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Avolites Titan Mobile Lighting Control System
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LSC Maxim Lighting Control Console
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Mega Lite Enlighten One Lighting Controller
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Pathway Cognito Lighting Console
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ETC SmartFade Lighting Console
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Lightronics TL-2448 Lighting Central Console
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Leprecon LPC-48V Lighting Console
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Chauvet DJ Stage Designer 50 Lighting Console
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Jands StageCL Lighting Control Console
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Blizzard ProKontrol Lighting Controller
As with video and audio, the lighting needs of a church vary immensely from congregation to congregation. There are churches that can benefit from the latest, greatest and usually priciest control consoles that a lighting manufacturer can create; there are plenty of other churches where the lighting needs are much simpler, and probably always will be—or perhaps have other venues at their campuses with modest lighting needs. This article is for the latter: the church that wants to keep its lighting on the simpler or understated side. That perhaps uses a lot of basic theatrical white-light fixtures and maybe some color, but at times may also want to step it up a little for a special event or service and do a little more advanced programming or introduce a few moving lights. Here's a round up of actual physical lighting consoles (not software-based systems that run on Macs or PCs) that list for less than $5,000.
NUTS & BOLTS
At the more basic level, churches usually want to be able to control what lights are set to what level of brightness and vary this as the service progresses. And to keep the transitions between each part of the service smooth, it’s nice to also be able to program these lighting “scenes” into the console and let the console handle the transitioning from one scene to another in a smooth, low-distraction way. Most of these consoles fall into the “two-scene preset” category and include the ability to program simple scenes stored in memories. Two-scene preset means there are two sets of controls for each fixture with a fader control to transition between them. One set of controls is “live” controlling the lights; the other is not and the user can set up the next scene on those, and transition to them at the proper time.
The
Electronic Theatre Controls (ETC) SmartFade console
provided this level of reliable and easy-to-use control for about a decade now, and it’s a common console to find in this type of church. “The time-proven SmartFade lighting control console is the trusted desk of thousands of smaller houses of worship, churches with a limited number of fixtures, and venues with mostly volunteer lighting programmers, because it is affordable and compact yet doesn’t scrimp on features, and also boasts an easy-to-learn style of operation,” reports ETC Entertainment Market Manager Matt Armendariz-Kerr. Ranging from $1,495 to $1,795, the SmartFade has models that can control a maximum of either 48 of 96 channels, with two different levels of fader controls for the 96-channel console.
Lightronics offers the
Lightronics TL-4016
for controlling up to 32 channels of lighting, and its $775 MSRP makes it a cost-effective entry-level console. “Simplified lighting control makes this console perfect for small- and medium-sized houses of worship,” says Chris Pease, sales and marketing manager for Lightronics. “Intuitive control and basic operating instructions printed on the chassis are perfect for volunteer staff or seasonal use.”
Leprecon offers three console series
Leprecon LP-600, LP-1500 and LP-1600 series
in the two-scene preset with memory category, ranging in MSRP from $1,200 to $3,500, offering both two-scene preset control, programing lighting sequences and creating submasters (groups of lighting channels).
IT'S A COLORFUL WORLD
The next step up from your basic white lighting is to add the ability to control the color of fixtures, and these days that usually means LED fixtures, known for their typically lower power consumption and ability to project almost any color desirable. While these fixtures can be controlled from consoles like those described above,
it is far simpler and less frustrating for volunteer lighting techs if the console being used is designed with the ability to control color-changing fixtures.
There are many options out there for the small- to mid-sized churches, and what console will work best for you depends greatly on your style of service and the capabilities of your volunteer base.
Jim Kumorek
Writer.
The Blizzard Kontrol 5 Skywire
is designed to control up to 16 color-changing fixtures, enabling you to set colors and intensities of your fixtures and store the scene you’ve created into a control for easy recall. “The Kontrol 5 Skywire is a simple fader control that also allows you to transmit the DMX signal either through a standard wired system or wirelessly,” states Frank Luppino of Blizzard Lighting. “It is as simple as moving the faders up and down per color as well as having the ability to create scenes and shows.” The Kontrol 5 has an MSRP of $179.
The Chauvet DJ Stage Designer 50
is a theater-style console created for controlling both traditional white-light stage fixtures as well as LED color-changing fixtures. It will handle up to 48 control channels at a cost of only $309. “An ideal solution for the small- to mid-sized church looking for a dependable, user-friendly controller that doesn’t take up much space, the Chauvet DJ Stage Designer 50 fits 48 channels in a 24 channel console,” reports Albert Chauvet, president of Chauvet Lighting. “This console enables volunteer techs without much experience to achieve impressive results.”
