Avolites: Shining Bright Like a Diamond

The recent launch of the new Avolites Diamond 9 Consoles, alongside their new brand logo, represent a major development for Avolites as a company; both in terms of their technology and creative process. Since their formation in 1976, Avolites have sought to push the boundaries of lighting control; starting with Touring Dimmer Systems and the analogue 8100 Console. 1983 saw the launch of QM500, which was expanded to 180 Channels in 1985 and remains arguably one of the most renowned consoles in live entertainment history. At one point, 17 of the top 20 grossing touring shows were running on QM500s, most notably the “Queen Desk” built for Lighting Designer Jimmy Barnett. There was even a special 660 Channel version designed specifically for the Hippodrome in London’s Leicester Square.

The Diamond Collection launched between 1991 and 2002 and quickly became renowned for being the ultimate live performance consoles. The Diamond 4s were stylish, intuitive to operate, with minimal operator fatigue and the ability to create the fastest, most cost-efficient range of live or programmed shows with cutting-edge technology built-in.

The latest release, the Diamond 9, is considered to be the flagship console of the Collection and once again, displays the innovation and expertise that has become synonymous with the Avolites name. Building on the ground-breaking Synergy software, the D9 was released in October 2019 and offers seamless integration between media server and lighting control, allowing for intuitive designs and layouts and your fingertips and is ideal for media playback and integrated control, allowing seamless integration between media server and lighting control, the D9 brings this to your fingertips with intuitive design and layouts, ideal for media playback and integrated control.

Creative Visual Control

Without doubt, the innovation to have made the biggest impact on our industry in recent times is LED. The increased use of LED Chips, and the high-resolution video screens they have given rise to, have created huge opportunities for designers to build screens into the complete visual picture; whether that’s as blocks, curves, flexible screens, or completely transparent.

From high profile rock shows to corporate presentations, lighting designers are being asked to increasingly combine lighting and video elements together for maximum impact. The shift from “Lighting Designer” to “Visual Designer” is fundamental in the successful implementation of new technologies within the live space. With this, the shift from lighting control systems to visual control systems has become a subject of interest over the last few years, with a number of manufacturers beginning to tackle the challenge of a cohesive blend of disciplines.

Avolites recognise and embrace what they call the “ongoing collision between lighting and video which means that the job has changed out of all recognition since the days when new entrants were expected to jump on a lighting console and essentially ‘figure it out along the way.’ Designers and Programmers will need to be on top of lighting, video, lasers, effects and audio, along with the interconnection protocols for each of those disciplines that are required to be able to bring it all together into a truly immersive environment. This has led Avolites to radicalise its R&D department, with both its hardware and software teams working together under one roof. “The two departments were based in different buildings before and I had wanted to make this change for a long time,” comments JB Toby, Technical Director for Avolites. “Now, we have the AI team, Titan software team and hardware development crew all in the same space, which means we have direct contact all the time.”

Synergy

Synergy is the result of years of R&D by a dedicated Avolites team, allowing users to stream Ai video colour data through any fixture group and to instantly integrate this into a larger video canvas. Launching in the UK at PLASA London, Synergy immediately won Avolites a PLASA Innovation Award, with the judges stating it stood out because it ‘opens up the creative opportunities for visual effects on stage as well as providing time-saving opportunities in production workflow’.

The software features Synergy brings are designed to remove the complications from blending video and lighting, by bringing both disciplines into one Visual Canvas and giving designers and programmers more time to focus on creating visual experiences. Any tool that enables a designer’s creative ambition to become a visual reality is a tool worth exploring. Synergy does just this: it simplifies the translation of an idea onto fixtures and displays, empowering lighting and video professionals to enrich an audience’s experiences.

One early user of Avolites’ Synergy Software, Luke Edwards, Creative Designer for Gary Numan’s Savage Tour, made heavy use of the integral link between Media Data and Lighting that comes with synergy, explaining: “It would be virtually impossible to programme the fixtures to display what Synergy can feed them from the video content,” Edwards continues. “This means that I can achieve an array of effects that before now were not available. Using Synergy, the video content can programme the lights for you!”

The Diamond 9

The D9 Consoles encompass this principle, designed from the ground up for seamlessly-integrated control of all visual elements. Whilst the Diamond 9–330 is the flagship visual canvas controller in the collection, the Diamond 9–215 offers a more compact solution. One of the key people driving the Diamond to market was Technical Director, JB Toby. He comments: “Diamond 9 dates back to 2017 when we set out to create a new control surface that was totally at ease with dealing with both media and lighting”. Building on the ground-breaking Synergy feature set, that allows seamless integration between media server and lighting control, the D9 brings this to users’ fingertips with intuitive design and layouts ideal for media playback and control.

One key area of interest on the D9 is the right-hand side, with 5 encoder wheels, common place in lighting control; a T-bar extremely familiar to video departments. The blending goes far beyond the aesthetics; it provides more intuitive media control integration for lighting designers in all sectors of the industry. The T-Bar is used as the “Scene Master” and can be user defined to control any transition that requires precision; be that video content, or a Lighting State or even an individual parameter change. As such, this then becomes ideal in a world of broadcast or live streamed events, where an event or occurrence is not only watched by a wider audience, but are watchable over and over again.

Avolites are focusing on the utilitarian elements of design, simplifying them and, where possible, removing them from the creative process. They are designing and manufacturing powerful tools, that are heavily focused on not just being creative, but allowing the user to be creative.

Synergy Features are available in the latest Titan Software, for use with Ai Servers, from T1, through to the Quartz and Tiger Touch, Sapphire and, of course, the D9. This means that users in all applications, however big, or small, can access the full power of Synergy and develop workflows around the numerous opportunities it offers.