Colour-changing LED luminaires are a fact of life in today’s lighting industry, but
intelligent lights require intelligent control. When time and money are tight, the
results aren’t always pretty; small venues around the world have experienced a
rash of purplish light, poor colour rendering and garish transitions. Since 2014,
ETC’s ColorSource family of products has fought back against this epidemic of bad
LED lighting by providing affordable, high-quality luminaires and effortless power
control. Now, with the announcement of the new ColorSource and ColorSource AV
control desks, the family is poised to really take control of the issue – one venue at
a time.

Approachability is key for a small console; many venues are staffed by students,
volunteers or visiting artists, and operators need to be able to walk up to a board,
learn it quickly and bring up great lighting looks.

“The ColorSource console is a simple machine, not a simplistic machine,’ says
Adam Bennette, the R&D technical director involved in the desks’ development. Each
ColorSource desk boasts a sleek design and hands-on control, with an on-board,
seven-inch touchscreen and 20 or 40 pageable faders that can control 40 or 80
channels or devices. The touchscreen interface brings colour selection, record and
other commonly used functions to the forefront, while a wealth of deeper features
can be accessed using the intuitive menu system. If first-time users get lost, they
can quickly find their way again with built-in, multilingual help functions and video
tutorials.

The desks are designed to make setup a breeze. ColorSource consoles streamline
the patching process by doing most of the work. They offer comprehensive RDM
(remote device management) support – a unique feature among small desks, which
identifies on startup any intelligent lights in the rig and populates their profiles in
Patch. Within minutes of setup, the fixtures can be assigned to channels using the
touchscreen and dragged into position on the onscreen stage map for easy direct-
selection and programming.

ColorSource consoles’ touchscreen interfaces include swatches of pre-programmed,
attractive colours and a colour wheel for quick, full spectrum selection, so a tight
tech schedule won’t get in the way of good lighting.

While all ColorSource desks provide excellent control of effects, cues, moving lights
and LED colour, the AV models go where no ETC board has gone before: providing
integrated audio-visual playback.

The AV consoles connect directly to monitors, projectors, networks and sound
systems and are able to store and play back still images and sound effects as part
of the cue stack or live fader control. The consoles also boast the innovative Video
Toy, which allows users to manipulate real-time projection effects through the
touchscreen. With the addition of the downloadable Amigo wireless remote app, a
ColorSource AV console can provide for all the control needs of a small production –
and free up a lot of space in the control room.

To learn more about ETC’s ColorSource family of products, visit http://www.etcconnect.com/Color
Source/