Is There a Difference Between a Shielded Fader and a Inhibitive Fader?
Explanation
Yes. "Shielded" refers to a fader's priority. "Inhibitive" refers to a submaster fader's mode.
Fader Priority
When a fader is Shielded, the contents of that fader are automatically made exclusive and only the fader or park can control these contents. Channels stored to shielded submasters will display in yellow with a superscript ‘s’ beside it.
Prior to v2.4.0, a fader's priority could be No Priority, Independent, or Shielded. The contents of an Independent sub are not affected by other submasters or cues, but are impacted by manual control, grandmaster, blackout, park, or other play faders and submasters that are also in Independent mode. Shielded faders are exclusive - their contents are not recorded into cues or other targets, and only the fader or park can control those contents.
Beginning in Eos v2.4.0, 'Independent' priority was replaced by a Priority range. A fader's Priority ranges from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest), or Shielded. The default Priority of a fader is 4 (denoted P4 in Properties). Shielded faders have a Priority higher than 10. Shielded faders' content can only be controlled by the fader or park. Shielded faders default to Exclude from Record - their contents are not recorded into cues or any other targets. However, there is a separate 'Exclude' property for faders, so a Shielded fader could be made not Exclusive if desired.
Note: Prior to Eos v2.4.0, Inhibitive subs could not be set to Independent or Shielded mode. In v2.4.0 and greater, an Inhibitive fader can be set to any priority, including Shielded.
Inhibitive Submaster Mode
Setting the mode of a Submaster to Inhibitive will limit the live output of its contents. Channels mastered by an inhibitive submaster are indicated with an “I” next to the intensity value in the channel display in live. Inhibitive submasters do not provide levels to the stage picture, they limit them. In other words, the inhibitive submaster acts as a grand master for its channel contents and can manipulate their live output proportionally. This behavior is the same in all Eos software versions.