By Rob Halliday
We’re here to talk about the future of Eos as defined by the new Eos Apex range of consoles – the single-screen/five-fader Apex 5; double-screen/10-fader Apex 10 which I got to play with; what can really only be described as the slightly ‘OTT’ Apex 20; plus a rackmount Apex-in-a-box. This is probably the third generation of Eos hardware, if you consider the first to be the original Eos, baby Ion plus Element for tiny venues, and the second the Ti/Gio/Gio@5 and updated Ion XEs and Element2.
What’s interesting here is the difference in approach between ETC and MA. Each new generation of grandMA has thrown away both hardware and software to start entirely from scratch – but has then had to backtrack by allowing the old software to run on the new hardware until the new software gets to a point when users want to switch to it. ETC, by contrast, has kept going with the same software, then every now and again created new hardware to support it, rather than sweeping all the old away.
Some existing products – Gio@5, Ion Xe, Element2 – will continue alongside the Apexes (Api?). But the software is the heart of the thing; that’s what the Eos name now really describes. Until quite recently, with the launch of Eos v3, any Eos hardware could run any Eos software. Now the original Eos/Ions can’t run v3 but can still function in the last v2 version,
and v3 can save show files that the older consoles will load, and happily load show files from any Eos version. That’s quite an achievement. For comparison, try opening a 15-year-old Word file (as I’ve just tried to do to check back on our review of Eos at its launch!). It does not go so well.
Read the full review at Lighting & Sound International
www.etcconnect.com
Australian Distributor: Jands www.jands.com.au
