Chuck Van Eekelen

Glad the cable thing got sorted out. There are very good, professionally made digital coaxial cables on the market (don’t worry about gold connectors though) that don’t cost a fortune. So if you dread working with small pliers, soldering irons and such, just buy a pair. Tip: the ones you find in the box with some home-grade stereo setups are NOT the right ones 😀 .

On the bigger question: what makes digital digital and different from the analogue RCA sitting next to it?

Good question and hopefully I an answer it in a comprehensible way without going my trademark wall-of-text, LOL.

Whether you use CDs,USB-sticks, streaming audio, whatever, it all starts as digital music. CDJs, controllers, iPhones all are able to “read” digital music. Most devices will manipulate the music in it’s digital form before offering it to a DA-converter (Digital to Analogue). It is at this point that sound goes from being written in zeros and ones to actual analogue (varying voltage) sound. Speakers and headphones need analogue input to be able to correctly translate electronic analogue signals to audible output our ears can process.

Many modern mixers and certainly all controllers do their sound processing digitally. At the end they too need to DA convert to get audible sound eventually.

In your typical CDJ/mixer setup this would be the signal path:
* digital source (CD/MP3, etx.)
* processing inside device
* DA conversion to analogue signal on RCA
* RCA to mixer analogue input (also RCA)
* AD (Analogue to Digital) conversion of incoming signal (so you can use all those nice digital FX and EQ in your mixer)
* processing inside mixer
* DA conversion to analogue master output on mixer
* Analogue signal to speakers

As you see this can lead to 3 DA/AD conversions which is something you really don’t want if possible. Another thing is that there is not option for error correction with analogue signals as the receiver of that signal has no means to double-check if what it received is the way it should be. Digital signal do have error correction (usually checksum).
Analogue signals are also much more prone to outside influence which create actual audible noise or drop-outs. Digital signals carrying only 0 and 1 as information are much harder to disturb and with the error correction have a far better chance of being restored on the receiving end.

So let’s do the same gear as above but now digitally connected:
* digital source (CD/MP3, etx.)
* processing inside device
* digital sound through coaxial output/cable to mixer
* processing inside mixer
* DA conversion to analogue master output on mixer
* Analogue signal to speakers

As you can see, there is only one DA conversion left, at the end of the sound chain before it goes out to the speakers.

So, if both your devices and your mixer support digital connections you should use those for better sound quality (every conversion hurts the signal quality some, depending on the quality of the converters it will be more or less) and lesser chance of outside influence due to the environment (old lighting dimmer packs for example are notorious for their influence on nearby signal cables).

Hope that helps some.

The whole problem here isn’t so much the controller as it is the fixtures. As long as you have only two, I’d actually see if there isn’t a foot switch or IR-remote for them.

Another option to look into would be the SoundSwitch (if you are using Serato). You can even pre-program what you want your lights to do. When you play a tune it will automatically do the appropriate lighting you set.

Check the article here: http://www.digitaldjtips.com/2017/02/soundswitch-wants-to-replace-your-lighting-guy/

As soon as you start adding more different fixtures, you will have to start thinking about things. Chances are high that the other fixtures you get will have other settings yet again, so your carefully re-assigned faders might have different functions again.

There is a reason why bigger mobile companies and all events have light-techs. When we used to go set-up a show, sound was done well within the hour, the rest of the 3-4 setup time was spent on getting lighting set up and working properly. And we’d have one guy managing the light show all night.

Having DMX control(ler) for two lights seems overkill, and once you have more lights, proper DMX operation comes with an investment in time, both in preparation, setup time and during the night.

While I know Marshall from live sound equipment, I have never seen them in a DJ environment. I am gonna guess these are made for (live) sound engineers.

Hopefully someone has or has had a pair and can tell you his/her experience with them.

Ok, there are two different things:

1) DMX addressing. If you have identical fixtures, you can set them both to the same address (first fixtures on 001). Be sure they are set to DMX mode (Menu on the back, ADDR then 001. Should you add other type fixtures later, you will need to use new address(es). Since your fixtures are 6-channel only, the next usable address would be 007 (001+6).

2) Channel assignment. The Obey assumes that the channels on a fixture are set up according to the list you posted. The faders will change the channel value from 000 (fader down) to 255 (fader fully up).

Now we get to the interesting part. Your particular fixtures are 6-channel but with a different assignment.

