Case Study: University of Georgia updates studio with new lighting gear from ETC, Barbizon

Any college football fan will tell you that for the University of Georgia in Athens, of all the colors in the spectrum, red is the only one that matters. ETC and Barbizon Lighting Company were able to give them red, and a whole lot more, thanks to fos/4 Panels and Desire Fresnels equipped with City Theatrical’s Multiverse wireless DMX technology.

When the National College Football Champions requested an upgrade for the Marketing and Communications’ studio lighting rig, Josh Fisher, Systems Integrator for Barbizon’s Atlanta office, had no hesitation in specifying ETC Desire Fresnels and fos/4 Panels for the all-important deep red tone they could produce. But that wasn’t the end of the story for this upgrade: “The color sold the job, but the integrated Multiverse wireless technology was integral to the job,” says Fisher.

“The beauty of this system lies in the Multiverse Wireless connectivity,” adds Fisher. “The only cable is from the console to a City Theatrical Multiverse Transmitter. After that it’s all wireless.” The Multiverse Transmitter can send DMX over distances of 300 feet indoors, easily reaching every area of the studio. And with capacity to send DMX to up to 10 universes of fixtures, the team has plenty of room to reach the full complement of fos/4 Panels, Desire Fresnels and ColorSource CYC fixtures in the studio’s new rig.

UGA was so impressed, they didn’t stop at the studio. “While we were working on that job, we were given the opportunity to do a similar upgrade for Mahler Hall, a multi-function auditorium and meeting space on the same campus,” says Fisher.

The UGA team were looking to trade in their old incandescent system to LED with a new console. Once again, the built-in Multiverse wireless DMX capability of the ETC fixtures offered huge savings in time and data cable costs. The new system uses 18 ColorSource Spot V fixtures and 5 ColorSource Fresnel V fixtures – and no new DMX cabling runs. The retrofit was effective in placing new, high-impact fixtures in in hard-to-reach places giving better light and more control to the largest event space in the Georgia Center. The upgrade was designed, built, and installed by locally-based Barbizon Lighting.