I have posted various comments and suggestions over time but thought it a good idea to take stock. I have used the CS20AV in three venues: a 140 seat proscenium theatre with 48 dimmer channels and 4 Colorsource profile spots; a 40 seat studio theatre with 12 dimmer channels; and Lichfield Guildhall for folk/rock bands, with just 6 dimmer channels. In all cases the rigs have been supplemented with LED colour mixing fixtures including moving wash and zoom.
Patching
I have not tried RDM. Manual patching no problem. I was concerned that the 40 fixture limit would be a problem in the first venue but with a little forethought and the multitasking ability of LED fixtures the rig handled four playlets in succession with capacity to spare. However it might be good to upgrade the CS20 software to handle 80 fixtures, either by having 4 ‘pages’ of faders, or limiting the upper 40 to control by touch screen and command line. The real threats to the fixture limit are multi-segment battens.
Stage map
A very useful feature. Clever the way it scales down when space needed for other things. A few nice-ifs: a ‘moiree’ scintillation of the green border on selected fixtures to make them more visible; a way to ‘gel’ a conventional during patch so its colour shows on the map; some way to show fixture type and general direction when map is full size and some indication of the pan of a mover.
Control
Selection on the map is prone to mistakes through leaving fixtures selected. Personally I would prefer the single tap to deselect other fixtures and selection of multiple fixtures done by keeping a finger on the first fixture while toggling on or off others using a second finger.
The ‘wheel’ is awful. It doesn’t even behave like a physical wheel. Why can’t we have a virtual ‘motorised’ fader with a knob whose position reflects the intensity of the highest setting of the selected fixtures?
Control of other parameters by placing finger on ‘film strip frame’ and having the full screen height to adjust is clever. Much better than the ‘wheel’ so it’s a shame intensity adjustment isn’t possible this way. Might be nice for some sort of vertical bar to appear on screen to show this facility is in use.
Colour control options very good. Handy having individual emitter settings particularly when the fixture has UV.
Not keen on the position cartesian map for XY. With a 540° pan on many movers it is too coarse, and the ‘rate’ rather than position response to finger position isn’t user friendly. I find myself using the X and Y ‘film strip frames’. Would be nice to be able to zoom and position the cartesian map so the usable range of pan and tilt for that fixture fills it, and default back to that map setting for that fixture for future use. Reduces the risk of accidental audience blinding.
Memories
Saving lighting states straightforward until you start messing with the ‘include’ option. I am still not sure how this works on a non-tracking system.
It would be very good if ‘include’ could include a playback so that when a look in a playback is changed all cues including it changed too.
When storing sound cues on the AV it would be good to ‘exclude’ lighting.
It is great to be able to set cue numbers manually. I have so far been able to use script page numbers with decimals allowing up to 10 cues a page. Got close to limit sometimes especially with follow-ons. Seems over the top - two places of decimals for cue numbers?
Editing cues on the AV tends to drop the sound part.
Cue list management
Could be made much easier for editing and rehearsal. Tap and hold a cue entry and press GO to go straight to it. Tap and hold a cue and press CONTROLS to edit.
it might be handy to be able to set the colour of text in the cue list so operators could, for instance, see a cue is a follow on so doesn’t need GO
On the AV console inhibit sound cue triggering when using BACK, the cacophony resulting can be dreadful if having to back through several cues.
Performance
Arrange that the touch screen GO button can be disabled. I caught it with little finger once during a performance and it went.
It would be nice to know how many of these suggestions folks agree with and how many might find their way into V3.
