Daslight vs Sunlite vs Lumidmx ..what cuts it ?
Printed From: Speakerplans.com
Category: Other Chat
Forum Name: Lighting Talk
Forum Description: All your lampy, laser and 'other' special FX needs....
URL: https://forum.speakerplans.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=54496
Printed Date: 27 March 2026 at 5:30am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.08 - https://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Daslight vs Sunlite vs Lumidmx ..what cuts it ?
Posted By: nineleaves
Subject: Daslight vs Sunlite vs Lumidmx ..what cuts it ?
Date Posted: 12 July 2011 at 8:51pm
|
Having a right ol time deciding what to invest in, in this price range for intelligent lighting control.. all seem very good in their own ways, but each has their niggles. The bottom line is i actually want the tool that gets the job done and allows easy creation and editing of shows later. Lighting being driven is 8 off moving heads, a bunch of scanners, some led light bars and some parcans. Requirements are the ability to easily create show palletes that can be left to do something half way decent when left on automation mode & allow for halfway fun improvised busking to be done on the fly on top. in addition i like being able to edit stuff in timeline mode as opposed to being limited to step mode sequencer & like having half way dependable show pre visualisation on pc to set things up ahead of deployment of the full arsenal of kit. What are peoples experiences with these & what gets the job done when it comes to the crunch ? Also are there any other systems that should at least be considered ? http://www.daslight.com/ http://www.nicolaudie.com/ http://www.lumidmx.com/ |
Replies:
Posted By: norty303
Date Posted: 12 July 2011 at 8:59pm
Chamsys MagicQ (free) with a full MagicDMX dongle (~£60) Budget for a touchscreen too - an ELO 15" can be had for about £80-£100 on ebay. Has a timeline feature but probably not 'Windows' enough if you're using the others as a benchmark. However, MagicQ is closer to Avo's, Frogs, Hogs, etc in terms of actual lighting desks. ------------- My laser stuff: http://www.facebook.com/SubsonicSystems" rel="nofollow - Frikkin Lasers |
Also are there any other systems that should at least be considered ?Posted By: nineleaves
Date Posted: 12 July 2011 at 9:02pm
|
Looked at chamsys, will boot it up again, been a while since i looked into it.. can understand the avolites users love it for being very much like the desks. Though being someone whos used to the way cubase & video editing software works, i like my interfaces to be extremely visual in their feeback & manipulation of data snippets :) |
Posted By: norty303
Date Posted: 12 July 2011 at 9:37pm
|
Yep, I hear you. However, consider that in a gig situation, you are using the rig for your visual feedback, and so a more traditional lighting desk makes more sense, especially if you can operate it without having to look down, or just spend it staring at a screen. I tried using a more Windows based software for some time, but found that the 'lighting console' type desks/software are popular because its actually a good way of doing lighting control. You mention timeline as a key requirement. Are you going to be producing pre-programmed shows synced to music, or are you looking for something buskable? ------------- My laser stuff: http://www.facebook.com/SubsonicSystems" rel="nofollow - Frikkin Lasers |
Posted By: nineleaves
Date Posted: 13 July 2011 at 12:17am
|
Mostly pre-programming shows which sync to the music. But with the ability to select appropriate sequences & tweak afew elements directly appropriately for the music at hand when it matters. Not 'theatre' style work for the most part; although at least one band will certainly require this for what they want to do. Have some passing experience with messing with intelligent lighting, tho meerly lashed it up before with afew quick and dirty things done in the likes of freestyler. it did in a fashion, but could see a huge depth of potential that wasnt being used. Setting out to get my hands properly dirty & do the job properly this time. I still remain open to at somepoint to learning the 'avolites console' approach; however i find navigating & mapping out my intended programming plan of action, like climbing a cliff face with a pocket torch. ..those menus feel like one of those old text adventure games ;) :) So unless the more visually orientated options can be ruled out for being ultimately not upto the job, id prefer to start there first at least. On the hardware user interface thing, this is indeed a strong point; however in terms of "touch typing" with lighting ive got a fair few midi routable devices offering faders, knobs, buttons and joysticks which can be mapped to various things for direct manipulation & hitting cues in with buttons you dont have to look for (ie touchscreen ones ;) ). Im relatively confident that the right things can be mapped for accessability. In terms of the buskability & timeline business.. There will only be certain events likely to crop up where things are locked hard to a timeline & soundtrack, however