Chaser speeds

[danlight]

Hi

I am the lighting operator at a night club and I am using a Pearl 2000 with the latest Pearl 2000 software (not 2004). When running chasers I usually will have them running to the beat of the music. The problem I have encountered is the speed increments are just not small enough- eg. 0.42s, 0.45s, 0.47s etc. and when this is changed to BPM the increments are 133, 141, 150BPM etc. So if a DJ is playing a track at 135 or 137BPM for example I cannot get the chaser to stay in time with the music. It tends to drift quite quickly.

Is there a way to change the resolution of the increments? Or has this been addressed in the 2004 software? If so I will look at getting it upgraded to 2004.

Thanks for your time
Dan

[danlight]

Has no one else encountered this or am I doing something wrong?

[niclights]

I guess most people are using the board for lighting bands.

I do some club operating and usually have no trouble getting chases to run in time, although I always do this by wheel. I never use the tap function or sound-to-light.

I am fairly sure the restrictions to speed increments are essentially a side-effect of the DMX protocol.
There are some improvements to sound-to-light in the 2004 soft, but no change to timings AFAIK.

My recommendation is to tell everyone that it looks much better when the lights are asynchronous to the music and that you are thinking from a punters point-of-view. Or blame it on the DJ. Always a favourite!

[iadwm]

I understand what your saying Dan...it's not exactly 'linear' is it? But I agree with Nic that it shouldn't be a problem, have you tried chases running in half time ? I.E. if the track is 120BPM then the chase tempo is 60. Or a chase step on 1st beat of every bar rather than every beat
This is also makes it easier to sync for the faster stuff.

Perhaps the software chaps could explain why the temp scale is how it is?

Regards,

Andy

[Olie]

The speed of a chase is based on a time between steps. No matter which mode you are in Sec/BPM the wheel will always increment the chase speed in seconds between a step. The difference between the modes is that in BPM it converts the current speed from seconds to BPM so it can display it on the screen.

As the difference between 1BPM and 2BPM in seconds is allot greater than 100BPM and 101BPM, the increments in BPM will decrease as the BPM gets larger.

Hope this makes sense and helps.