In my experience you will not believe how much stuff you have to do to put on a show once you get into it. I felt totally overwhelmed once I started. Thanks to a good friend with experience I was able to get a small show up and running my first year. I also put up 16 channels at Halloween for some singing pumpkins, That was a great learning experience and helped me shake out my weak spots with sound, timing, radio, power, attaching lights, etc. I have a SS Hub and 8 controllers, but have not ordered any lights yet, and I don't think I will attempt adding SS to my show this year. I have read of too many issues to date plus the quality of lights still seem suspect and in my opinion the software just is not ready for prime time. That being said, I do think smart strings and RGB are the future of lighting and I am hoping product quality and software will be substantially better next year. I would go with 2 LEs this year.