there i mainly talk about a visual way of stacking up elements and editing them in sequences whose timeframe is determined externally by the detected tempo of the music. Mostly its a matter of building shows for events with djs on and the likes where a show of various interesting sequences can be left to play & self sync to the tempo or at least vaguely match it & when the nights requirements are higher, work in semi automatic mode, selecting sequences appropriate for the mood and tempo of the music concerned ..with the ability on top to still be able to isolate elements/fixtures individually for direct live control. Also the ability to preview something resembling the show sequences virtually is an important element here. means most of the donkey work laying up shows can be done in down time & then they can be polished when its all setup properly. Lack the luxuary of having the space to keep it all setup for programming. So short of somehow patching visualiser software onto the virtual backend of magicq, thats one reason its sorta ruled out. The other, is i just booted it up again and despite abit of digging firmly remembered what it was about it that drove me spare. Im sure its great once accoustomed to the way it works, though its not awfully compatable with the way i work ;) :) Oh, and added to that... although not perfect, having access to virtualisation allows the evaluation of weather a new fixture would be of benefit to a setup & allows creation of shows for fittings that might get hired in once in a while from elsewhere, but not owned :) |
Posted By: norty303
Date Posted: 13 July 2011 at 11:01am
Oh, you are not alone there. I tried it and thought it was crap, and put it to one side. I came back to it, read the manual, spent about 8 hrs playing, read the manual again and then it clicked. I think that because you are using it on a computer, you expect it to work like a computer. Once you see 'past' the computer and just see it as a lighting console, it starts to make sense more, but it does take a while to achieve the required mental re-adjustment. Where are you nineleaves? Just trying to think where you could get a few hours initial leg up so you can evaluate it for what it really is, rather than the demonspawn it first presents itself as. ------------- My laser stuff: http://www.facebook.com/SubsonicSystems" rel="nofollow - Frikkin Lasers |
Posted By: nineleaves
Date Posted: 13 July 2011 at 1:33pm
|
Based in Leicester, Midlands at this time. Bit of a trek to Eastbourne on spec i would think; but it is appreciated :) |
Posted By: norty303
Date Posted: 13 July 2011 at 2:00pm
|
Well I'll be up Lincolnshire way middle of September for a festival if you fancy a visit and a play. ------------- My laser stuff: http://www.facebook.com/SubsonicSystems" rel="nofollow - Frikkin Lasers |
Posted By: nineleaves
Date Posted: 13 July 2011 at 2:42pm
|
Thanks, Interesting offer, will have invested in a system by then tho. However it would be silly to pass up on a offer to have a play & see how more experienced folks in the field are getting the job done; so if nothing gets in the way id be up for that :) |
Posted By: norty303
Date Posted: 13 July 2011 at 2:59pm
I doubt £60 would break the bank for a dongle though, if you decided you liked the look of Chamsys  ------------- My laser stuff: http://www.facebook.com/SubsonicSystems" rel="nofollow - Frikkin Lasers |
Posted By: nineleaves
Date Posted: 13 July 2011 at 3:03pm
|
Indeed, it may as well be bought alongside anything else used ..as itll at the very least serve as effective "console logic" training for the price of a decent teccie book or two. |
Posted By: norty303
Date Posted: 13 July 2011 at 3:28pm
|
Well for £10 you get a MagicDMX dongle that is time limited for 5 hrs. Just restart for another 5 hours. Thats got to be worth it for the training. ------------- My laser stuff: http://www.facebook.com/SubsonicSystems" rel="nofollow - Frikkin Lasers |
Posted By: nineleaves
Date Posted: 13 July 2011 at 3:35pm
|
Blimey, they really are keen on getting customers onboard.. Fair play to them. Might as well go order that as the sideline option rn. |
Posted By: Jasonstry
Date Posted: 14 July 2011 at 4:29pm
| LightJockey is pretty intuitive and good for DJs since it was designed for the club environment. It is free to download, as is the extra software that allows you to use a touchscreen. The dongles aren't cheap though but, as it happens, I have one for sale.... |
Posted By: nineleaves
Date Posted: 14 July 2011 at 4:44pm
|
Downloading it to look at, though its definately too much money at this point new. In addition theres two versions of LJ about ..one that came out before, and another after the martin one key. on softwares, been bouncing back and forth between the windows orientated apps, probably ruled out Daslight for having some weird bugs which mean some perameters which should be arent seen by the scene generators. ..and Sunlite is a weird irrational mess, LumiDMX shows some promise however, but from there its a question of what passes the 'make it do what it should do' test. Taking another look at LJ2 now. |
