The Simple Desk provides direct 512-channel manual control per universe plus a cue-stack playback system

The Simple Desk emulates a traditional lighting console: an upper area shows DMX channels as pages of 32 sliders, and a lower area has playback faders each with an independent cue stack. Moving a slider overrides any function on that channel (turns red); clicking Reset releases the override. Cue stacks are independent of the Function Manager — scenes added there don’t appear as Functions. The playback slider acts as a submaster for its cue stack. Simple Desk is the starting point for exploring a rig before building function-based shows.

Examples

At a venue with no show file, an LD uses Simple Desk to manually check fixtures, then DMX-Dumps results when a good look is found.

Assessment

How do you release a Simple Desk channel override and return it to function control? How are Simple Desk cue stacks different from Scenes in the Function Manager?