"moving" lights advice please |
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bass*en*mass
Old Croc Joined: 03 September 2009 Location: "unknown" Status: Offline Points: 4009 |
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Posted: 04 December 2009 at 12:13pm |
Hya,
i work for a club now and would like to improve their lighting, but i am totally new to that as i am a sound guy and have never been interested in lighting yet... they mainly do live shows but also some dj partys aswell. for the stage they have 24 PAR cans and a controller which is more than enough for the size but for just party stuff its boring as hell. they have a mirror ball, an old optikinetics effect and a hazer - thats it. so my question is what lights are common in disco/party clubs? music varies from balkan, gypsy to minimal, drumnbass and all u can dance budget is around 1000€ for some nice moving effects, maybe mini-laser too any advice or ideas? cheers |
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bass*en*mass
Old Croc Joined: 03 September 2009 Location: "unknown" Status: Offline Points: 4009 |
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p.s.: room size is only 250peps max so no need of big/bright stuff!
thanks |
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jamwa
Young Croc Joined: 10 February 2009 Location: Southwest Status: Offline Points: 1060 |
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you will get 4 stagetec LED movers for that and a simple DMX pc interface and bob is your uncle as they say in blighty....
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Sound, Light, Projection, Display, Cameras and production support
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bass*en*mass
Old Croc Joined: 03 September 2009 Location: "unknown" Status: Offline Points: 4009 |
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stuff dont has to be new...
just need a direction of what is usually used! thanks |
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joshd963
Registered User Joined: 09 September 2009 Status: Offline Points: 375 |
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strobes / lasers / movers
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Jasonstry
Young Croc Joined: 11 September 2007 Location: Cannock. J11 M6 Status: Offline Points: 1367 |
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I would avoid lasers unless you know what you are doing as you can run into complicated Health and Safety issues. When it comes to movers, you can have moving heads and moving mirrors (scanners). Moving heads are very fashionable. Scanners are less so and that means more bang per buck. They are able to move faster but don't have the same range as a moving head. A moving head can project a beam behind it while a scanner can't. Movers tend to come as either washes or spots (I am guessing you know the difference with regard to beam size) while scanners always seem to be spots. The spots have different gobos to change the shape of the beam while washes don't. Lighting comes with different kinds and powers of "lamps" which are bulbs to most people but if you call them bulbs to a lighting pro they will assume that you don't know what you are talking about and will be snickering at you while rubbing their hands with glee. On that note, they are "fixtures" not "lights" as well. Anywya, lamps. Ordinary tungsten type lamps that are similar to those in par cans. Normally these only go up to about 250W in a mover. There is another kind that is called HMI or HDI or similar. These are brighter watt for watt than a tungsten (the optics of the actual fixture have a big impact as well) and have a higher colour temperature, which means the white tends to be purer or bluer compared to tungstens. The HMI lamps are quite a lot more expensive to buy but last up to 10 times as long as a standard tungsten. They do need to be changed at regular intervals and should not be left until they blow as they can blow big style. That is OK, you just need a maintenance cycle to replace lamps and clean all the crap out. I would go for HMIs if I were you and be looking at 250W lamps.
Other issues are power and control.
So power. 24 x 300W Par 56 cans are going to use 7200W, which is the power supplied by a ring main. 24 x 1000W PAR 64s is, well, 24,000W which puts the venue in a different league. A fixture with a 250W HMI lamp is going to use more than 250W to run, possibly 350 to 400W. Another big thing on power is that an HMI lamp requires a ballast (don't ask....or more honestly, don't ask me.....) and that can require up to 3 times the normal running power when first turned on. You can turn the switch on a socket on and blow fuses.
Control. What do you have in place? 24 cans suggests a desk with either 24 channels or 12 channels with cans wire up as 2 cans per channel. I don't know if that is DMX or analogue or whether you know what the difference is - we all start somewhere. If the present desk or whatever is full then you cannot expand your system without either replacing the existing desk with one with more channels or adding an extra desk.
Hope that helps.
Andy
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bass*en*mass
Old Croc Joined: 03 September 2009 Location: "unknown" Status: Offline Points: 4009 |
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thanks jason
distro is fine its 32A light and 32A sound only 18cans are used, 12 small ones 6 big ones, run in pairs off a dimmer rack and the desk desk is a MA lightning lightcommander 12/2 with 2 dimmers 12x2.3kw also MA lightning for adequate stage-lighting its fine but nothing for partys... so i look for some effects to improve the "fun-factor" whilst usual club events is sound to light ok nowadays? please any recommendations how its done today in professional club installations thanks |
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Jasonstry
Young Croc Joined: 11 September 2007 Location: Cannock. J11 M6 Status: Offline Points: 1367 |
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Its Andy rather than Jason though you're not the first person to make the mistake.
IAssuming it is single phase, 32A is 7300W @ 230V, 7700W @ 240V and 8000W @ 250V. There is every chance that your power for lighting is already allocated. No offence but "small ones and big ones" doesn't really help me much. In theory, you can have as many cans as you want as long as you don't exceed the available power but it isn't unusual to have a set up where you can't trip the fuses even if you have everything on full at the same time. You will have to make sure that you only have minimal stage lighting in use to free up the power for your movers. Also don't assume that a PAR can only uses half power if you have the fader halfway up as it doesn't work like that.
You might be better leaving all the 16 cans that you currently in use out of your plans. You can then nick the other 8 and use them for washes at your parties. You will be able to gel them up to match the colours of your movers.
Sound to doggy pooe will work after a fashion but some of the internal programs are limited and, well, not very good at linking to the actual music. I think that your desk has a total of 99 dmx channels. If you are using 8 dimmer packs then that is 8 leaving you with 91 (clever me). It has far better capabilities for putting together a show but it will take quite a bit of work to get the best out of it. Do you know how dmx works?
Andy
Sound to doggy pooe will work after a fa
Andy
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bass*en*mass
Old Croc Joined: 03 September 2009 Location: "unknown" Status: Offline Points: 4009 |
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allright andy sorry for beeing not really precise.
its 12 par56 with 300w and 8 par64 with 500w, thats what the owner told me. 56s are controlled in doubles, 64s seperatly. (off the MA dimmers 2x12 2.3kw, so i guess its not a single phase 32A) the cans are not used whilst usual dj-events, just 4 for some background lights... i am unfortunatly not yet too firm with dmx and how it all works thats why i would prefer an easy solution (sound to "doggy poo") as theres also no one to control the lights all night, besides me who has different things to do than LJing mainly. will have a read on the subject aswell and would be happy to get some more info or recommendations from u or other guys on here! cheers alex |
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skeets1skeets
New Member Joined: 11 December 2009 Status: Offline Points: 2 |
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Have been working in clubs and bars for a long time now installing sound systems and lighting and I think what you need is some intelegent lighting that can either be controlled using DMX when needed or on stand alone when you have nobody to control the lighting. One of the best lighting effects I have installed is the Martin Wizard Extreme which gives great coverage and works on stand alone when no receiving DMX. Might work well for you. |
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Jasonstry
Young Croc Joined: 11 September 2007 Location: Cannock. J11 M6 Status: Offline Points: 1367 |
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The Wizard extreme is a VERY good fixture but it will just about kill your budget. Doesn't the desk have a Sound to Light function anyway? If not, skeets1skeets makes a good point in that a number of fixtures have a built in Sound to Light Function that you can turn on via dmx and you might be best to get ones that can do that.
Andy
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