Your main three options are:
LightShowPro 2.0 (aka LSP)
LOR S3 (aka S3, but Light-O-Rama)
Vixen
= = = =
Vixen basically does very little for you in terms of RGB, but you can do it and it works ... its just ol reliable
and you need to know what your doing ... and the learning curve isnt that steep because its kept fairly simple.
THe cost is of course wonderful (free). To me, Vixen my be a short term choice, but maybe not a good long term
choice unless that project gets moving again.
LOR S3 has decent RGB support, but its on the fairly basic side. Its easy, reliable and fairly bug free.
A lot of people using DMX and/or smart strings (RGB) on here use LOR to sequence the songs, then xlights (free)
as the show scheduler and player. For me the LOR S3 upgrade (from S2) was only $30 . So yes, you could say LOR
wants to trap you into using their hardware only (which is good), but you can use LOR software to sequence with
and xlights to play back against various hardware and protocols ... but most that are doing that are coming from LOR
so it makes more sense for them. If your starting fresh, its less clear cut.
LSP 2.0 has way more RGB support, esp. in high channel counts and allows some object oriented programming to occur that
neither of the other options have ... but its more to learn and has some stability issues which are being addressed. Overall,
I think LSP is the software with the most potential and current capability as a sub $500 price point.
It kind of depends what you want to do in your first year or two and whether RGB is part of those plans or not.
It also depends how important saving money on software is as well ... because if saving money is the top priority, then Vixen
may be the choice, period. If you have a prior investment in LOR, LOR S3 may suffice for now. If your willing to pay for RGB
and advanced capabilities for larger channel counts ... then LSP.