Strictly champion tours under Obsidian control
- Details
Early last year, Lorenzo, who started working with Pernice in 2019, transitioned from a more established lighting control platform to Obsidian’s Onyx. “Cally Bacchus at [Elation Professional UK distributor] Entedi asked me to demo an Obsidian NX2 console and I immediately loved it,” the designer stated. “It’s powerful, reliable, compact, and doesn’t cost 50-60K. It is ideal for touring and doesn’t take up much space in a truck or in a venue. Obsidian is really waking people up and showing that there are new and better options out there.”
Lorenzo initially purchased an NX Wing, the complementary USB control surface to the Onyx platform, and used it on some local tours in the UK. Later in 2021, he bought Obsidian’s compact yet full-featured NX2 lighting console to use on the 2022 This is Me tour.
“The number of parameters you get out of the console without having to spend a lot of money on NPU’s and computer processor units is fantastic,” he stated. “We live in a world now where some lighting fixtures can take up to 200 channels so having more parameters is important and is one of the strengths of ONYX.” The NX2 is able to process 64 Universes right inside the console without the need for costly external processing networks.
A feature of the Onyx platform that users appreciate is the built-in pixel composer, Dylos, a full media engine that provides a new way to quickly programme dynamic lighting effects by mapping video files to the colour systems of lighting fixtures. “I absolutely love Dylos,” Lorenzo states. “It’s an amazing new way to create effects by using presets on videos to make dynamic effects. Dylos is one of the most powerful tools I’ve seen integrated in a lighting console in quite a long time.”
On This is Me, Lorenzo controlled up to 80 intelligent lighting fixtures, some pixel mapped, some not. He ran up to 16 Universes on the show, four straight out of the back of the NX2 desk and 12 out of a Netron EN12, a 12-port Ethernet to DMX gateway. A pair of 10-port Netron DMX 10-5 DMX splitters were also used for data distribution. He also hooked into and controlled the house lights at each venue. “Networking with the Obsidian series products is really easy and straight forward compared to piecing together a system using different brands,” he said. “It’s also nice to have a console where you don’t need to block off a bunch of seats to fit it in a house.”
Lorenzo’s designer and programmer credits include the Strictly Come Dancing: The Professionals UK tour in 2019, Anton Du Beke & Giovanni Pernice: Him & Me UK and Ireland tour in 2021 and BBC Blue Planet II: Live.. He is currently out on the 2022 Him and Me tour, also controlled with Obsidian and Netron, and has another show out called The Ballroom Boys: Act II touring the UK with an NX Wing.
