ChamSys, Obsidian and whoever else I can't think of right now. 

This actually makes it a great desk but it depends on your perspective. Lighting equipment and practice has changed hugely since the VL1, and the last decade has seen as much of that change as any. 

I wish people wouldn't bash something like the FLX for just being a modern lighting control

Edited November 23, 2023 by indyld

[ianknight]

9 hours ago, GOODN537433 said:

@Edward- Z88 reminds me I must get my leap frog up to you for fault diagnosis/ repairs. After some smoking from it !

@GOODN537433 Sadly Zero88 don't take kit in for repair these days in the same way that they used to 😞

I do however repair Zero kit and am an authorised independent service centre (I can do warranty repairs too) - I also have spares around for LeapFrogs... Is it the original LeapFrog or the version that runs ZerOS? Hopefully it's not a LeapFrog 96 as transport can be problematic without a flight case. 

I'm in Coventry - if you want to carry on a conversation about this  - then eMail me - ian at serviceguy dot co dot uk 

[kgallen]

As of today there is no way I would want to use moving lights (or even LED washes) on anything less than an FLX type console. Considering the budget it seems to me "higher" consoles (ETC, Chamsys etc) are well out of range.

There is no way I would want to do moving lights on a desk that didn't have that baked into the design as a first thought rather than an afterthought. Yes you can have half a decent bash with movers on a Fat Frog (which supports such devices) but it can be hard work. Behringer and Showmaster type desks - you've got to be kidding me, we're not on the same page here (we're not even in the same book) if that class of design is under consideration.

FLX has move on dark, palettes galore, LED support, full-feature modern fixture libraries and proper tracking built into the design from day 1 - not the relatively horrendous Partial mode on the Frogs that you needed to use for anything beyond a two-preset type generics rig. Movers on a Sirius or Strand GSX era desk - you've got to be kidding!

Seems we need a reset on this thread for the OP to spell out clearly what is in the rig - how many and what type of fixtures, who the users are, what type of shows need to be supported, and what capabilities within those shows. And the real budget. If there is a couple of hundred quid available we might have to just stop here.

 

[Hilary Watts]

I've got a Behringer LC2412 which I bought in 2005 before I had any LED fixtures.  It was excellent value at the time and I still use it regularly for small events with a limited number of lights which just require a few presets fading up and down.  However, it has some idiosyncracies, it certainly isn't suitable for moving lights and as most LED fixtures require 4 or more DMX channels the fact that it can only handle 24 channels in all is extremely limiting. There is a reason why the behringer and showtec type desks are a fraction of the price of a 'proper' desk .....

[Stuart91]

8 hours ago, Robin D said:

To be fair to Z88, the emergency phone walkthrough I received was first class thank you.  

Zero have always been great for this. I was given comprehensive help the Saturday before Christmas one year. Saved me a trip over to a customer (who had made a mistake in their DMX wiring which I couldn't guess over the phone) and I was immensely grateful. 

[GOODN537433]

21 hours ago, indyld said:

 

Thank you @Hilary Watts that's the thoughts I had and the information is greatly appreciated and useful for this process. 

[GOODN537433]

Thanks @ianknight will dig it out of its flight case at the back of the store repair pile and check if its a leap or bull and I will probably not be able to check the os as im not sure it will power up after its smoking session 😢💨

[GOODN537433]

@kgallen

Currently it is unknown what will be in the rig.

Probably some led profiles or replacement led pars, 

A couple of led cyc lights / battens ( call them what you like).

And the ability to run 6 traditional fixtures. 

1st job is to find a desk and the cost of it to run the 6 current led pars / or the replacement lanterns before proceeding any further as Currently thier desk uses all it channels for the led pars with no ability to run anything else and the pars are definitely failing and the desk though serviceable is too small and getting odd moments.

Hence the original question of appropriate desk in place of the jester ml which I hadn't realised was no more ! 

Hope this clears things up. 

