The Avolites Discussion Forum

Is there a high resolution photo of the Pearl Expert's face plate available somewhere? It would be nice to see all of the buttons in detail.

Thanks!

Probably Nic has some more ressources. However:

- for the black expert, there are some HiRes pictures here: http://www.avolife.co.uk/album/products ... index.html

- for the white version: why not just start the simulator, and do a screenshot? Except that the context buttons A~G are missing, this might be enough for a detailled view on the buttons? See this: http://www.avolites.de/test/icke_siegen/pexp.png (of course, if you had a bigger screen...)

I don't have anything better. The white laminate is the most up-to-date for Titan but there aren't any hi-res images that I know of so I think the Simulator panel is your best bet. They are fixed resolution images but is enough to read all the legends.

Thanks, I did start up the simulator to check it out, but that screen shot is great.

Any advice on migrating from the Mobile to the Expert? Are there any common pitfalls/quirks that you know about when doing so? I will build my show on the mobile and then use the simulator to migrate over and check it out, but I don't have much time and may not get that far.

Thanks in advance!

I'd say it's pretty much a question of taste.

Biggest question: will there be a touch wing or not?

Essentially, due to the distribution of the controls between the console and the touchwing, some things should be kept in mind:

- there is an additional user setting (AVO, user settings): attribute control on touchwing/console, which determines where attributes are controlled. Personally, I prefer this on the wing for programming, but put it on the console for running the show. Chase control will always remain on the console.
- coming from the TiMo, you'll probably treat the windows/the screen as the center of your programming. However: there is a display in the desk, _this_ holds all the essential information!
- the key switch provides for a 'run' mode, where you cannot overwrite the programmed settings (you can work almost as like as in program mode when toggled to 'takeover' - but when coming from the mobile, you'll find it easier to stay in program mode
- if the touchwing is connected, some basic macros (like: clear, locate...) on the macro buttons of the wing will be extremely helpfull
- with or - even more - without touchwing: window options can be found when pressing View+C
- edit: another one: if both the wing and another display are provided you'll probably love the screen real estate. I'd suggest to keep things simple, and put the windows you only need for viewing on the external display. But much more important: make damn sure not connected displays are disabled in system->display settings. This is not because of GPU performance in the first place (as the manual states). Much worse: the software might open a window on a not connected display - and you're waiting for the window to appear (don't ask me how I know...). This is prevented if not present displays are disabled. Also: there are two more window operations (via window options or shortkeys): move screen (shortkey AVO+Size/Pos), and next window (AVO+min/max). Also good to have them as macros on the wing...

But except from that: have fun, and enjoy the large desk!

Mostly it will be different location of buttons/functions. In particular:

- Separate Record Cue and Record Chase/Cue-List buttons.
- Copy/Link/Move menu is accessed from the Copy function key. Quick access to Move = press Copy x 3 (toggles through softkey options).
- Latch is ML key (below softkeys)
- Open Workspace menu = View
- Extra attribute bank keys.
- Blind is accessed via shift menu.
- SelIf is accessed from the channel menu.

And two more:
- don't forget to bring tape and a sharpy
- in case the Expert is a black one, you should rather bring a printout of the white laminate (screenshot) of the control section: some keys (e.g. the grey ones above and below the number key pad, and some function keys) had different functions - and thus where labelled differently - in good old classic times

Thank you both again, I will keep this in mind when I go, I am definitely looking forward to the much larger board!

Finished my show on a Pearl Expert 2010 with no touch wing (which made things a bit weird for me at first, coming from the Titan Mobile). I'm happy to say that the show converted over to the Pearl quite well, but I did run into some strange happenings:

1. I was not able to leave the desk in "Program Mode" like I was hoping for. I like to run everything off of cues (including the 60 above the roll bar) and I'll use the programmer on the fly. I don't want to use the faders above the roll bar as pallettes. However, it seemed like I was being forced to use those cues as palettes, my key profile just didn't work on those faders in Program mode like I needed them to. When I put the desk into run mode, it automatically changed the key profile for me, but completely uniformly (I like to customize each faders key profile). Is it not possible to have different key profiles than the master "program mode" profile or "run mode?"

That was the bulk of the issues, that and no touch wing! There was an instance where a cue just would not release, no matter how many times I tried. I had used the cue many times throughout the night and it released just fine (it was in fader mode 2), but near the end of the night, it wouldn't go lower than about 40%. I had to go into the programmer and turn all of the lights off to get them off, which did suck a bit, but it was near the end of the show. Any thoughts on this?

Thanks!

You can have any number of global user key profiles and you can use them in both program and run mode. The only difference is to access from program mode is from the shift menu whereas in run mode you can toggle between the last two selected with softkey A. Key profiles set individually on playbacks override the global profile.

It's impossible to say about the intensity staying on without more details.