ETC's stand had hints of decadence with a huge baroque proscenium arch set into it, displaying the company's sine wave dimmers in the 'back stage' whilst control and lighting equipment was mainly displayed in the resulting 'FOH' areas. The stand also naturally echoed the company's Hopper-inspired headquarters unveiled in June this year. ETC launched its Smartfade products onto the American market, the newest addition to its Smart Solutions compact lighting control range. Designed to give users at all skill levels the tools to program a lighting show, SmartFade has three operating modes:

Two-Scene, Normal, and DMX Backup. There's no learning curve for novice or first-time users: the simple two-scene mode provides a concise, easy-to-operate 12- or 24-channel, two-scene preset console with a manual or timed crossfade section, bump buttons with master and a grand master. The Normal mode is designed for more experienced users, providing 48 or 96 channels with 288 or 576 memories and 48 sequences for expanded control functionality. The DMX512 input facility enables SmartFade to provide seamless, reliable backup for any DMX512 lighting console. In DMX Backup mode, SmartFade provides 24 or 48 backup looks of 512 channels each, with backups recorded as dimmer snapshot.

Also high on the agenda was the Sensor+ SineWave dimming products, which offer precise voltage, temperature and load reporting for each dimmer, powerful functionality of the Sensor+ CEM+, direct Ethernet control input as well as two DMX inputs, total short-circuit and overload protection and no harmonic distortion, meaning lower power costs. Also, by controlling the actual amplitude of the sine wave, SineWave dimming eliminates filament noise. This allows quiet dimming of any load - even ballasted HMI fixtures and low-wattage LEDs, as Mark White said: "With the sensor dimmers you don't leave work humming a lighting plot!" There is also the fact that lamp life tends to be longer, running costs are lower, making it a much more ecological solution for venues and events that tend to use large amounts of power.


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