Nick

[kgallen]

The LEDs (or other device with more than one "colour") imply you need a console that treats one LED luminaire as one controllable object - just one with a number of colour (or other) attributes. Your typical £200 "console" still thinks in the "one fader controls one DMX channel controls one dimmer controls a light" mentality. So even the most basic LED fixture gobbles up your faders. Further, the console has no ability to understand your one LED luminaire as one light with elaborate controls and no ability to understand red, green, blue channels collectively as a colour control and thus no sensible way for the lighting designer to request a yellow, or a cyan or an orange or an... This is what (colour) palettes give you.

If you add in movers (1) if you've got the money for movers you (2) need the money to have the control surface to work them.

Movers require palettes too - for position. It is essentially impossible to plot a show in a meaningful time with movers without position palettes.

Then really you need move on dark. Sure, in the past we've used marking cues to do this manually. But then you need time and an experienced programmer to anticipate what is required.

This is why consoles like the FLX range and the higher devices from ETC et al exist. It's just not practical to operate these complex lights with the dimmer-oriented fader-based controls of yesteryear.

 

 

[indyld]

The bottom line here is that in the future, people are gonna want to use stuff that needs a proper desk at some level. The answer isn't a Behringer or a SmartFade ML (another thing of filth, along with the Jester ML). Minimum you will want a FLX, QuickQ or, (urgh) Colorsource type of desk. 

I don't agree that MIB is essential, but it is the sticking plaster that people used to cuelists of conventionals use to shore up the huge gulf between what they know about putting a few dimmers up and recording a cue, and the massive learning curve that is controlling fixtures in the modern era. But, MIB also gets people into a mess because they fundamentally don't understand a lot of the core concepts in lighting control, are confused by tracking, LTP, priority, virtual dimmers etc. So, it's a blessing until it is a curse.

All of this points to the main thing about the kind of lighting people expect these days, and the functionality of equipment they can suddenly afford. 

Anywhere needs both a baseline control desk capability, and someone that can learn to use it. There are no shortcuts. It is no longer 1995 and running modern fixtures on the equivalent of a Sirius or Jands Event takes even more skill and knowledge than it did back then - and even then it was horrible.

Edited November 23, 2023 by indyld

[Robin D]

12 hours ago, indyld said:

and someone that can learn to use it.

And there is the rub. Your average school teacher understood the fader per channel concept. They do not understand more modern concepts such as I faced at zero notice with the FLX (S) that the school had been persuaded to buy from a supplier who was less than keen to assist. They got the call to help before I did. If you actually have the someone to use it, you also need 

• Time
• Knowledge of what's in the rig and to have it properly patched, 
• a clear understanding from the Director of the actual lighting requirements. 

In my experience, rarely do one out of three see the light of day and the call for help always goes out far too late. The keen student, (or even someone like me with limited experience on the modern stuff, but then I am advancing in years!),  is never going to do a great job. I know that, but then you have generally a large group of children keen as mustard to perform, tickets sold to parents and a rapidly approaching first night, what do you do. The school I was referring too, I ended up teaching the Head of Performing Arts the fundamentals of DMX, as well as how sound gets to and from the stage to the sound mixer through a stage box! 

Now it's dead easy to knock the teachers and those that allow these situations to occur, but surely desks could be designed to be more intuitive thus reducing the learning curve? As said earlier I am certain the FLX is a cracking little desk but faced with the late hour, the lack of working knowledge of the desk by me, (but I had more idea than anyone else.)! 

It's also easy to criticise the silly old codgers like me who live in the dark ages. Maybe I should have kept up to date as an amateur, but with generally two 'stage/dance school type shows' a year using mainly my own gear for the last couple of decades years,, why would I a) invest £000's in a new desk, or b) invest in training on any number of modern desks I might just be called upon to assist with at very short notice? My background is electronics and IT consultancy but have been retired for several years.

