How many levels of control are really needed?

[charleskerr]

First, after perusing the forum, if one wants to discuss technical concepts, the best I can tell, this is the forum to post. If I have mis posted, I apologize before hand.


I have noticed that many of the new items are moving to 4096 levels of control. Is this really necessary? Even though available, would 1024 make more sense? (I understand the chips aren't going to change, but it does change what you use of it).


Thoughts?

 

[AussiePhil]

Charles


I have a simple view, DMX has 255 levels (8 bit) for brightness levels this has been seen as more than enough for years, even a slow fade from zero to 255 is hard for most people to spot the steps and for RGB it's a mile of resolution.


Anything about that is just cream that lets you then do hardware based dimming curves to further smooth out the bottom end of LED and Incandescent lights.


Seriously LSP as an example only deals with 101 discrete levels as the UI only deals with 0-100% in 1% steps and no one complains (much) about that.


To me 8bit depth in this hobby is sufficient.


Cheers
Phil

 

[charleskerr]

Yea, I think the same. I understand the concept of having more to be able to map to higher granularity to even out fades across lights, but even that I wonder how much is necessary.


What I am not sure about,is when one starts to mix colors, and if one needs a higher granularity to normalize it.


But I have noticed that for most, the full 255 is not even used. For instance, there are some DC controllers that only support 200ish levels (200-201), and few even notice.


Just wondering, for right now, we are using the 4096 levels for normalization, but I have argued its overkill. At most I think 1024 would suffice.