Oh my, how I do enjoy playing with new lighting consoles. It's fascinating to see how different manufacturers design approaches (they call it syntax) to the often laborious task of lighting design. Many consoles are capable of creating the same end results, but how you achieve those results couldn't be more different.
At the LDI show in 2014 I was introduced to the Neo console from Strand Lighting. This isn't your parent's Strand console—Strand has partnered with New Zealand-based LightFactory, taking its sophisticated lighting control software system, and integrating it into a hardware-based lighting console solution.
Overview
The Neo console brings a rich set of hardware controls to lighting system programming and playback. Most functions have a physical button that's easily accessible, enabling quick access to functions, and also serving as a reminder of how to get at features for those who aren't immersed in lighting design on a day-in and day-out basis.
Neo can support up to 100 universes of DMX. The least expensive option (MSRP $8,500) comes with one DMX universe of channels enabled, and you can configure the system with as many universes as you need with each additional universe costing $580. However, Strand, a subsidiary of Philips Entertainment Lighting, has done a cool thing called Philips Advantage DMX. Fixtures from within the Philips group of lighting companies, Selecon, Vari-Lite, Showline, as well as Color Kinetics, do not count against your channel count as long as you are using KiNet. So, if want to equip your rig with 50 Vari-Lite intelligent fixtures, 100 Color Kinetic LED fixtures, a couple of dozen Selecon LED profile fixtures, and 50 dimmers for conventional fixtures, you will only need a one-universe license. This is a brilliant marketing move that provides a significant financial benefit to those using Philips fixtures with Neo.
The console has four DMX output jacks for direct DMX connections, and supports numerous Ethernet-based protocols such as Pathport, ShowNet, Art-Net, KiNet, and streaming ACN. The console does not come with monitors, but supports three external monitors as well as multi-touch touchscreen monitors. Monitors are essential when working with Neo; I suggest at least two. The evaluation system came with two Planar Helium series PCT2265 22-inch touchscreen monitors, which worked very well.
On the left side of the control surface you will find 10 submaster faders with bump buttons, five cue list playbacks, and a master cuelist playback. All faders are on the system are motorized, so when you change pages on the submasters or playback faders, the faders jump to the correct position for that page. This is so much nicer than consoles with non-motorized faders, where you would have to move the fader to zero (or some such thing) before a new page takes effect for that fader. Even the master fade time fader is motorized—if you type the command Time 5, that fader moves itself to the five-second position.
The main section for the console consists of button panels—lots and lots of buttons. Suffice to say, most consoles' features have a hardware button associated with them.
Ten programmable shortcut buttons can be programmed to do just about any function you want. Want one button that will select all your backlights? You can program a shortcut for that. Most Neo functionality has an equivalent command line text for it, so you just enter the command line text into the shortcut button. For example, creating a shortcut “Red @ 100” will cause the Red color of the selected fixtures to be set to 100%. There are 100,000 user-assignable shortcuts available, accessible through 100 pages. Shortcuts have soft buttons in an on-screen window; the 10 shortcut buttons on the console access the first 10 shortcuts; adding the shift key to a shortcut button press accesses shortcuts 11 through 20.
On the right side of the console you'll find a level wheel dedicated to adjusting a fixture's intensity and four attribute encoders. The attribute encoders have a couple nice features. First, holding shift while turning the wheel adjusts the value to the next DMX value (as opposed to the next unit value, like 25 to 26 degrees for a Tilt value). This gives you a fine adjustment mode, especially for 16-bit attributes. And if you press and hold the encoder wheel for 1/5 of a second, you can then type a specific value for that attribute via the keyboard. What attributes the wheels affect changes based on which option button you pick: Intensity, Position, Color, Beam and Edge. If there are more than four attributes in one of these families, pressing that button again moves to the next group of four attributes in that family. A color LCD display next to each encoder wheel indicates what the wheel will adjust and its current setting in a very clear and concise way.
"It’s highly configurable. There are often numerous ways at getting to the same end result."
Jim Kumorek
Product Reviewer.
Also on the right side is a trackball with three mouse buttons. You can also connect a USB mouse-type device if one desires. In a pull-out tray at the front of the console is a keyboard for entering text.
Patching the Neo is pretty simple. Press the Patch button to enter patching; select the fixture profile you want to patch, the quantity you want patched, and then use the trackball to drag the starting DMX address to the fixture number you want to patch the first fixture to. Repeat until your rig is patched.
Working with fixtures is also rather intuitive. To select fixtures, use the central set of keypad buttons to build up a fixture selection command line. “1 Thru 12 Enter” select fixtures 1 through 12. “- 6 Enter” removes fixture 6 from the selection. “1 + 4 + 9 Enter” selects fixtures 1, 4 and 9.
