Photo courtesy of High End Systems.
Lighting is a favorite topic for me, and I always look forward to working with new lighting gear. High End Systems has been around for a long time, and its Hog series of consoles has been a favorite in the touring industry. To date, though, I've never had the opportunity to work with one of the Hog consoles, and so I was excited to get the chance to review the HedgeHog 4 console from HES (distributed in the Americas by Elation Professional).
The HedgeHog brings the line of full consoles into a price-point that's more accessible for houses of worship. With an MSRP of $7,000, this console delivers a significant amount of power and capacity—not to mention a self-contained package requiring no external computer—to the lighting world.
Product Overview
The HedgeHog 4 runs the same Hog operating system that all the Hog line of consoles run, making them completely compatible with each other. It supports an unlimited number of simultaneous crossfades, has four encoder wheels for adjusting fixture and other parameters; has 12 user-programmable keys; 10 playback faders; two fixed universes of DMX 512 and up to four universes of DMX 512 over ArtNet or sACN; as well as Ethernet connectivity for protocols like ArtNet, sACN, and in the Hedgehog 4N model, HES's own HogNet. It also has a touch-screen display system where much of the user interaction with the console occurs.
The Hog system is clearly designed to handle very large lighting rigs, and uses a more traditional method of selecting and presenting fixtures to the user. There's no graphical representation of the rig (which could get very awkward with large rigs); instead, you work with fixtures by their fixture number, and many of the screens involving fixtures are presented in a spreadsheet view.
Getting Started
As with any significant piece of gear, there is a learning curve to the HedgeHog 4, but it wasn't as steep as I anticipated—and it wasn't long before I had fixtures patched and could work with them.
Patching the fixtures involves two steps for each type of fixture. First, you enter the Fixture Schedule and select the fixture type (using the generic Desk Channel for dimmers), and tell the system how many of that fixture type you have in your rig. This enters that number of the selected fixture type into the fixture spreadsheet, and they are initially unpatched. You then select a fixture in the spreadsheet and pick the “Patch @” function to select a universe and address for the fixture. If your fixtures are addressed sequentially (such as a rack of dimmers), you can select a range of fixtures and specify a starting address, and the console will patch all those fixtures sequentially for you.
With an MSRP of $7,000, this console delivers a significant amount of power and capacity—not to mention a self-contained package requiring no external computer—to the lighting world.
Jim Kumorek
Reviewer
To work with the fixtures, you use the Programmer window. This window presents the fixtures you select to work with in another spreadsheet, and the columns of the programmer window can be customized to show things like a user-created note for the fixture that you might enter when you patch the fixture. (I created a note to remind myself what each of the dimmers are for—for example, house lighting left or apron stage right). The notes can help you make sure you selected the fixtures you intended. By default, fixtures numbers are specific to a fixture type, and [they] restart at “1” for each fixture type. So, for a given rig, you may have Desk Channel (for dimmers) 1-48; Chroma-Q Color Force 1-12; and Elation DesignSpot 575E 1-20. To bring fixtures into the programmer, you use the fixture button to select the fixture type, and then enter the range of fixture numbers for that type, and press enter or set an intensity and then press enter.
Once in the programmer, you can use function buttons, such as Intensity, Position, Colour, Beam, to select which attributes you want to work with, and the four encoder wheels change to work with those parameters of the selected fixtures. For parameters like color, you can work with hue and saturation, CMY, gel colors, or a color wheel on the touch screen. As with other moving light consoles, palettes can be created with any combination of intensity, color, beam attributes, etc., stored in them, and easily applied to fixtures in the programmer. When programming cues or scenes, the palette references can be stored in the cue as well, or the values from the palettes stored into the cue/scene. In the former case, if you later update the palette entry, all the cues and scenes that reference them reflect this change. In the latter case, a change to the palette doesn't get propagated to the scene or cue. Once a set of fixtures are brought into the programmer, you can work with just part of those fixtures by selecting specific fixture numbers, returning to the previous selection, by stepping through the selected fixtures one at a time using the Next and Back keys, selecting odd/even fixture numbers, or by selecting all the fixtures in the programmer. The ability to do sub-selections and then go back to selecting all fixtures that have been brought into the programmer is really nice and convenient, and worked well.
