New grad looking for gear advice!!
New theatre tech grad here! I want to use some money I received by my family as a graduation gift towards investing in myself and my work. I have a Gadget2 and EOS key via the student discount a while ago, but I want to get my setup to be more professional. I have come face to face with a fork in the road that I want to get advice from others about. Should I go the Chamsys MagicQ route with a DMX USB dongle and simply learning off of my laptop and no other control interfaces, or should I try my hand at one of those aftermarket GrandMA2 OnPC command wings that are on AliExpress? I have a budget of about $500 I want to put towards investing in my work, so a lot of starting consoles are not affordable, even used, and I really want to get the ball rolling with an interface connected to my Laptop setup, but the MagicQ PC wings are so expensive, the GrandMA onPC wings are more expensive, and I have no idea where to really go from here? I need to learn either system, so my plan is to use my days off between gigs learning. Thank you!