Welcome to The Sound of Silence.For decades, lighting designers have been waiting for a powerful, high intensity moving light with framing shutters suitable for extreme noise-sensitive live entertainment environments, including opera, theatre, concert halls, television studios, and of course, houses of worship.
The SolaFrame Theatre also has an iris, a linear CTO filter (that matches perfectly to a Tungsten Halogen lamp), and a four-faceted prism.
Many moving light companies have searched to find that balance of intensity and fixture cooling that would result in a light that has very quiet motors, cooling fans, and internal moving parts (gobo wheels, zoom mechanisms, shutters, and the thousand of other gears, belts, and tracks). High End Systems (an ETC company) has developed a revolutionary fixture that addresses and meets these challenges. The new SolaFrame Theatre moving light is a welcome addition to the recently developed SolaFrame line, which also includes the SolaFrame 750, SolaFrame 1500, and SolaFrame 2000. What separates the SolaFrame Theatre from the others in the SolaFrame family is that this is the only light without any cooling fans. In addition, this fixture has a very high CRI of >90 with an output of 15,000 field lumens. The light engine consumes 440 watts and has a color temperature of 6,000 Kelvin. The SolaFrame Theatre also has an L70 LED-life rating of 50,000 hours. It’s RDM compatible and runs on 47 DMX channels. This fixture is ideal for small to medium-long throw applications (10-40 feet), which applies to most houses of worship.
So how does the SolaFrame Theatre get away with no cooling fans? The engineers at High End Systems came up with an ingenious liquid cooling system that circulates a coolant throughout the fixture. And no, you don’t fill it with anti-freeze.
Hands-on Trial
High End Systems sent us two SolaFrame Theatres to test in our lab and theatres at California State University Long Beach. We ran our tests in a real-world environment by using these fixtures for front light for our production of Wonderland. We were also able to directly compare these fixtures to our SolaSpot 2000s, since five of them were also used on this production. As we pulled the SolaFrame Theatres out of their cleverly designed road cases, we immediately noticed how beefy they were. No doubt, this is partially due to their elaborate cooling system. But this cooling system allows for completely silent operation. I am not kidding; these lights are super quiet even when they reset. Like the companion models, the SolaFrame Theatre is built solidly with high-quality materials. High End Systems tells us that SolaFrame Theatres are presently on several tours and have been holding up well, which after careful inspection in our lab does not surprise us. The student lighting designer for “Wonderland” wisely placed these lights in a front of house catwalk position. They were used in most of the light cues as area lights, front specials, color washes, and effects. They never failed and were dependable for the entire run of the show (which is a good thing because we didn’t have a spare).
Findings
What did we like about the SolaFrame Theatre? Well … just about everything. Let’s start with the quality of the field of light. We have not seen a smoother field in any other moving light that we have tested over the years. Throughout its entire 7-degree to 42-degree zoom range, the SolaFrame Theatre (and the SolaSpot 2000s, for that matter) has an incredibly smooth and unbelievably even field of light with very little drop-off. In fact, you cannot see any drop-off with the naked eye. This is due to a combination of the fixture’s high quality optics and its panel LED light engine. The high CRI of the LED engine enabled us to see the true colors of the costumes and skin tones. This is crucial for front light. We were able to compare the white light quality of the SolaFrame Theatre to our SolaSpot 2000s. We found that with careful manipulation of CTO and CMY, we were able to get the 2000s very close to the high CRI quality of the SolaFrame Theatre. But in comparison, the SolaFrame Theatre is slightly more accurate in color rendition. You would never see this from 12 feet away, but you may if you are using video in your services.
The CMY color system is exceptional. There was no color creep in any combination of colors. The field of color stayed consistent and pure, even during complex color fades. We were able to mix to just about any color. For deep primaries, you can dial them in with the dedicated seven-position color wheel.The SolaFrame Theatre passed our LED-dimming test with flying colors. We expected no less as all of the High End Systems Sola models that we have tested have excelled in this challenging test. The dimming is smooth and perfectly linear from 0-100%. The designer programmed several subtle pulsating dimming chases for her show and the fixtures performed flawlessly. The fixtures also passed all strobe and video flicker tests.
The SolaFrame Theatre comes with an eight-position fixed and seven-position indexing/rotating gobo wheels. We found the stock gobo choices very useful for most theatrical and worship applications. It has all the breakups you would ever need. And if you don’t like the stock gobos, you can always replace them with custom gobos. The gobo speed range in the rotating wheel was wide, smooth and consistent. The gobos indexed precisely every time. Kudos to High End Systems for coming up with an amazing diffusion filter that is extremely useful, especially for theatrical applications. The diffusion is not variable, but there is really no reason to have variable diffusion if you can achieve a beautiful soft edge like you get when you add R119 or R132 to a leko. The SolaFrame Theatre’s diffusion filter beautifully achieves this standard. Although not as elaborate as the effects options in the SolaSpot 2000, the SolaFrame Theatre’s linear animation wheel is very effective, especially in combination with a rotating gobo. We were able to create stunning water, fire and shimmer effects.
How does the [silent] SolaFrame Theatre get away with no cooling fans? The engineers at High End Systems came up with an ingenious liquid cooling system cooling system that circulates a coolant throughout the fixture.
Now for my favorite feature of the light: the SolaFrame Theatre’s framing system. This sophisticated system can control all four shutters independently. You can angle and rotate each shutter to create complex shutter cuts. The shutters are very smooth, fast and accurate. You can even create some fun shutter chases. The SolaFrame Theatre also has an iris, a linear CTO filter (that matches perfectly to a Tungsten Halogen lamp), and a four-faceted prism. What more could you ask for? But the real beauty and genius of the SolaFrame Theatre is in its virtually silent operation. In combination with our SolaSpot 2000’s extremely quiet fans, we could not hear any moving lights in the theatre. This is a first in my career. All the actors, as well as our production team were very impressed. And what’s really cool is that you no longer have to wait until the conductor leaves the theatre to shut down the moving lights, since there are no fans to turn off. As a theatrical, opera, television, and worship lighting designer, the SolaFrame Theatre is the answer to my dreams of a silent moving light. I can now place a very powerful and flexible fixture with shutters and a high CRI LED engine a foot away from the audience.The days of hearing fan noise are over. Your worship team will love it, your sound designer will love it, your video engineer will love it, and most importantly, you will love it.