Posted By: nineleaves
Date Posted: 14 July 2011 at 5:07pm
|
Yeah, im not sold on Light Jockey, may well suit a die hard martin fan; but i feel many other softwares offer alot more. |
Posted By: Jasonstry
Date Posted: 14 July 2011 at 5:07pm
|
One problem with LJ is the limit of 100 fixtures. I have outgrown it now and moved on to MagicQ so I am a bit out of touch with developments. The LJ dongle I have for sale. It is the USB universal dongle with 2 x dmx input/outputs but pre one-key if that matters. I also have a Behringer BCF2000 which can be used as a desk with the use of Markus's FaderS software. A better solution than Martin's Fingers because of the motorised faders as much as anything else, though the price difference is substantial as well. The ChamsysPC wing I use cost me about £1500 and doesn't have motorised faders. LJ also has the visualiser which Chamsys doesn't. I would be looking for £600 for the dongle and BCF and will chuck in a touch screen monitor though there is something wrong with the monitor but I can't remember what it is. Whatever, it wasn't serious enough to persuade me to bin it so I am guessing it is usable to some extent or repairable. I would be more than happy to sort you out with some sort of sale or return deal so you could give it a go for real. I also have an Enttec dongle that allows you to output DMX from MagicQ and we could doubtless chuck that into the equation somehow so that you can compare the two systems in real world conditions. HTH.
Andy
|
Posted By: nineleaves
Date Posted: 14 July 2011 at 5:21pm
|
Tbh id look at putting those bits up in the for sale section, I cant see it fitting what im doing tbh... As for things like motorised faders, i have two behringer ddx3216 digi desks kicking around, very likely to map those for light controller functions; so cant see myself being in a rush to get the bcf. potential control surfaces wise, with the inclusion of other things i have here, i think ive got it covered for now. |
Posted By: Jasonstry
Date Posted: 14 July 2011 at 5:38pm
| No worries, I think our messages got crossed so I was replying to your earlier one. I'm far from a die hard Martin fan, much the opposite but I'm curious as to what you think is wrong with LJ though. Andy |
Posted By: nineleaves
Date Posted: 14 July 2011 at 5:47pm
|
Its development cycle is clearly behind many of the current offerings out there, especially for the money. Freestyler more or less appears to offer something equivalent, complete with 3d visualisation for free. Other new packages being evaluated cost considerably less, and offer more. And with a little patience magicq + the visualisation package they reccomend (capture polar), costs less & offers a considerably more powerful package; even if the user interface is bloody weird to adjust to. |
Posted By: norty303
Date Posted: 14 July 2011 at 6:23pm
|
One thing to mention, although the MagicQ hardware seems expensive if you want to go the full fader route (~£1600+vat iirc for the PC Wing) they do come up in the right circles for ~£700-£800 (which is what I paid for mine, virtually new as it was a factory replacement for a dodgy jog wheel, including soft gig bag) Considering that the PC wing, plus touch screen is not far off what you get in a fancy box with the MQ50, it's astonishing value for a 'proper' desk, and you could build a box to house it all if you so desired. Me, I like the fact I could travel light with it if necessary, I use an Acer 3600 clipped to the back of my touchscreen. ------------- My laser stuff: http://www.facebook.com/SubsonicSystems" rel="nofollow - Frikkin Lasers |
Posted By: nineleaves
Date Posted: 14 July 2011 at 6:52pm
|
Magicq dongle is on its way.. Tbh not going to be in a rush to buy a load of dedicated hardware for it just yet; interesting none the less; if i can get it to talk to various items of midi controller hardware ..then great :) Sofar on the windowsey stuff it seems to have settled on nicolaudie sunsuite afterall.. its abit messy, but all the others are misconceived, broken or buggy in some amazingly retarded ways. If these are things that not only myself is coming up against, then im supprised they sell much software at all.. people must buy some of these things to put on shelfs and forget about ..or meerly use them to piss around with parcans. Will be reporting back on weather sunsuite sucessfully creates a satisfactory basic virtual show soon. |
Posted By: Jasonstry
Date Posted: 14 July 2011 at 7:07pm
|
Norty, my system is fairly similar though I paid full whack for my PCWing as I didn't have a lot of time at the, erm time. Now a Zotac Xbox on the back of a 19" touch screen monitor and PC Wing. IMHO its weakness (if you want to call it a weakness) is that there are so many ways of using it that a new user can just freeze with the number of options. Well I did anyway. If you just dive in and get on with it, it can work magic and you can always change things later. Downside is that, even after all this time I still hit Control+tab to change between windows and sit there and look stupid trying to figure out why it hasn't worked!
