# As Derek asked so nicely



## robertpaines (Jan 29, 2008)

I'm Robert, and I'm from the UK.
I'm currently at uni, and so my involvement in techie stuff is mostly amateur. I like to get involved in everything; lighting, sound, stage etc and usually end up doing around 16 shows a year on top of studying, working and sports. Our venue is a lecture theatre (apart from twice a year when we get to use the professional theatre on campus) so, although we have fixed lighting bars, dimmers, audio multi etc, we have to hire in staging for every show, and have to contend with the fact that we can only use the space at weekends and after 6 on weekdays.
I also work as technical crew in my students union, where I mostly work in the nightclub on lights, as a sound engineer for small pub type gigs or as general crew when tours come in.




BTW, my main lighting desk is an ETC Express (or occasionally an Expression 3) but I use a Chamsys MagicQ Maxiwing in the nightclub.


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## Van (Jan 29, 2008)

Welcome Aboard Robert!
I hope you have fun and learn here. You'll find a wide variety of backgrounds and people here. Some are normal, some are odd, some are Austrailian. 
Ask a lot of questions answer what you can!


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## derekleffew (Jan 29, 2008)

Well thank you, robertpaines. The world would be such a better place if everyone just listened to me and did what I asked of them. 

I've just recently begun hearing about the ChamSys--I think I heard/read something about PRG really pushing them. What do you think of it? Seems like it's an affordable solution, and very scalable. And some are running quite a few movers from it. We had a very lively discussion here about "running lights from a PC" sometime back. Use the "search" feature to find it.


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## robertpaines (Jan 29, 2008)

Personally, I think it's great for what we use it for. We have a playback wing set up with lots of movement chases on our mac 250s and roboscan 918s, and with intensity chases on our martin wizards, robocolor pro 400s and atomic strobes. We then use the faders on the maxiwing to control the intensity channels on everything, and use the touchscreen to control the rest of the attributes of the lights. This makes busking club style lighting really quite easy. The one thing I wouldn't want to use it for, though, is theatre. I tried it once, but the cue stack facility seemed to be added as a bit of an afterthought, and so is nowhere near as easy to use as the etc express.
It's main weakness, though, is the fact that it runs on a normal computer. Although it is generally fine, on some nights it can crash two or three times, which obviously isn't good if you have a nightclub full of punters who want lights. This occurs even though it runs on a dedicated PC which has nothing but windows and the MagicQ software installed and which has never been connected to any sort of network.
It's also quite handy for us using the Chamsys desk as the uni that I'm at is based in the city that Chamsys is based in, so getting hold of any spares is easy (not that we've needed to yet).


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## dvlasak (Jan 29, 2008)

Welcome!! Here's my standard intro to new members - Please ask and answer questions. The search feature is your friend!! Welcome again!

Dennis


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## Hughesie (Jan 29, 2008)

welcome to controlbooth

From the Australian sect of controlbooth


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## Chris15 (Jan 31, 2008)

Welcome Aboard!

The only stupid question is the only we've answered twice in the past month.

Australian Division, Phase II.


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