Fins,
As promised in our RC mail convo:
I started with a package from
www.wowlights.com[Link: wowlights.com]That one comes with a 16 channel controller and a Santa head that makes it look like he is singing along to the music.
It also includes your choice of 5 premade sequences. The sequences are the hard part. I buy premade ones whenever I can and customize them to suit my needs. Programming from scratch takes forever. (for me at least)
You can use a computer to run the show or what they call an MP3 Director
[Link: wowlights.com] I use an old windows xp computer and it runs the show just fine.
The cool thing about lightorama is that it can easily be converted to DMX so you can easily add RGB DMX lighting to your shows. The WowLights sequences actually already have some RGB programming in them.
I don't know if they have any dealer pricing, but the
www.lightorama.com website does have a pretty good sale every spring. Here is a link that shows the pricing during the sale from 2015:
[Link: store.lightorama.com]Hope that helps.