# Need Some Live Show Technology History Help Before March 4



## JohnHuntington (Feb 25, 2019)

I’m on sabbatical this semester to work through some ideas I’ve been kicking around in my head for many years about the maturation of live show technology. While of course there is always room for additional innovation, it seems to me that--after a period of fairly rapid and intense development--we now have a large group of mature, well-known production technologies and techniques associated with those technologies. If you see the latest Taylor Swift stadium mega spectacular or a well-funded bar/bat mitzvah, on both shows you can see video walls, truss, chain motors, wireless mics, powered speakers, moving lights, lasers, etc, with all of it controlled by a number of more or less standardized computerized controllers (you might see the same console, in fact, on both events). That is a very different world than the one I graduated into from college in 1985, and also very different from our world early in my career when there were continual disruptive technological developments.

To establish and sequence trends, I’ve been working for too many hours on a fancy timeline which you can view, and I'd love to get some feedback on it this week. I have details and the link on my website here.


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## sk8rsdad (Feb 25, 2019)

SCR dimmers were commercially available in 1958 (Strand C Core) and were ubiquitous in modular form factors circa 1975.


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## derekleffew (Feb 25, 2019)

Perhaps something from here might help:
https://www.controlbooth.com/threads/memory-lighting-control-systems-history.9203/


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## JD (Feb 26, 2019)

I wouldn't say anything is stable or static right now! We are right in the middle of a massive evolution of both control and lighting technologies. What you see this year will be history a year or two from now. We are seeing the end of conventional dimmer systems with the introduction of LED systems, which most often include their own on-board PWM type dimming. In addition, the world of DMX dominance is on the verge of massive change! 
In the sound world, digital processing from mic to speaker is already underway. Gone are the old "elephant" snakes. Powered speakers with addressable Ethernet inputs have replaced amp racks and wads of copper that used to fee line arrays. Much like computer evolution in the 1990's, things are changing so fast that what is "standard of the industry" today is often laughed at one or two years later.


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## Jay Ashworth (Feb 26, 2019)

"

JD said:


> We are seeing the end of conventional dimmer systems with the introduction of LED systems



... for new installations.

What percentage of fixtures live in new installations in any given year? 5%

10?

So, how long will that "end" take to arrive?

This is a thought that's applicable to the "when will gel die?" conversation we're having in another thread, too...


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## JohnHuntington (Feb 27, 2019)

JD said:


> I wouldn't say anything is stable or static right now! We are right in the middle of a massive evolution of both control and lighting technologies. What you see this year will be history a year or two from now.



What exactly are you predicting?


JD said:


> We are seeing the end of conventional dimmer systems with the introduction of LED systems, which most often include their own on-board PWM type dimming. In addition, the world of DMX dominance is on the verge of massive change!



Well LED's are decades old, and the death of the conventional dimmer has been forecast for many years. What do you think is going to replace/change DMX and why? And how would that impact what the audience sees or how we work? ACN was developed to be a modern networking standard, and really could have offered all kinds of new functionality (I wrote articles about that 10 years ago), and, sadly, it tanked in the market. sACN has been successful but only because it preserves 1980's slots and universes. RDMNet is finally on the way, but have you used RDM? It's cool but mostly it's for changing addresses without a ladder and getting lamp hours and that kind of stuff. It's cool, and we should do it, but I don't see that as a game changer.


JD said:


> In the sound world, digital processing from mic to speaker is already underway. Gone are the old "elephant" snakes. Powered speakers with addressable Ethernet inputs have replaced amp racks and wads of copper that used to fee line arrays. Much like computer evolution in the 1990's, things are changing so fast that what is "standard of the industry" today is often laughed at one or two years later.



Actually most of what you describe is already in my chart.  I've written 10's of thousands of words about that on my blog if you'd like to read more about my thinking on networked audio. And I think most of the real change that you're describing already happened in the 90's. Even if we stuck an RJ45 on every mic (which I don't think is happening any time soon) it won't really change the way we work or give us new capabilities. 

John


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## JohnHuntington (Feb 28, 2019)

sk8rsdad said:


> SCR dimmers were commercially available in 1958 (Strand C Core) and were ubiquitous in modular form factors circa 1975.


Thanks I also found this:
http://www.theatrecrafts.com/archive/history/chronology.html


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