Recorder or Memory-based consoles have become very popular in almost all larger installations, particularly theaters. This type of controller has almost completely replaced preset consoles as controllers of choice. Memory consoles are preferable in productions where scenes do not change from show to show, such as a theatre production and nightclub lighting design, because scenes are designed and digitally recorded, so there is less room for human error, and less time between lighting cues is required to produce the same result. They also allow for lighting cues to contain larger channel counts due to the same time savings gained from not physically moving individual channel faders.
Moving Light Controllers are another step up in sophistication from Memory Consoles. As well as being capable of controlling ordinary luminares via dimmers, they provide additional controls for intelligent fixtures. On midrange controllers, these are usually provided as a section separate from main Preset and Cue stack controls. These include an array of buttons allowing the operator to select the fixture or fixtures they want to control, and a joystick, or a number of wheels or rotary encoders to control fixture attributes such as the orientation (pan and tilt), focus, color, gobos etc. found in this type of light. Unlike a fader that shows its value based on the position of a slider, a wheel is continuously variable and provides no visual feedback for the value of a particular control. Some form of display such as LCD or LED is therefore vital for displaying this information. More advanced desks typically have one or more touchscreen, and present a GUI that integrates all the aspects of the lighting.
As there is no standard way of controlling an intelligent light, an important function for this type of desk is to consolidate the various ways in which the hundreds of types of intelligent lights are controlled into a single abstract interface for the user. By integrating knowledge of different fixtures and their attributes into the lighting desk software, the detail of how an attribute such as pan or tilt is controlled for one device vs. another can be hidden from the operator. This frees the operator to think in terms of what they want to achieve (e.g. pan 30 degrees clockwise) instead of how it is achieved for any given fixture (e.g. send value 137 down channel 23). Furthermore, should a lighting fixture need to be replaced with one from a different vendor that has different control sequences, no change need be apparent to the control operator. For some further discussion on how intelligent fixtures are controlled, see Digital MultipleX. - See DMX Lighting Controller System