Since the beginning of the year I'm using the Wolfmix W1 MK2 in combination with the Akai APC Mini for controlling the lighting on our events and it's really nice to work with.
I like the fast startup time, the way new fixtures can be created, the many possible combinations you can create with the beam, color and move fx, the option to use midi faders for the 8 dimmer groops + master and the option to use buttons for executing presets.
Here is a setup I used at one event and the groups I used for it:
1. 8 Beam Moving Heads
2. 8 Spot Moving Heads
3. 8 Flood Lights + 8 Led Bars
4. 12 5x5 Matrix Blinder
5. Another group of 8 Beam Moving Heads
6. 15 LED Pars for Ambient Light
7. 4 Vertical Fog Machines
8. 4 Spark/Pyro Effects
Using the Wolfmix for that worked very well, but there is still one thing I would really wish for to make the setup easier and the preset feature more useful - A way to descide which settings will be overwritten by a preset.
It often happened to me that I only wanted to change the move fx setting without changing the beam fx setting, speed setting and static color setting or only wanted to change the beam fx setting without changing the move fx setting, speed setting and static color setting etc.
In that case it always is a bit frustrating when you just got all the settings looking nice to the music only to hit the next preset for changing the move, color, or beam fx which then overwrites all the static color, gobo, position, speed and fx settings with "unknown" settings (since you likely cannot remember all the setting values you had set at the time you created each preset).
As workaround for the colors I set the static colors of all fixtures to rgb white and saved this color in every preset. Then I set up locked live edits as "CMY filter" of which each live edit locks certain channels to 0 so that the colors which remain from the rgb white are equal to the desired color.
This way the beam fx does still work while it's at least to some extent possible to control the colors independent from the presets, but this is in no way a favorable solution to the problem, since I really would like to also use color fx and the static colors while at the same time being able to change the look of the stage with one press of a midi button (without setting up each possible fx/color/gobo combination as separate preset).
My idea for making things easier would be adding an overwrite selection list.
Maybe it could be done by adding a list button to the preset screen where you can also rename the preset and assign the midi button to it.
When you press the button you would see a list of the settings which will be overwritten when the preset is executed.
It could look like:
- Color FX
- Move FX
- Beam FX
- Color
- Position
- Gobo
You could then tick each setting that you want to be overwritten by this preset.
The settings you would not tick would then stay the same when the preset is executed.
This way the preset could still save the current look of the stage as before and the only change would be adding a way for the user to descide which of the settings will be overwritten by each preset.
I think an option like that would add a lot more functionality to the preset feature and could improve the overall workflow when working with the Wolfmix.
What do you think about this idea?