In a manual control board lighting changes are carried out by the operator who adjusts potentiometers and controls the rate of change of the lighting. Each lighting state has to be prepared by setting the potentiometers at their predetermined level, hence preset board. Preparation of lighting states is a time consuming process, and the operator is limited by the number of channels he has to control. Therefore such boards have a limited number of control channels.

The AMC lighting board by Strand

Manual control boards have two presets of up to 24 channel each. Each preset has one fader (potentiometer) for each control channel, and a preset master. Crossfading between presets can be either dipless or split. These boards also enable a pile-on mode of operating whereby both presets are active simultaneously. It is also possible to perform a manual light change by moving a potentiometer independently on the 'live' preset.

Typical lighting board by Zero 88

The following steps demonstrate how a manual control board with two presets is operated:

1. All sliders of both presets (red) are at nil. The master sliders of both presets (yellow) are at the top position, and the top preset is enabled.		2. The sliders of the top preset have been set to different levels.
3. The sliders of the top preset have been set to different levels.		4. The sliders of the bottom preset have been prepared for the next lighting state. The master sliders are set at the top position.

A skilled operator can easily run the lighting of a show using a control board with up to 24 channels. However, the increasing amount of luminaires in the theatre brought an increase in the number of dimmers and channels that the board operator had to control. Manual control proved inadequate to handle a large number of control channels. The time necessary for setting, writing and trying out the lighting states during technical rehearsals became longer and longer, until lighting rehearsals became a long and exhausting ordeal. Moreover, it was difficult to prepare and operate continuous swift lighting changes with precision, and this harmed the quality of lighting in performance.

An 18 channel manual lighting board by Pulsar

These problems of manual operation were overcome by computer control boards. Although it was obvious from the start that the lighting computer could solve operating problems, its acceptance met at first with resistance. There was no doubt that a computer board could recreate the lighting accurately, but if the actor were to change the timing of his entrance or his position on the stage, could the operator change the lighting in real time on a complex board? Some claimed that 'a skilled manual board operator is better than any computer'.

Computer boards however have demonstrated decisively that the best possible manual board operator is no match for a computer in precisely controlling a very large number of control channels.

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