VLX Review
We had the privilege of not only seeing but getting to demo a revolutionary fixture that Varilite has just released. It is what I now consider the first real LED moving light. The leap that this light represents in lighting fixtures is monumental. This fixture is not only the first LED moving head that I didn’t think looked completely ridiculous, but it is what I consider the future of lighting. This technology I believe will eventually make the arc lamp within the theatrical and concert worlds of lighting obsolete.
The LEDs within the light are 90watt LEDs. To give you some perspective the brand new lights that we use at North Point for lighting our current sets are 1 watt LEDs. There are 4 of these 90 watt LEDs on each chip: Red, Green, Blue, & White. These LEDs can be mixed to create an assortment of colors. There are seven of the chips in each fixture, each of the chips are individually liquid cooled. The light passes through an array of glass that diffuses and mixes the light so that when you look at the fixture you only see the mixed color and not the individual LEDs that mix to create the color.
The traditional way of getting color mixing out of a fixture is with colored glass wheels being layered on top of one another to create different colors. This however has the draw back of the colored glass cutting down the intensity of the light. The more glass you stack to create different colors the less output the light actually has. In contrast LED technology actually increases in intensity as you mix colors because more color means more light coming from different LEDs adding to the output. The result of this is very intense saturated colors. This is what will eventually kill traditional arc lamps, however right now it is a bit pricey and is only available in a wash type fixture.
If Varilite figures out how to reduce the price, which time will do, and how to focus the light into a reasonable spot or beam fixture, this new light will take over the industry.
Great review. I really like the way you guys are using this website both internally and as a teaching tool for other ministries.
The VLX is definitely a revolutionary fixture but I have to admit I was less than impressed with the color mixing. For an LED it was amazing but any additive color mixing fixture still has problems hitting those deep deep saturated colors. The lavender was beautiful but it wouldn’t put out an indigo, the red was actually really good but it wasn’t that deep rosco 27 blood red that you sometimes want, etc.
In a lot of situations I’m sure the positives of the VLX would outweigh this one negative. The light output was enough to work with my VL3500 washes and VL3K spots. The power consumption, heat output, and physical weight were all huge pluses. In this particular room at this particular time the color saturation, or lack of, was enough for me to pass. I ended up going with the Mac 700 wash for this application.
I love watching what you guys are doing. Keep up the good work!
-Daniel
Cool review–I can’t wait till these become mass produced and more affordable. To nitpick, however, mixing with color wheels or with LEDs actually produce the same effect: the closer to white, the brighter the fixture. In color wheel mixing, the “piling on” of colors by a gel acts as a FILTER of light–but in LED mixing, the “piling on” of colors by the LED acts as a PRODUCER of light. In either case, the effect is the same: the more saturated the color, the less bright the result, the more “white” the color, the brighter the result.