Graphic Equalizer

[lukew]

Hi everybody annother question from me. This year at our battle of the bands we are having 2 bars down the side of the stage with Green Pars, Yellow Pars and then Red pars at the top is it possible to program the desk to make these act like a graphic equalizer. We are using a zero 88 illusion 240. Would the "Ripple" function do this.

 

Many Thanks in advance

 

Luke

[robloxley]

You can use the audio input on the desk to set up a simple sound-to-light chase (i.e. flash red pars with bass, yellow with mids, green with treble etc.) from a feed from the sound desk; see the manual for full details.

[Aran2000]

Presumably by 'graphic equaliser' you actually mean you want to approximate the LED bar-graph meters commonly found on audio mixing consoles.

 

I'm not familiar with the illusion desk, but I'd imagine it shares similar audio functionality to the old sirius desks and newer frog range, allowing you to use the audio input to step through pre-programmed chases.

 

After a brief glance through the manual it appears that also in common with the older sirius desks, you can assign groups of lights to pulse when audio is received within specific frequency bands, and this is what seems to have been named the 'ripplesound' function on the illusion series. (As Robloxley pointed out).

 

This isn't quite going to achieve the effect I think you want (ie. red PAR cans fade up with loud audio, and green PAR cans come on most of the time, yellow ones come on with moderately loud audio). Correct me if I'm wrong there.

 

Now, donning my sound hat for a second. The best way to feed the illusion's audio input is by taking a separate aux send mix from the relevant channels on your audio mixing console, which will allow you to control to what extend each sound source influences the lighting. Alternatively, the rough and ready solution is to plug a dynamic microphone straight into the desk and position it somewhere near the FOH PA or monitors.

 

Alex.

[lukew]

Presumably by 'graphic equaliser' you actually mean you want to approximate the LED bar-graph meters commonly found on audio mixing consoles.

 

red PAR cans fade up with loud audio, and green PAR cans come on most of the time, yellow ones come on with moderately loud audio

 

You are right that is exactly what I want but if it is going to be more trouble then its worth I won't bother. I just thought it would be quite a nice little effect to have going by the side of the drummer.

[Jamtastic3]

You might want to just programme a good old sequence in though this may take time considering you have to do it step by step goin up and down the par 'scale'. It might result in a programme as much as 60 steps long but play it fast and it will look like its kind of reacting to the music (the crowd should get the design drift)

[lukew]

If the easiest way is just to program a sequence then I will probaly just do that.

 

Many Thanks for your help

 

Luke

[dgander]

I don't know how good you are at electronics but if your dimmerpacks have an analogue input you could use this to create the led bar graph effect.

 

One of those Velleman kits comes to mind (K4304), taking the output from the 3916 and inverting it to give 0-10v outputs.

 

This may be a completely ridiculous way of doing it though, as you'd have to think about how to dim it down between acts and such. It would also be interesting to know if there's anything wrong with using the 0-10v inputs in this way.

 

A sequence definitely seems like the best solution!

[cabletray]

Hi everybody annother question from me. This year at our battle of the bands we are having 2 bars down the side of the stage with Green Pars, Yellow Pars and then Red pars at the top is it possible to program the desk to make these act like a graphic equalizer. We are using a zero 88 illusion 240. Would the "Ripple" function do this.

 

Many Thanks in advance

 

Luke

 

Could you not hire in a Chroma bank or a cheap LED disco unit from MAD or Abstract?

http://www.madfx.uk.com/products/ledhead.htm

http://www.abstract.uk.com/extreme/products/XP1.html

 

They have the VU effect built in and with a MRRP of £250.00 the hire cost should be affordable.

[daemon]

Well we did this for a music festival in Brisbane,

http://conpub.com.au/cxweb/article.asp?ID=351

Unfortunately was a custom control system that my business built. Bit difficult to do off a desk properly, as most audio inputs seem to be a rate controller.