Motorised fafers - gimmick or really useful?

[dmxlights]

The unit I broke the fader on Behringer BCF2000 midi controller and the motorised fader are not as good as what Yamaha have in the LS9.

 

I am not say that they are easy to break. I was just unlucky with one and I have replacement one on way and it should be here soon.

 

I do like the idea of them on a lighting desk and would come in very handy for a lot of things for sure. One thing I wish I could find a usb midi interface like the Behringer BCF2000 that is powered from usb. would come in very handy.

[grandMA_the_2nd]

I've been using motorised faders on consoles for 10 years now, so they really aren't a new thing- they can be incredibly useful and to be honest when I downgrade to smaller consoles I miss having them. They make complex shows a lot easier being able to send commands to fly other faders for you, keeping faders running in background on other pages on busking or multi room environments is great also plus when running shows with other operators in a network session can make inhibits really handy for broadcast shows.

 

Never had a problem with resistance or faders dying in any way more than normal faders - if you are going to thrash a fader then it will die be it motorised or not... but try using temp flash buttons with timing to save your poor faders in the future!..

[PaulDF]

I wasn't over impressed with the BCF2000 for lighting, I just found the travel distance of the faders was too much. Saying that I'm used to using a bullfrog.

[paulears]

The Behringer is a very old design now - the ones on the X32 are superb, and very light. technology has moved on.

[PaulDF]

Could you use an X32 as a lighting desk?

[Smiffy]

I used an MA2 Ultra Light on a show for the first time last week after about two years of only using the Light or Full Size, NOT having the motorised faders was a real PITA.

 

The faders were far too 'light' to move as the resistance was all wrong, not being able to see levels on Faders that have been commanded up via a macro was annoying, the inability to work easily across many pages was also annoying.

 

If you don't find Motorised faders useful, then you're either not working the console anywhere near hard enough, you don't realise just how useful they are, or you are not working in an area where they are useful.

 

Cheers

 

 

Smiffy

[dbuckley]

Back when I used to use lighting desks, I'd have like motorised faders on something as trivial as a Zero88 XL. Recalling preset levels by watching lights flash not a very intuitive way of working.

[timsabre]

Back when I used to use lighting desks, I'd have like motorised faders on something as trivial as a Zero88 XL. Recalling preset levels by watching lights flash not a very intuitive way of working.

 

Indeed, level matching a scene was an awful job. But I think that motorised faders might have pushed the price up a bit too far...

[mac.calder]

The greatest advantage on a lighting desk I believe is when you can throw all your intensity channels on faders - even more powerful on a desk like the MA2 where desk channels can be user-organised and grouped. It means I can hit edit on a cue, jump into my intensities and nudge levels without having to remember fixture numbers etc - If I only have 30 or so channels, not a MAJOR advantage, but when dealing with 300+ fixtures? I can logically group by location, then visually tell which lights are on and how much they are outputting.

 

The other great one is the ability to split programming up - I often create a number of cuelists which are only called by links in cues and it is nice to be able to jump through a few pages and manually pull down the fader slightly without having to "catch" control and risk bumping it the wrong way first. I also tend to split off house light control and other "constant" items that I don't need to touch often - it puts everything close but without using up "active" faders.

 

Essential? Nope.. But they are a nice feature - one could argue they are never essential, be it audio or lighting - I would argue that for the little bit of extra cost they add an infinitely larger amount of usability.