Learning lighting please help...

Please be patient with me... I’m trying hard to wrap my head the details of the dmx box/lighting software.

First... I can’t figure out how various DMX channel options affect my lights. I would assume that setting my lights and software for a higher number of channels would enable some greater functionality. For example, I’ve got two FX Par 9’s that can be set to work with up to 27 DMX channels. When I check the software, the various channel descriptions show that the software should be affecting strobe, auto modes, colors, etc. However, when in use, the lights function VERY basically. They essentially just turn on and off in various colors. Ni don’t see anything to indicate that the software is taking advantage of 27 channels. Not even close. What could I be overlooking?

Also, I see that I can assign my light to act as a par, bar, strobe, etc. is there a place I can look up to see what difference this makes for my light? In other words, is there a document that says “if you assign a light as a bar, it’s more likely to do xyz, whereas if you assign it as a par, it’ll act more like abc...”?

Finally (for now), I see that specialty lights like the gig at are now supported. But to what extent? Do they just act like pars (like my FX 9s), or do they actually operate like gigbars, with laser, strobe, etc?

Do you guys have favorite sites, YouTube vids, or links that cover any of this stuff?