I don't know anything at all about lighting, so let me just apologize in advance for my ignorance. My band is thinking about purchasing 3 or 4 mega bar 50s to use in our live show and I was wondering which controller(s) will work with them. Also, we don't have anyone to help work the lights, so we're looking for a fairly easy way that one of the band members could control them from the stage. Is that possible? Can you program something for each song and then just start each program at the beginning of the song? Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi Davey and welcome to the forums.

Any DMX controller can control any DMX fixtures. The issues become ease of use and channel count limits. Each fixture has a certain number of DMX channels it uses. A dimmer pack might be 4 channels, the Mega Bar 50s you can select 1 thru 7 channels a piece.

As for making it so you can just hit a button and the lights go with the song, that is possible. However, you most likely won't be able to adjust timing on the fly, so you will have to be spot on with your timings. You might want to look into MIDI to trigger the console to control the lights.

Console wise, you have a lot of options. Are you looking to just use LED fixtures or add moving lights in the future? Likewise, how 'big' of a show are you looking to make? Something like a Magic 260 would be a good choice for LED shows and has a 260 channel count limit. I have a couple and love them for LED only shows. You can also add moving lights to it as well.

Hopefully this helps. Let us know what you are thinking and hopefully we can help you more. Once again, welcome to the forums.