Best product for high school theatre production

[Greg Lazzaro]

I am new to this product.  I'm trying to determine the best product to use for a live local high school production.  Has anyone had any experience with MiX16 PRO in comparison to QLab? 

[Rusty Wandall]

QLab is arguably THE standard playback program for professional theater of all levels, including Broadway.  I would say that QLab is the main (really only) thing that you would want to teach high school students.

Rusty

[micpool]

As Rusty has said, QLab is an established standard, and it  is used at all scales of theatre, and events, from the smallest community theatre to the largest Broadway shows and huge international events with TV audiences of millions. Also by using QLab you become part of a huge online community of users ( including users of this group, over 11000 on the unofficial  FaceBook User group, and a large number of QLab users on  other related  forums). You can learn the basics of  it in an afternoon, and when a really complicated show comes up you can look in detail at more advanced ways of using it.

Both programs have free versions and at the free level there is one huge difference. QLab is a fully functional  program that you can program unlimited numbers of cues on and make some really sophisticated shows with , while MiX16 Go (the free version) only allows 64 audio cues (which they confusingly call channels) and you can't save anything at all!   

MiX16Pro is substantially cheaper than QLab with a Pro License or multiple Pro Licenses, but for many uses the  free version of QLab is actually better and easier to use than the Pro version of MiX16.  Whether this is the case for you will depend very much on what you are intending to use software for in your production. Is it just to play house music and some spot effects during the play? Is it to play video for projection? Is it to play backing tracks for a musical? Do you need it to control hardware like a mixer? Do you need any individual sound to play to  more than 2 audio outputs?

If the free version of QLab won't do everything  you need for your show,  then the price difference between the programs might come into play. But if you can afford the license for QLab or the modest daily rental charges, then QLab is in my opinion by far the better and most polished  program and has many more features than MiX16, and is much easier to use. 

My advice would be to sketch out a simple list in plain English of  what cues you want to play from QLab, (post that list in this thread if you like and people may have some tips to help you).  Download  the free version of Qlab and watch the free tutorial videos here https://qlab.app/tutorials and then program your show. If you get stuck with anything ask.

Finally a caveat. Because you have asked this question on a QLab forum you will not be surprised that  any responses you get might be very pro QLab, although these responses are genuinely from real users of the product. You could ask the same question on a more general theatre forum, in an attempt to get a more balanced view, but I think the installed user base of MiX16 is very small indeed. Having said that, for some people it clearly works well for them, and although I have only looked at it very briefly, the developer has put a lot of thought  and work into the program and it has some surprising features included for its price point. 

But overall, I think that you and your students will enjoy using QLab more.

Mic

[Philip Glenn]

As a person who has used QLab exclusively in public school, I concur. QLab is capable of so much more than I need to do. I have used it for audio, projections, and lighting. I use the very reasonable rental licenses to get the precise functionality I need. 

Philip Glenn

On Feb 9, 2021, at 11:11 AM, micpool <m...@micpool.com> wrote:

As Rusty has said, QLab is an established standard, and it  is used at all scales of theatre, and events, from the smallest community theatre to the largest Broadway shows and huge international events with TV audiences of millions. Also by using QLab you become part of a huge online community of users ( including users of this group, over 11000 on the unofficial  FaceBook User group, and a large number of QLab users on  other related  forums). You can learn the basics of  it in an afternoon, and when a really complicated show comes up you can look in detail at more advanced ways of using it.

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[Andy Dolph]

I think it’s also worth saying that using Qlab your students will be learning on one of the primary platforms used through the industry. If they get good at it and want to go on, that’s a marketable skill.

On Feb 9, 2021, at 2:23 PM, Philip Glenn <pgle...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

As a person who has used QLab exclusively in public school, I concur. QLab is capable of so much more than I need to do. I have used it for audio, projections, and lighting. I use the very reasonable rental licenses to get the precise functionality I need. 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qlab/75FCA054-77AE-46E8-AABA-CEF56E85357C%40sbcglobal.net.

[Chris Ashworth]

Folks have said many kind, thoughtful, and thorough things so far, and speaking as the person presumably most biased in favor of QLab I won’t pile on in that direction.

Since I don’t know anything about MiX16Pro I can’t speak to it specifically, but one other option to consider might be for your students to study both programs. Particularly in an educational setting, I think it can be refreshing to get our heads around contrasting tools that offer different designs and different tradeoffs.

As QLab has become fairly ubiquitous in theatrical circles, I sometimes feel slight pangs of concern about what that means from an artistic standpoint, and for our responsibility as we develop it. While I feel we do a good job of keeping QLab flexible and effective for a variety of design philosophies, every tool has opinions built in which shape the things it builds. I (unsurprisingly) agree with people here who have said it offers some pretty compelling reasons to use it, but as with any other part of an artistic process, I hope it is deployed as an intentional choice. If nothing else, I love Foley, and would like to hear it used more often. :-)

Since QLab has a capable free version, one way to make the underlying design challenges clear might be to have students explore and achieve design goals in both programs.

Best,

Christopher 

[Greg Lazzaro]

Thanks all.  Seems like an overwhelming consensus.

[ivan.bi...@thelir.ie]

Hi Greg,

One last thing to follow from Chris's suggestion of learning both. I am teaching in a drama school and with having to teach online for the last while, students on different platforms etc., getting them to learn different programs is a great idea.

Before lockdown I had some time in college to teach them all QLab so the frustration my students felt in trying to program less intuitive software was really interesting, those stuck on PCs and Chromebooks can't wait to get back to QLab!

I have been using it from version 1.0 and it really is unbeatable, Chris and the team have been fantastic throughout and the group here adds so much extra support (especially if Mic is online!).

For the sake of learning - try everything.

For actually doing shows - QLab all the way.

Ivan