Some people seem to tune into it very quickly and others (including me) seem to find it a bit harder. IMHO it is, however, worth the investment of time.
Andy
|
Posted By: norty303
Date Posted: 14 July 2011 at 8:38pm
I tend to find one way and stick with that ;) The nice thing is that there is really no 'wrong' way to use it though. It was interesting working with Matt Monkeypuzzle at a fest this year, as he uses his in quite different ways to me. Some of the ways I'll be having a go at myself, but I (think) I also passed on some of my stuff to him, which he can make use of in the future too. 'Flexible' I think is the right word. @nineleaves - you may struggle getting midi gear working with MQ. I would say that a dedicated piece of hardware is worth it, if only because it unlocks the power that is the 'Execute' window!! Take any object, from anywhere on the desk, and be able to add it to a single combined window of buttons or faders on the touchscreen! So very very powerful, and makes mapping a very complex patch into something very straightforward an absolute dream. Given how popular and 'industry standard' MagicQ is becoming, I don't think you can lose if you buy some second hand hardware, it'll always sell on because demand is high. ------------- My laser stuff: http://www.facebook.com/SubsonicSystems" rel="nofollow - Frikkin Lasers |
Posted By: nineleaves
Date Posted: 14 July 2011 at 9:16pm
|
ill be keeping all of that in mind. putting alot of effort over the next few days proof testing sunsuite.. it looks like the only affordable windosey approach which actually works. if it passes the test it will also be invested in and will be the first bit of software to be thoroughly learned. will keep an eye on the magicq hardware situation, but if more hardwares bought atm, the money would be better spent atm in further expanding the lighting arsenal. A small quantity of well used bargain CMY washes would be nice for one ;) |
Posted By: nineleaves
Date Posted: 15 July 2011 at 3:34am
|
spotted a copy paste bug in the beta version of sunlite, probably doesnt do it in the non beta.. will be feeding back to them regardless on the matter. But having gone thru some of the tutorials and having suceeded in creating afew passable show sequences sofar well in advance of what i had lashed up before, i am almost 100% this is what im going with now. Reccomend anyone curious about these things downloads it and runs it in demo mode.. im frankly impressed. It can do some pretty spiffy stuff with a little patience. Whats rather amusing is it looks like itll even get a decent show out of some crappy martin 812's when theres not room for the big guns ..not the best things in the world, but if you look at them like parcans with afew added benefits ..then everything falls into place. Talking of which, anyone know of a good source of affordable hti 150 bulbs and some good front surface mirror glass; i need to finish renovating those :) |
Posted By: Pirlo
Date Posted: 15 July 2011 at 12:43pm
|
+1 for http://www.freestylerdmx.be" rel="nofollow - freestyler After a short work-in-period ya can do (almost) everything ya want with it!  ------------- Who the fu&k is Mr. Phanton, and why he has so much power!? |
Posted By: nineleaves
Date Posted: 15 July 2011 at 1:16pm
|
Yup, freestylers great for a freebie.. but its painful to get it to do the really fancy stuff. Lots of fighting with the step sequencer for complicated sequences, which other tools can do in afew button clicks :) For parcans, rudimentry point to point scene fade programming for scanners & ledwall type effects though its great :) It does have some generator tools mind, but they are abit soso. Still excellent for the 'price' though ..cant argue with that ;) |