Greg Plouvier wrote:Randy> Are the Rocklite colors thick and saturated? I bought some puck RGBA's and they're ok - just not real saturated. Havn't had the Rocklites in hand yet - been getting a lot of inquiries though. Thanks
Rich is a good term to describe these guys.
As far as I am concerned, the problems with these units should be immediately obvious to anyone who has ever used a larger-format LED fixture:
1) They use separate (3W) R, G, B, A, and W LEDs (primarily because 5-in-ones don't exist yet, but I understand they are coming). Therefore, color mixture, especially at short distances isn't going to be that great. For example, at 2-3 meters (5-10 feet) the center of the beam is much warmer (redder) than the outer area which is much cooler (blue and green). At my July 4th show, the cans were about 10-12 feet from the performers. At 50% brightness they did a heck of a job (didn't go above 50% because it really hurts you eyes, evening being hit at a 45-degree angle) to run those things at 100% that close.
2) The fans are a little loud (though it's great they have fans). Okay in a concert setting, probably too loud for theater and other quiet applications.
3) I wish they had better channel # options. I'd love to see a six-channel mode with R, G, B, A, W, and D (dimmer) channels that would fly well with MagicQ. A 7-channel mode that adds strobing would be cool, too. As it is, it eats up 12 DMX channels if you want a dimmer channel. 16 fixtures times 12 channels eats up a lot of DMX channels.
4) The 25-degree coverage pattern is wrong for me. At 10' in front of a 2' high stage and about 14' in the air, the beams were too wide by the time they hit the stage (decent color mixing at that point, though). I think I'd rather have 40-degrees and put the cans closer to the stage or 15-20 degrees with the position I was using. IIRC, you can order these fixtures with different optics (15, 25, 40 degrees?).
I bought 8 Puck RGBAW units to provide side fills on the stage in the two zones that weren't directly hit by the Rocklites. They made no difference whatsoever at all (3,000 lumens each). This was with the Rocklites being driven at a maximum of 50%! The Pucks are going on the back truss for effects from now on. No, I wasn't impressed by the brightness of the Puck RGBAW units; they do beat the pants off some old Chauvet and ADJ cans I've had for the past three years, but they are nothing compared to the RockLites.
My stage was 24' wide with six 4' wide zones. I put four fixtures on each zone (two from each side, at between 45 and 60 degrees). The two zones on either end were supposed to be covered by the Puck RGBAW fixtures, but the spillover from zones two and five (the RockLites) was so bright the Pucks had little or no effect. At the distance I was shooting, four fixtures could have easily covered 6-8' zones.
When we hit one zone with white (all LEDs on) and neighboring zones with amber/yellow (RGA on), it was very impressive how well the high-lighted zones stood out. It was a very bright white. The individual colors were quite saturated; but I say this coming off those Chauvet and ADJ fixtures, which were useless (and flat out embarrassing to provide with my rig, to be honest). I went from "just enough illumination to see the stage at a distance" (ADJ+Chauvet) to "wow, this is Rock Concert Brightness..." All with only 16 fixtures on the front truss (okay, 24 counting the Puck RGBAW units, but they didn't add much). To be honest, I was worried about whether 16 was going to be enough. After seeing the show, I'm glad I didn't spend more money on additional fixtures (I originally wanted to complement the set with 16 RockLite AW fixtures, too; I might add a few of those in the future, but certainly not 16 of them).
A Blizzard sales rep told me that 5-in-1 LEDs will start appearing next year. Some Pucks with a half-dozen to a dozen of those guys (10W each) ought to be pretty good. I'd love to have the flat Puck form factor with somewhere near the same amount of light (and RGBAW). Truck pack is so much easier with the flat fixtures. (I currently have all my fixtures pre-hung and pre-wired on 5' pipes with clamps so we can connect all the lights up in a couple of minutes; they need to hang from the ceiling in my trailer with the LEDs pointing up, so the cans wind up taking up a lot of space when it's all said and done.)
I just purchased 4 Irradiant mini-movers (moving head LED washes) to get something moving on the back truss. Got a great deal on these (about $450 each). Need to add 4 intels to the back truss (probably in the $2,000/ea range, the Blizzard units look good enough) and then my lights will be done for a while and I can starting working on a better microphone kit and looking towards my next "A" rig.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde