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Hey dj slackin and welcome to the forums.

What exactly is your goal with lighting? Also, do you want to add more things and control them via the same controller? Or would you much rather set up fixtures and let them control themselves via Stand Alone and/or Sound Active?

Answer these questions and hopefully we can help a little more. I realize however, my questions can in fact lead to more questions. Feel free to ask.
I am looking more right now for the sound active lights, the main place I am thinking of has a medium size dance floor and there is no house lighting. There is seating all around the dance floor, and I just want some multi colored lights to move around the place to the beat of the music.
Well, that's a good cheap way to go about it if you don't absolutely need control over your lights.

Going the sound active "hi-tech FX" is a good way to save money since you don't need DMX control. You can still add some degree of control by using switching packs(or dimmer packs with a switching mode on a global or per channel basis) so you can turn the lights on and off.

Some DMX fixtures have sound active modes in DMX mode. Just something else to think about.

Hi-Tech FX take away control in favor of pricing. I'm not saying you're getting garbage. What I am sayins is that while you give up a lot of possible control, you're not paying for that DMX chipset, instructions and feature set(and hardware) in a fixture, which drops its price significantly.

For a tight budget, it can be a good way to go. Smart planning will allow you to add in DMX fixtures later on while still keeping the older stuff. Then, as time goes on, you can swap out for more DMX fixtures or newer high-tech FX fixtures. There's no reason why they can't mix and match.

You may want to consider a DMX or at least remotely controlled fog machine or hazer so people can see those beams. Helps with the atmosphere. Hazer might be a better way to go. Thinner, runs all night, people don't really notice it unless the lights start slicing through it, which is pretty cool.

If it was me, I'd go with various scanner-type units and moving heads, all DMX. I might toss in some high-tech FX lights such as a Mystic or Vertigo, which are also available in LED and DMX(and LED DMX) variants these days. Mirror ball with some LED Par36 pinspots is a must, gotta have that cheese factor.

It really depends on what you want to do in the end. Just try to plan ahead to minimize how much money you may have to waste, as it is unavoidable to a certain extent, that is the nature of this industry.

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