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I am a parent volunteer for our local Middle School (11 to 14 years) here in the US. I have been learning as I go, so forgive my awkward descriptions. We have out grown our Scene Setter 24 and are in the market for something new.

Our stage is situated in a dedicated space in the gymnasium. Our lights are primarily contained above the stage decking, although we do have the option of utilizing floor extensions to make the stage larger and suspended bars for additional lights during productions (to the great angst of the Physical Education Dept.). We have two hard wired dimmer bars with 6 channels each. Those channels we use for PAR 64s and floods for forward and fill in lighting. We also have 8 LED RGB PARs that require 7 channels each when used in full functioning mode, which is our preference, although they can be used in 3 channel mode. Last year, we added a single scanner intelligent fixture for a couple of specials. It requires 11 channels, if memory serves correctly. The LEDs and scanner have been daisy chained from the dimmers in order to utilize the one DMX universe hookup that we have and the current board accepts.

In order to use everything to its fullest and not group all of the LEDs together, we need more channels. For our upcoming musical theater production I want those LEDs at full capacity and totally independent of one another. I'd also love the functionality of programming cues and our setting up the next scene while running the current. I have been running these production manually and sometimes I do not have enough fingers...

While I would love to add more movable fixtures, I doubt it will happen simply because future operators are likely to not know how to use them. Sad, but true, unless I continue to come back and do the lights each year.

Is the Magic 260 the right board for us? Budget is always a constraint, especially when competing against a dedicated storage container for all of our set pieces that are taking up space in the choral classroom.

Thanks in advance for any advice!
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The setup you described uses 79 channels, the Magic 260 has 260 channels (plus four more if you use the Aux buttons). So the M260 would enable you to individually control all of your fixtures (plus a lot of room to expand).

An Operator Pro would have enough channels too.

I'm not aware, however, of how you would program the next scene while the current scene is playing with any of them. The are primarily intended to play Scenes or Shows (a sequence of Scenes) that have been programmed in advance and saved so they can be easily called up during the show. [Although you can control the scanner, change the tempo of scene changes, fade speed and individual fixtures and overall brightness with the M260.]

If you are logical in where you save your Scenes/Shows knowing what each button will do can be made to be intuitive. If you don't save too many options, you will have a chance of writing instructions so that others can run the board in your absence.
I have a Magic 260. I am still very new to DMX, but from what I have learned, this controller is a beast with much room for growth. I bought it primarily for control of my moving head fixtures. I do alot of uplighting with par cans, so something you might want to think about for your pars is buying a few RGB controllers from ADJ to independently run your pars. Then just stick with what you have for the other fixtures currently programmed.

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