Room Combine

Will Fraser

Room Combine

The audio system for an eight room combine has a number of unique requirements, including:

~ Independent controls for each room.
~ Individual input processing for microphones within each zone.
~ Combination of zones in any configuration with integrated control linking.
~ True linking of Automixers to provide Uniform gain control across combined zones
~ A simple and intuitive control interface.

Today, most hotels and conference facilities rely on flexible room configurations for a wide variety of events. Typically this involves one or more large rooms that may be divided by flexible partitions. These combinations of space are referred to as “room combining” and have their own unique requirements when it comes to the audio system. The key is the management of the audio signal to interconnect sub-room sound systems when those sub-rooms are combined into larger rooms.

The example featured here has ten possible divisions, eight rooms and two pre-function areas. Each of the smallest room divisions have six microphone inputs, a stereo line level input (summed to mono), and a source selector for choosing background music (BGM). There is also a master for the overall room volume. The Microphone inputs have adjustable input sensitivity and phantom power.

The key to this example is the Room Combine processing object. This simple-to-setup processing objects includes seamless integration of a complex logic and audio matrix with an easy to setup control panel. The programer has the power and flexibility to create a design that is suited to the venues operation and the ability to create a powerful user interface very quickly. What once took many hours of very complex programming can literally be done in just a few minutes.

Each of the eight rooms can be combined in any combination due to a unique, yet simple, bussing arrangement within the Room Combine processing object. Some room combining systems cannot achieve more than adjacent combining of the sub-rooms. But because of the unique capabilities of the BSS Audio algorithm, non-adjacent rooms can be joined together very simply using the Group Combine method. This feature has been in demand more often as events become more complex in their requirements and booking schedules require flexibility. Important functions such as green rooms, backstage areas, production control rooms, and recording rooms or any combination of them are easy now when the adjacent space to the main event is booked by a conflicting event.

By using a BLU-8, the user can be given simple control of source selection, room grouping, input gains and master gain in each of the rooms. The BLU-8 controls reflect the current room group as well as link control functions such as current BGM selection and Master gain when combined.

By enabling the Automixer property on the Room Combine Processing object, the threshold and Chain signals of the rooms Automixers can be managed by the Room Combine processing object to create one automixer. This is a true automixer, with all microphones equally weighted across multiple automixers in the room group. No other DSP offers this level of integration and ease of setup and use.

What is important to note in this design is the power of HiQnetTM London ArchitectTM which supplies a toolset for creating a powerful graphical user interface (GUI). This makes control of this technically advanced system very simple for the operator.


>>>Click here to download the full application guide and sample file.<<<


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BSS Audio
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