I’m shopping for my first (legal) laser here in the US. My friend gave me a SHEHDS he had that I have setup in my shop just to play with Liberation. Obviously not legal in the US for Production shows. Now I’m shopping for a legit laser. I’m looking at X-Laser since there’s a discount for being a Liberation user, and also because they have the quick Variance packages. My question is how strong a laser(s) do I need? I obviously want bright vibrant beams but everywhere I would use them will be indoors in venues that seat 500 or less people. Would the LaserCube 1.2W or 2W put out a sufficiently bright enough beam for those sized venues? Are there other options that are legal in the U.S. that are better (Pangolin?). Would love your thoughts and experiences.
I have 2x X-Laser Skywriter M2’s (2w) and 2x 2.5w Lasercube Ultras. All work well and look great when I can run plenty of haze and they are not competing a ton with other fixtures.
Outside, they don’t always look great unless there’s absolutely no wind at all and you can blow haze into the beam paths.
Indoors I will have to be careful (or ask the LD to be careful) not to try to compete with them, as a truss full of pars or wash movers at full blast will wash them out.
As long as I can meet those requirements, they look great!
To compete with lots of other fixtures and/or in venues with strict haze/atmosphere limits, you may want something more in the 5-10w range.
The wattage will be the biggest factor in how bright / “good” they look, and is also the biggest cost impactor.
The other factors that typically differentiate costs from US-varianced manufacturers are scanner performance, beam divergence, IP rating, and special features. (Additionally, which DAC is built in also plays a big part, aka is it naked with just an ILDA input or does it have a Mercury, FB4, Etherdream or something else built in).
I may get corrected on this & this is just my observation, it seems the X-Laser skywriter series, Lasercube, and Unity Elite (Pangolin has 3 main product lines - Unity Raw, Unity Elite, and Kvant Clubmax, in order from worst to best) all have similar scanner & beam divergence performance. The Clubmax’s have slightly better scanner & divergence (Thin beams/dots can get thinner, and they will handle complex graphics better). The Unity Raw doesn’t have quite as good scanners or divergence.
All that to say, I guess it depends on your budget and what looks you’re trying to go for…A couple 6W X-laser Skywriters or 7.5W Lasercubes would be really punchy, whereas 4-6 2-3W units would have more fixtures.
If you’re trying to stay as low budget as possible, a couple Unity Raw’s with only ILDA inputs will get you going.
If you are eventually wanting to integrate them with a lighting desk, the X-Laser Mercury system is great for that, I would do a couple M2’s with the Mercury built in to start playing with it that way in addition to Liberation.
I like the LaserOS software for the LaserCubes for certain use cases as well - easy to throw it on shuffle and let a simple graphics show just run as eye candy/wall flowers somewhere.
Thanks guys. Lots of good information here. To start with, I am the LD. Right now I’m just looking to incorporate the lasers in with our band, but if I end up picking up some gigs as a light guy for other acts then cool too. Initially, I don’t have to worry about the LD stepping on the laser output since it’s all me. Control would come down the Liberation on my show runner MacBook which is time synced to my music laptop when my VSTs and some Ableton is played from so it’ll all be highly automated when I’m done. I’d love to get an Elation down the road to control it all but for now it’ll all be in the box.
I’m already learning beam convergence on cheap gear isn’t the best. The Shehds my friend loaned me definitely needs beam alignment and scanning on it isn’t great at all. For me it’s as much about a good piece of gear as it is about being legal in the U.S. Thanks for all the info.