Now what happens is that the control fader 1 will change value between 000-255. For your fixture that means RED from off to full on. You would think that moving fader 1 up you would have RED full on, right? Unfortunately your fixtures have a master dimmer on channel 5. So, in order to get full on RED, you need to move both fader 1 and fader 5 all the way up! The master dimmer level will affect all 4 channels before it (channel 1 through 4). So you set the color mix by using the RED, BLUE, GREEN and WHITE channel faders and then use MASTER (channel 5) to set the actual brightness.

My suggestion would be to use a lettering thingie or a small strip of white gaffa tape on which you write what each fader does and stick that over the current channel names.

Finally, while the controller offers a strobe button (I don’t see a speed control), your fixtures have strobe on channel 6 going from slow to fast, but the ultimate last bit (251-255) switches your fixtures to sound control mode. Personally I would test at which setting the fader goes into sound control from strobing and put a piece of gaffa tape to prevent the fader from going there. Your controller has a sound control button, so that should work better than the one built-in into your fixtures.

As long as you use only these fixtures you should be ok. Once you start adding other fixtures with different channel assignment things might get tricky. Let’s say you get a couple of Chauvet fixtures that use the actual assignment as marked on your controller.

RED, GREEN and BlUE would be the same (channel 1-3), although you’d still need to move fader 5 to make any light visible on your QTXs. However, channel 5 on the Chauvet fixtures would be WHITE. SO while your QTX get brighter with the color mix set by faders 1-4, the Chauvets will set the white color according to that fader position.
And if you want to use the UV option of the Chauvets, your QTX will start strobing.

The controller offers an option of setting 6 groups of fixtures. In the above situation you would set your QTX to fixtures 1 group and the Chauvet ones to fixtures 2 group. Now you select group 1 and set the lights the way you want them, then select group 2, now you can set those fixtures (for example the UV to max, the rest off). While you set group 2 the group 1 fixtures should “remember” their last setting.

Finally your controller has many buttons that give you shortcuts to all kinds of settings. Unfortunately that works only perfectly with fixtures that have the 6-channel assignment that is identical to what the controller is setup for.
Better not use them, or test them in advance and see which give an acceptable effect and which don’t.

For example with color chase, it could play channel 1 then 2 then 3 then 4 then 5 then 6 then 1 again. Unfortunately, since your fixtures need a master channel, when 1 2 3 and 4 are sent to max respectively they won’t show light because 5 is closed and when 5 is opened the others are closed, still no light. When channel 6 is triggered it will strobe shortly until it chases to 1 again. Ergo, the color chase is not a viable option.
Alternatively it might only chase 1-2-3 in which case it might work correctly with channel 5 set to the value you want, but you’d have to test that.

A DMX controller based on a software solution would give you much more control to mix and match various fixtures.

UPDATE: Just looked at the Obey manual a bit more. And the faders seems to have two control modes. In manual RGBAWUV mode (press the button), it should work as above. The faders all double as something else (like master dimmer, strobe speed and such) when other buttons are pushed (like strobe, chase, etx.).
It is well beyond this post to work out every single combination. With your current fixtures, I’d experiment with the color fader and chase (look at the bottom text on the faders to see what they do) in combination with the TOP row of the colors/fades block of buttons.

Hope that helps some.

I do in Holland. You will have to stick invoices for gigs played in your bookkeeping too though!

Depending on what processor, it should be able to handle it.

Sure, HDD will work too. It’s just that if you have the option SSD is a) the thing that gives most upgrade for the money currently (especially as swapping processors in laptops isn’t possible or too expensive and b) since it has no moving parts, an SSD is not prone to movement issues when “spinning” or – worse – falling or being bumped.

But hey, it’s a good laptop either way and the specs seems ok, as does the price.

Under Preferences, in the analysis tab, there is an option to switch OFF (remove check mark) the option to “allow key analysis on import”.

Default RB will do key analysis when you import tracks. And RB will not analyse in Camelot format.
And that means you end up with regular key info in the key column of RB. As far as I know it won’t automatically “translate” regular key to camelot and there is no option to pick what key format you want to display. It will just read what’s in the key column and display that. And if you let RB do the analysis, as said, it will write regular key notation to that column.

So to get the desired result in RB, you want to switch of the key analysis on import. Now RB will just read what is in the key tag, which would be Camelot in your case and it will show it as such.

Hope that helps some.