Dmx/ dimmers Express & Ion.

This is true if you don't patch them in parts. If you patch them in parts then you should be able to get more. For example Channel 1 part 1,2,3 and so on. Any DMX dimmers will work perfectly with an Ion.

This is an old thread, I know, but:

The Express you're using has two DMX outputs, but only has 240-ish channels of control.That means you can plug up to 1024 dimmers (or fixtures with a sum total of 1024 attributes) into it, but you can only send 240 disparate values to any of these - so hypothetically if every fixture needs one channel for each of its attributes, you have 240 only addresses to work with - though they can be patched anywhere in that 1024 output range.

The Ion has many more addreses available (with additional hardware, like an ethernet gateway), so you can have a *bunch* more 512-address universes than the two outputs the actual console has. Early versions of the Ion had 1000, 2000 or 3000 channels available, and software licenses were (are?) available for purchase if you needed more of them unlocked on your console, up to 3000. A later revision doubled those numbers. So the Ion is far more flexible than the express in terms of how much you can plug in, and its expandability.

As much as I miss my old dependable Express console, I'm not looking back.