The electric system in the theatre must enable installation of a large number of luminaires. The optimal system is one which allows each luminaire to be plugged into its own socket, with each socket wired to its own dimmer. In this way each luminaire in the theatre can be controlled separately. In the days when
lighting control
was exclusively manual, the amount of dimmers a theatre could hold was limited. A system of 60 dimmers and an appropriate manual lighting
control board
was considered large. Since theaters had more sockets than dimmers, it was necessary to install a
load
routing system, which allowed a few sockets to be plugged into each dimmer. Such a system once called merely a 'patch panel' is now called a 'hard
patch
panel'.
By the 70's, computer control boards had done away with the technological problem of control of a large number of dimmers. However, at that time the problem was financial: dimmers were expensive and this was a decisive factor in planning lighting systems. Nevertheless, in recent years dimmers have fallen in price and the financial consideration carries less weight, so that today it is possible to install dimmer-per-socket lighting systems. The hard
patch
panel has lost its role and is installed only in very small theatres where budgetary considerations, or technical and operative considerations, do not justify a dimmer-per-socket installation.
However, a theatre with a dimmer-per-socket system of 1000 sockets and 1000 dimmers will not necessarily need 1000 control channels, but rather the ability to route a dimmer, or several dimmers, to any control channel. Soft
patch
electronic routing is a common feature of modern computer boards which enables cross connection of channels and dimmers. This system also enables proportional
patch
where the dimmers selected to a
control channel
can be limited to a lower light level, for example 90% or 70%. This feature allows the balancing of several units into a lighting look which is then allocated to one control channel.
