Skip to main content
Log in / Register
Log in with {$a}
Log in with {$a}
Log in with {$a}
Log in with {$a}
Log in with {$a}
Log in with {$a}
Log in with {$a}
Log in with {$a}
Q-SYS QuickStarts
On‐Demand Training
Q-SYS Training
New to Q-SYS Training?
Q-SYS Level One
English
Spanish
French
German
Chinese(Mainland)
Chinese(HK,MACAU,TAIWAN)
Portuguese
Q-SYS Control 101
English
Spanish
French
German
Chinese
Q-SYS VisionSuite Training (New)
English
Spanish
Q-SYS Quickstarts
English
Spanish
Q-SYS Quantum Training
Q-SYS Video 101
English
Spanish
French
Portuguese
Q-SYS Certified Sales Professional(New)
Q-SYS Reflect Enterprise Manager
English
Spanish
Cinema Training
Cinema 101 Training
Q-SYS Level One For Cinema
Q-SYS Level Two For Cinema - Bridge Course
MP-M Series Training
English
Spanish
Portuguese
French
QSC Pro Audio Training
New to QSC Pro Audio Training?
L Class Activate Line Array
TouchMix Digital Mixers
English
Spanish
Italian
K.2 Series Active Loudspeakers
CP Series Activate Loudspeakers
KLA Active Line Array
House of Worship
TouchMix Application
Sound Advice
Live Training
Q-SYS Architect (Introductory)
Q-SYS Level One
Q-SYS Level Two
Standard
Higher Education
Cinema
Q-SYS Control
Control & UCI Fundamentals
Control 201
Q-SYS VisionSuite Training (New)
English
Spanish
Touchmix Certified Operator Training
Contact
English (en)
Deutsch (de)
English (en)
Español - Internacional (es)
Français (fr)
Italiano (it)
Português - Brasil (pt_br)
Русский (ru)
简体中文 (zh_cn)
PRO AUDIO TRAINING - CLICK HERE
Menu
On‐Demand Training
Q-SYS Training
New to Q-SYS Training?
Q-SYS Level One
English
Spanish
French
German
Chinese(Mainland)
Chinese(HK,MACAU,TAIWAN)
Portuguese
Q-SYS Control 101
English
Spanish
French
German
Chinese
Q-SYS VisionSuite Training (New)
English
Spanish
Q-SYS Quickstarts
English
Spanish
Q-SYS Quantum Training
Q-SYS Video 101
English
Spanish
French
Portuguese
Q-SYS Certified Sales Professional(New)
Q-SYS Reflect Enterprise Manager
English
Spanish
Cinema Training
Cinema 101 Training
Q-SYS Level One For Cinema
Q-SYS Level Two For Cinema - Bridge Course
MP-M Series Training
English
Spanish
Portuguese
French
QSC Pro Audio Training
New to QSC Pro Audio Training?
L Class Activate Line Array
TouchMix Digital Mixers
English
Spanish
Italian
K.2 Series Active Loudspeakers
CP Series Activate Loudspeakers
KLA Active Line Array
House of Worship
TouchMix Application
Sound Advice
New to QSC Pro Audio Training?
L Class Activate Line Array
TouchMix Digital Mixers
English
Spanish
Italian
K.2 Series Active Loudspeakers
CP Series Activate Loudspeakers
KLA Active Line Array
House of Worship
TouchMix Application
Sound Advice
New to QSC Pro Audio Training?
L Class Activate Line Array
TouchMix Digital Mixers
English
Spanish
Italian
K.2 Series Active Loudspeakers
CP Series Activate Loudspeakers
KLA Active Line Array
House of Worship
TouchMix Application
Sound Advice
Live Training
Q-SYS Architect (Introductory)
Q-SYS Level One
Q-SYS Level Two
Standard
Higher Education
Cinema
Q-SYS Control
Control & UCI Fundamentals
Control 201
Control & UCI Fundamentals
Control 201
Control & UCI Fundamentals
Control 201
Control & UCI Fundamentals
Control 201
Control & UCI Fundamentals
Control 201
Control & UCI Fundamentals
Control 201
Contact
English (en)
English (en)
Deutsch (de)
Español - Internacional (es)
Français (fr)
Italiano (it)
Português - Brasil (pt_br)
Русский (ru)
简体中文 (zh_cn)
Log in / Register
Log in with {$a}
Log in with {$a}
Log in with {$a}
Log in with {$a}
Log in with {$a}
Log in with {$a}
Log in with {$a}
Log in with {$a}
Priority Ducker
Q-SYS QuickStarts : Public Address (Paging Systems)
Collapse all
Expand all
Close Search Results
CERTIFICATION STEPS COMPLETED
Certification Steps Completed
1 ) Control QuickStarts
4h 18m 13s
Arrays of Controls
15m 13s
The State Trigger Control
18m 20s
Interlocking Buttons
24m 52s
Named Components
21m 25s
Deep Lua: Arrays, Tables, and Loops (part 1: Tables and Arrays)
17m 12s
Deep Lua: Arrays, Tables, and Loops; Oh My! (part 2)
15m 57s
Deep Lua: Arrays, Tables, and Loops (part 3: GetComponents)
14m 20s
Deep Lua: Demystifying The EventHandler
30m 36s
Dynamic Scripting (for Press & Hold Presets) with a good bit of JSON too!
