Ableton Forum

Ok so, i bought a DMXIS light control to trigger my two Equinox Firecracker 1500w strobes.

My band plays the whole set with a set click track through ableton, and my idea was to program in single flashes & fast strobes to go exactly with the set. Now i got everything to work, but when my midi note sends the flash ON, sometimes it comes on on time, sometimes late and sometimes it doesnt even flash once. its not like straightforward latency from ableton out to the strobe, because it is always different.

I know this is probably not an straight Ableton question, and im thinking more if strobes are just difficult to trigger exactly in time cause of the charge between flashes.

Anyone have anything on this? would be much appreciated..
cheers
Gulli

Try some basic tests.

It's gonna be the strobe I am sure.

Does your DMX strobe driver have any indication of when signal has come in and when the strobe is active? Strobe lights are far from accurate unless you spend some serious $$$. Some of the higher end DMX strobes (with the driver inbuilt) are a lot more accurate to the point of BPM perfect synchronisation and will have the strobe circuit always pre-charged and ready to go.

What you are getting is the pre-charge delay time sometimes depending on where the strobe was when it cut off. If it was at the bottom of it's charge cycle, when told to switch ON it has to first charge then fire off whereas if it was right at the peak it will hold that charge for some time and when told to fire it will do so immediatly.

Without the right professional strobe, there will be little you can do.

cheers for the reply! yeah i thought that, did some more tests and cant see a way out of unless i get moneymoney strobes.. returning them monday and switching out for a couple of LED cans i reckon. do you have good experience in this lighting business?

gulli
x

Nope, Sorry.

I'm no real full on expert but I have been around enough gear and built light chaser units, Worked with some basic DMX lighting rigs and have an electronics engineering background so have a pretty fine understanding on what makes this gear tick.

I was looking at designing a similar system a while back where you could set the strobe to flash via BPM but it's quite a challenge to create a back yard solution that's half reliable. As I said, ready made solutions do exist and I am sure that there are even MIDI driven ones that can take your clock signal and trigger to the BPM or multiples there of. Some clubs I have been into have really elaborate systems that I would love to study more but have never had the time or real chance but if it's in your interest i'd recommend sussing some out and having a look at how the pro units do it all.