I also agree, it's not 1995, or even 1965 (with 2 x Junior 8's)! Sooner or later, something of the modern technology needs to be simplified or schools are going to stop doing shows and that will be a real travesty. The only thing anyone in the school knew how to do with the FLX was to use the colour picker to change the scene colour. Training certain teachers will help, but teachers move on, and is the incoming person going to get training on the equipment? You all know the answer to that. It's a huge challenge but one that system designers could really assist with if they stepped back from their own knowledge base and really put their minds to it. The alternatives of hiring in a LD and operator are just not going to happen whatever the purists here might thing should happen. 

I sometimes wonder if I should have persevered with the FLX, but driving home that evening having been thrown out by the caretaker who wanted to go home, I knew that with a hour or two next day before the opening matinee for local feeder primary schools, I could put a half decent light show on using the Smartfade sate in my garage. Rightly or wrongly, that's what I did.  

None of this helps the OP. I felt that adding my ten penneth worth was the right thing to do, but again, if anyone thinks that was wrong, I apologise. 

[J Pearce]

The Jands/Chroma Q Stage-CL provides an interesting control layout for folks who really just want a fader per light - per channel it has a fader, a hue dial, and a saturation dial. Effects can be accessed by a touchscreen. 

It can do fancier things, but for sitting in a corner and letting folk setup a scene on some non-mover LEDs it's quite a user-friendly option.

[Edward- Z88]

5 hours ago, Robin D said:

• Knowledge of what's in the rig and to have it properly patched, 

I think this is a really valid point. Before you can even think about touching a lighting console, the rig needs to be working. Powered, data cabled, and addressed. If the rig isn't working, this is a huge learning curve for those that are not in the industry. "DMX", "Personalities", "Start Address", "DMX Splitter", "Universe" are all just jargon. This is the exact problem we try to solve with RigSync. However, in most cases, the fixtures are sadly not RDM, and so this all falls down...

https://www.zero88.com/manuals/zeros/setup/universes/remote-device-management

5 hours ago, Robin D said:

Now it's dead easy to knock the teachers and those that allow these situations to occur, but surely desks could be designed to be more intuitive thus reducing the learning curve? As said earlier I am certain the FLX is a cracking little desk but faced with the late hour, the lack of working knowledge of the desk by me, (but I had more idea than anyone else.)! 

The aim of FLX series consoles is that they are as intuitive as possible, without limiting advanced "industry" users. There are some consoles solely aimed at non-industry operators, some aimed at industry professionals, and then FLX which is definitely designed as a "hybrid". If there were particular workflows you found hard to get your head around, I'd love to know - perhaps we can make some changes.

However, what never ceases to amaze me, is the speed at which students pick up and learn FLX. I was running console training only the other week at a school, and before I had finished explaining what the different faders and buttons are for, a couple of students that had never touched the console were controlling lights, and recording them onto playback faders. Anyone under 20 - 25 seems to just "get" FLX. Why? Good question. Growing up with an operating system in your hand (smartphone/tablet) is definitely going to help, but I also wonder whether an element is that they have never heard the term "fader per channel". If you don't know this philosophy, why would you expect a single light to have several faders to control it? Working left to right, they see the fourth light, raise the fourth fader on FLX, it comes on, tap blue on the touchscreen, and that light is now blue. Happy days.

5 hours ago, Robin D said:

The only thing anyone in the school knew how to do with the FLX was to use the colour picker to change the scene colour. Training certain teachers will help, but teachers move on, and is the incoming person going to get training on the equipment?

This is a real issue, and something we see regularly from a support point of view. There never seems to be any handover when the designated school technician leaves. This is where from our point of view online training works well. The teacher who wishes (or has to!) pick up the reins can join an online session on their tablet, sit in front of the console, and work through some examples with their lighting rig. 

I hope this hasn't come across as me ramming FLX down your throats. I'm not a sales guy so had no intention to! Just my personal outlook on the topic.

Edited November 24, 2023 by Edward- Z88