Jands, distributed by A.C. Lighting, introduced its
Jands Stage CL console
just for this purpose. With an MSRP of $1,495, the Stage CL can control up to 12 fixtures or groups of fixtures by providing the ability to patch multiple fixtures to one control channel. Fred Mikeska of AC Lighting states, “The Jands StageCL provides intuitive control of LED and conventional fixtures, allowing volunteers with little or no lighting experience to grasp it immediately.”
GETTING A MOVE ON
Beyond color-changing fixtures, there are intelligent, or moving head, fixtures. These fixtures let you control not only the intensity and color, but also where your light is pointing—and often other beam characteristics such as size and focus.
To easily control this fixture type, you need to move up to a console that supports this level of complexity. ETC offers a more advanced version of its SmartFade controller designed for moving lights—the SmartFade ML. This version of the console adds control of up to 24 intelligent fixtures through two additional multi-function encoder wheels, and has an MSRP of $2,995.
The Blizzard ProKontrol
, listing for a mere $399, offers control of up to 32 fixtures by setting the 16 faders to control a maximum of 16 fixture attributes for the selected fixture. You need to understand the DMX layout of the fixture and what the control values for each attribute do, so this is a no-frills way to access your intelligent lights. However, while inexpensive, this console requires intimate knowledge of each fixture type you are using, because it offers no abstraction layer between you and the fixtures to make things intuitive.
The Lightronics TL-2448
controls moving lights in a fashion similar to the Blizzard ProKontrol, mapping a set of faders onto the fixture attributes in the order the fixture presents them without any interpretation or advanced control. It also offers built-in wireless DMX, and has an MSRP of $2,400.
Pathway Connectivity's Cognito
offers a lot of power and ease of use for working with moving lights in a cost effective package. With an entry-level MSRP of only $3,700, the Cognito is a robust console with lots of features to easily work with moving lights. Van Rommel, director of business development at Pathway, states, “Cognito is designed for productions and venues where the lights include conventional fixtures, LED fixtures and automated fixtures; featuring a task-oriented graphical user interface, Cognito does not require mastering command line syntax. Cognito will not intimidate the less-experienced user and will not disappoint the most demanding professional.”
LSC Lighting has been offering the
LSC Maxim Console
for over a decade (MSRP $4,995), and provides moving light control in a sturdy package. Richie Mickan, technical sales engineer for LSC Lighting, comments, “The Maxim console is designed with the philosophy of being ‘powerfully simple’—to allow a non-lighting person to become a lighting operator with less than an hour of training.” A sturdy LED panel guides the user through setting fixture attributes in a simple, cost-effective way.
Mega-Lite offers its
Mega-Lite Enlighten One console
, which comes with either two or four universes of DMX, and provides full control over moving lights as well as control of media servers. Eleven jog wheels provide lots of convenient access to fixture parameters. The Enlighten One has an MSRP of $5,599 for the two-universe configuration.
Avolites Titan Mobile
“The Titan Mobile puts the power of Avolites’ Titan software into a compact and lightweight unit that connects to a laptop to deliver a fully featured moving [light] control system,” says Brad White, national sales manager for Avolites. Small enough to carry on a flight, yet sophisticated enough for more complex shows, the console features: 10 page-able playbacks, 60 pages; three optical encoders; Avo’s “Quicksketch” freehand tool; MIDI support; four physical DMX outputs; pixel mapping tools; dedicated cue stack control; and 20 programmable executor buttons.
And last but not least, the
Leprecon LPC-48V
with an MSRP of around $5,000, is a full-featured moving light console supporting up to four universes of DMX for handling a larger fixture count, submasters and cue programming. The LPC-48V will also support touch-screen monitors for additional ease of use. “The LPC is designed for users with all levels of programming knowledge for controlling LEDs, moving lights, and dimmable incandescent fixtures,” says Julie Sanders, marketing manager at Leprecon. “There’s no need to spend days in training sessions to get this console to perform.”
Summary
There are many options out there for the small- to mid-sized churches, and what console will work best for you depends greatly on your style of service and the capabilities of your volunteer base. Two things to keep in mind when looking at consoles: make sure that you don’t buy more console than you are likely to need, risking the addition of unneeded complexity that would limit your volunteer base. And also, don’t buy less than you need and end up having to replace it within a year or two because you’ve outgrown its capabilities.