Once fixtures are selected, use the Intensity wheel and encoders to adjust the fixtures to your liking. “Record Enter” records what is live to the next cue in your active cue list.
Palettes can be programmed for fixtures, as well. Palettes provide a quick way to change the attributes of a fixture to a pre-recorded state. For example, you can record position, intensity, beam shape and color pallets for all your intelligent fixtures for the piano on your stage. Then, when you want to use some of those lights to highlight the piano, you select those fixtures and activate the Piano palette entries. If you then record this into a cue, and later update the palette entry for the piano because some one decided to move it to another part of the stage, your cues will still work because they refer to the Piano palette entry.
Neo has a built-in effects engine with lots of generic effects available, as well as the ability to design your own effects. Effects can be programmed into a cue or a submaster, just like any other attributes.
By default, a grid view of your fixtures is presented; Neo also gives you other views including a Magic Sheet view, which basically lets you add your fixtures to one or more free-form pages and lay them out anyway that makes sense to you. You can create multiple tabs in the Magic Sheet window, assign a background image (such as a plot of your stage layout) to the tab, and then add fixtures to it. So, you could have a tab for just the awesome circle truss and its fixtures upstage; another for conventionals; another for house lights, etc.
Experience
Neo has a lot of cool options and plenty of power in its interface. It's highly configurable, and there are often numerous ways at getting to the same end result, so if one approach isn't quite your cup of tea, there's probably another way that will be more to your taste. The shortcut buttons are very nice, and once you get accustomed to Neo, customizing it through shortcuts and laying out the windows the way you like will make it even quicker to use.
I really liked having the motorized faders—this makes working with multiple pages of submasters and playback faders much more logical than consoles without motorized faders. Programming and updating cue lists is pretty easy and logical. The encoder functionality is nice, as well; it is easy to see what the encoders would do, and the shift method to do fine adjustments works very well.
You can also easily pull fixture attributes from another cue as you are programming. Let's say you're programming the end of the service, and you really liked the look for fixtures 1 thorough 8 from the second cue in your service. “1 thru 8 @ cue 2” will pull those values from that cue for those fixtures and make them live. Nice touch.
If there's a mistake in a fixture profile, or if you need to create a fixture profile for a fixture that's not in the console's current library, the fixture editor built into the Neo software easily solves this problem. I had no problem correcting the profile for a very old fixture, and also created a new profile for a brand new fixture I'm reviewing for another issue of CPM.
For all of its keys, I found it odd that there is no “delete” key—you have to press Shift Edit to get a delete function. That seems like a bit of an oversight to me.
Effects are easy to use and, for the most part, work well. However, one thing I don't like about the effects engine is how it interacts with cues. Let's say you bring up intensity on some fixtures in cue 1; add an intensity effect in cue 2; remove the effect in cue 3. I would expect that in cue 3, as the effect has been removed, the lights would fade smoothly to their last intensity that should have tracked in from cue 1. However, it does not—the fixtures first fade to black and them pop up to their tracked intensity values. This doesn't make sense to me. And it works this way for all attributes.
I mentioned that there are usually several ways of getting at the same feature or function, which gives you flexibility in how you work with Neo. This can also cause confusion, and makes the learning curve steeper. For example, I had a hard time figuring out palettes. In the manual it says, “First, press the Palette display key and select/open the desired specific Palette window…. ” It turns out there are three things labeled “Palettes”—one physical button and two on-screen drop down buttons. Only one of these gets you to where the manual is describing. It probably took me 20 minutes to figure it out. There were multiple areas where confusion like this is created, and this gives the Neo one of the steeper learning-curves once you moved past the basics. Figuring out how to correctly operate the Effects engine is another area I found quite confusing. Again, there are a number buttons and having to do with Effects, not all of which will take you where you want to go.
I also ran into a few bugs, one where the effect engine held the values of fixtures on when it should not have (a Rel All command worked around it, and the Neo team has already implemented a fix). The console hung on me several times, each time after I worked on fixture profiles via the fixture editor. I did not see it hang when simply programming or playing cue lists.
Summary
There are a lot of aspects of Neo that I liked. Once you've learned it, it's quick and easy to use, and lets you approach tasks in ways that work best for you. Having it hang several times in the short amount of time I worked with it was a bit disconcerting. And expect a steeper and longer learning curve if you're going to get into more advanced features due to naming conventions and a user's manual that's not very clear on what to do.
If you have or expect to have a lot of Philip's brand fixtures, the fact that those do not count against your licensed channel count is really plus and makes it a more cost-effective platform. For the price tag, you get a lot of power.
I'd like to see the platform become a little more stable, but I believe the Neo can have a bright future in front of it. And of course, I can only scratch the surface of a console's functionality in the course of a review—Neo can do far more than we have space to describe. I recommend downloading the fully functional PC version and playing with it for a while to see if Neo might have a place in your ministry.
