Multi zone volume ramping
a_riot42
Posts: 1,624
With clients that have some experience with the Sonos players, where you can control volumes in all zones at the same time, its getting difficult to tell clients that spent a lot of money on an audio switch that the same feature can't be implemented. Most audio switchers controlled over serial can't ramp multiple zones of volume, and take switching commands at the same time. Does anyone have a recommendation for an audio switch that has a feature similar to this? Short of controlling a PA mixer, I am not sure if one exists that can do what the Sonos playesr do natively. The Autopatch switchers can only ramp one output at a time, so if one user is lowering the volume in one zone and another does the same in another zone, the first ramp ends.
Paul
Paul
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I would prefer to do it in firmware rather than relying on the rather small serial buffer. If the firmware can't do it, then no amount of queueing will matter. The problem isn't queueing the commands as much as it is the behavior of the switch dealing with all of them on an asynchronous basis. The Autopatch duet module has to fake ramping because the device doesn't support it, and will only do one output at a time. I assumed this was due to the device and not laziness on the duet programmers part, who couldn't be bothered to implement a queueing mechanism. I am quite sure all the duet modules have queueing. Last time I worked with an Autopatch switch I had some weird behavior when trying to do this, and it wasn't as a result of lack of queueing. If you are trying to ramp 18 zones of audio at the same time, and there is a tenth of a second between every command, that will result in an almost 2 second delay at every step, if nothing else is going on which it might be.
Paul
CHAR sMusicScenes1[][20]= { '3 8' // Master Suite ,'1 4 9 10 11 17 ' // Kitchen,Den,Link,Sunroom,Living, Dining ,'6 13' // Pool & Exercise ,'7 16 18' // Outside ,'1 2 4 6 9 10:15 17 ' // Kitchen,Den,Link,Sunroom,Living,Dining,Pool,Exercise,Wine,Packer,Rec,Library, Front Porch } // Music scenes for switcher 2 CHAR sMusicScenes2[][20]= { '2' // Master Suite ,'0' // Kitchen,Den,Link,Sunroom,Living,Dining ,'0' // Pool & Exercise ,'1 3' // Outside ,'3' // Kitchen,Den,Link,Sunroom,Living,Dining,Pool,Exercise,Wine,Packer,Rec,Library,Front Porch } SEND_STRING dvAutoPatchPrecis1,"'CO',sMusicScenes1[nOffset],'VS+T'" SEND_STRING dvAutoPatchPrecis2,"'CO',sMusicScenes2[nOffset],'VS+T'"send_string precis, "'CL0O1VS+O2VS-T'"
And I'm fairly certain you cannot do that, haven't tried however.
I've done simultaneous ramping with a Precis without any real issue (in the same direction), and it works fine, but frankly, not many customers use it. I find it far more useful to give them volume presets for audio zones where they can hit "low" or "medium", etc., for the entire selection of zones, and adjust what those mean themselves. When people are using multiple audio zones, it's generally for a few distinct purposes, and once they have it settled, they don't often tweak the levels. Would you rather, if you are having a party, turn your music on and fiddle with the volume levels, not even being able to actually hear every room from where you are standing, or hit *one* button and know exactly what level it's going to be in every room?
I also have multiple large systems (36 - 64 zones audio with upwards of 24 panels and 14 remotes) that have multiple people living in the house plus house staff using the system and I have never once had a complaint about the system volume not being responsive enough.
I think you might be trying to find a solution for a problem that doesn't really exist.
This was with the AP? It would appear then that AMX's own documentation is less confident about its abilities.
Ramping up and down at the same time on different outputs could happen frequently in a large system. What is more concerning though is if one or more people are ramping and a switch gets triggered that doesn't take appearing broken or intermittent.
I am not really looking for a problem, but wasn't sure what the capabilities are so I thought I would ask those who have attempted it. Last thing anyone wants is to buy a 64x64 switch and be disappointed when it can't do what the Sonos players that it replaced can.
Paul
I'm pretty sure the BCS protocol for AP switches is similar if not the same for all of their switches but since I've only used the Precis ones so far I can't say for sure. Plus I haven't actually looked at the BCS protocols for a feew years.
When I need to go above 18 zones I just get another 18 x 18 and my module builds the strings and sends to the appropriate AP device. When I wrote the module I figured 3 18x18's would be more than enough for anything I'm about to do in resi but doing it this way I limit myself to just 18 inputs which I "y" in and out of each AP device. It's not pretty much it's cheap and 18 inputs are usually more than enough for dist audio in most resi installs. FYI, if using y's like I do the planet wave y's let you create your own to the length required in seconds so it's not really so bad to look at.
So even when using 3 seperate 18x18's I can switch or ramp any combination of zones at the same time. If I want to ramp all 54 zones I can and the module will build the single strings necassary for each AP dev and route to them accordingly. The module then handles up to 3 dev buffers to handle feedback responses based on the intial config 1, 2 or 3 APs. Using a single 64x64 matrix switch should be a snap to ramp or switch any or all as you see fit.
Yes this was with Autopatch. We use the Precis 18x18DSP for jobs that are 18-36 zones, and then we jump up to the Octaire switchers (from 32x48 up to 64x64).
The same comm module works for both matrix switchers and they both have full EQ, Volume, and Input trim for all zones.