For fixtures that have photometric information provided by the manufacturer, the Hog will use that data to make sure that colors match to your selection as closely as possible, which is pretty sophisticated and very nice. Fanning parameters such as color, position, etc., are very fast and flexible, and provide several fan types that can be applied.
Scenes and Cues
The HedgeHog 4 has a powerful programming capability, letting you build up cue lists and scenes (one static look), as well as play back numerous cue lists and scenes at will.
Once a look has been created in the programmer, you can create a scene by pressing Record Scene and selecting a scene number or playback fader. For cues and cue lists, you press record, and list, and give the cue list number, and it creates a new cue in that list. Fade in and out times, as well as in and out delay times, are easily set as you program a cue. Programming was remarkably fast, and always gave me what I expected. Cue lists can then be assigned to a playback fader, and easily controlled.
If there's a look you programmed in another list or scene and you want to reuse part of that look, you can easily bring that scene up on stage, and then load specific fixtures and parameters from that look into the programmer to reuse in another scene or cue. The “Suck” function takes care of that, “sucking” the request parameters from the on-stage look and loading them into the programmer. One of the powerful aspects of the Hog is its ability to copy, manipulate and manage fixture parameters in a flexible way—in my time with the console, I've only just touched on the power of this aspect of the system.
Playback is powerful, letting you run cue lists in sequence, but also letting you jump to specific cues in a list quickly and easily.The HedgeHog 4 operates in a “LTP,” or Latest Takes Precedence mode for all parameters, including intensity. If you run a scene that brings light 20 up to 80%, and then run another scene that brings the same light to 20%, the light will indeed drop to the 20% level even though another scene specified 80%. This made a lot of sense to me, and if while running the show you want one of the earlier run scenes that is still running to take precedence again, you can choose that scene and press the Assert button, and the console will cause the parameters encoded into that scene to take precedence again (or “assert” themselves).
This console would be ideal for building up a large number of scenes or cue lists, and combining them to get a variety of looks that you use dynamically throughout a concert or service. It feels very logical, and really seems designed for this mode of operation. Of course, it can also be used to program a service or event more theatrically, with one cue list for the entire event. Cues were also trivial to edit, and changing a cue to enable intelligent fixtures to move in black was quite simple. Given that the HedgeHog 4 is probably designed to support concerts where seeing the lights move while fading up is a pretty natural thing, I can see why it wouldn't be the default.
A Word on Effects
There's a sophisticated effects engine built into the console, letting you apply effects to any parameter of a fixture quickly and easily, and adjust the limits and speed of the effects. I was able to quickly apply numerous effects to a variety of parameters, achieving some pretty advanced movements.
In a Nutshell
I was truly impressed with the HedgeHog 4 console. I initially thought that I wouldn't like the spreadsheet method of displaying information, but I found it to be concise and informative, and was able to let me see details on many fixtures at once, not just the specific fixture I was working with at the time. I liked that. The software was rock-solid—once I got past the initial learning curve, the console did what I asked it to do, and I was rarely wondering what just happened, or why something didn't seem to be working as I thought. It never crashed or acted unexpectedly. My only complaint was with the built-in screen. It's laid flat on the surface of the console, and presented a lot of glare from any light source in front of the console. It would be nice if it were hinged in some fashion so it could be tilted up and towards the operator, reducing glare and making it more accessible. If one was standing over the console while programming it wouldn't be an issue, but I found it hard to see at times when sitting. So, one would have to position the console so that this isn't an issue, or create something to shield the display from any light sources that are causing glare.
I've only scratched the surface of what the console can do, so playing with the PC version of the software would be a good way to continue to explore its capabilities. I enjoyed using it, and would not be disappointed to show up at a church to do lighting and find this Hog system. Learning the basics to do straightforward programming did not take long—and having the power and flexibility of this console when one is ready to do advanced programming would be awesome.
In addition, it's a full, self-contained lighting console, which I love. When you need to make a change in a hurry, having to grab a computer mouse to move an on-screen fader is frustrating. Having this much power in a real console for only $7K is pretty amazing, and well worth looking at.