36m 14s
Status Indicators and the hidden power of Lookup Tables in Lua
22m 34s
Multidimensional tables and Lua's version of the switch-case
16m 2s
Demystifying the role of "Control Frames" in QSYS
25m 28s
2 ) Q-SYS Networking Fundamentals
57m 47s
Introduction to Q-SYS Networking
8m 36s
Q-SYS Network Topologies
9m 14s
Prioritization
7m 41s
Multicast and Bandwidth
15m 27s
Q-SYS Reflect
5m 13s
Isolated Networks
11m 36s
Assessment
3 ) Public Address (Paging Systems)
1h 43m 49s
Terminology
9m 26s
Wiring
11m 18s
Administrator Settings
14m 57s
Virtual Page Station Controls
14m 37s
Virtual Page Station UCI
7m 4s
Command Buttons
12m 5s
PA Router Control Panel
4m 41s
Priority Ducker
15m 21s
BGM Ducking
7m 3s
Core to Core Paging
7m 17s
4 ) Automatic Camera Preset Recall (ACPR)
13m 16s
Intro to ACPR
2m 11s
ACPR v3.0 Update
4m 27s
Autoframing with ACPR
3m 22s
How To Enable Auto Framing
3m 16s
5 ) Video Freeze for NV Endpoints
1m 41s
Video Freeze for NV Endpoints
1m 41s
6 ) Camera Streams to NV Series devices
2m 47s
Camera Streams to NV Series devices
2m 47s
7 ) Q-SYS Security – Introduction and Best Practices
13m 35s
Introduction to Q-SYS Security
3m 3s
Q-SYS Security Best Practices
10m 32s
8 ) Integrating Microsoft Teams Room
8m 54s
Integrating Microsoft Teams Rooms into Q-SYS
8m 54s
9 ) HID Conferencing
1m 58s
HID Conferencing
1m 58s
10 ) Integrating Axon C1
14m 34s
Integrating Axon C1: Part A
7m 26s
Integrating Axon C1: Part B
7m 8s
11 ) Bring Your Own Control with Q-SYS
4m 32s
Bring Your Own Control with the Q-SYS Ecosystem
4m 32s
12 ) Feature License Activation
4m 12s
Feature License Activation
4m 12s
13 ) Q-SYS Video 101 Training
0m 0s
Link to the Q-SYS Video 101 Training Series
0m 0s
14 ) Block Controller
19m 9s
Part A: Block Controller A
9m 50s
Part B: Block Controller B
9m 19s
15 ) Online Connectivity & Security Considerations
12m 37s
Online Connectivity & Security Considerations
12m 37s
16 ) Intro to External Control
23m 3s
Part A: Connecting to Q-SYS
7m 34s
Part B: Issuing Controls
7m 37s
Part C: Managing Change Groups
7m 52s
17 ) Public Address
18 ) Dynamic Pairing
6m 38s
Part A: Dynamic Pairing
6m 38s
19 ) Core-to-Core Streaming
8m 23s
Part A: Core-to-Core Streaming
8m 23s
20 ) Room Combining
12m 23s
Part A: Build a Room Mockup
6m 23s
Part B: Wiring Your Design
6m 0s
21 ) Notch Feedback Controller
4m 0s
Part A: Notch Feedback Controller
4m 0s
22 ) Ambient Noise Compensators
14m 9s
Part A: Ambient Compensator Setup
4m 13s
Part B: Gated Ambient Compensator
4m 19s
Part C: Continuous Ambient Compensator
5m 37s
23 ) Intro to Control Scripting
12m 30s
Part A: Control Script Component
6m 39s
Part B: Fader Turns Red
5m 51s
24 ) Networking Overview
15m 3s
Part A: Basic Networking
4m 35s
Part B: Network Protocols
4m 28s
Part C: Q-LAN - Audio Channels vs. Audio Streams
2m 29s
Part D: Q-LAN - Maximizing Channel Output
3m 31s
25 ) E-Mailer
6m 30s
Part A: E-mailer Component
6m 30s
Video Transcript
Video Transcript
Priority Ducker
15m 21s
00:06
Okay, welcome back.
00:08
So, what we have left to do is integrate this
00:10
paging system into our design.
00:13
While you were away,
00:14
I built out a couple of generic signal paths
00:18
for different types of rooms.
00:20
If you look at my design here, I’ve got my lobby
00:22
and my conference room built out with a couple of things.
00:25
The lobby has a couple of different music sources
00:28
that can be chosen by this router,
00:31
which gets summed down to a mono channel.
00:33
It’s going through a continuous ambient compensator,
00:35
which will constantly keep the levels in this room high
00:38
or low based on how much crowd noise there is.
00:42
We’re finding that crowd noise via an ambient
00:45
microphone that’s in the ceiling,
00:46
which is also coming in through my COR’s
00:48
microphone channels and going out to a
00:50
loudspeaker in the room, probably a bunch of them.
00:54
In the conference room,
00:55
I’ve got four microphones coming in on Dante,
00:58
going through an AEC system.
00:59
Oh, I didn’t put in a reference yet;
01:01
I’ll fix that in just a second. In fact, it would come from right here.
01:04
This would be my AEC reference that would go
01:07
back to the reference sent to the far-end caller.
01:11
Meanwhile, the far-end caller’s voice is coming in.
01:13
I’ve also got a couple of HDMI sources in this room
01:16
that are going through an HDMI router.
01:19
I’m stripping the audio off that HDMI, sending it,
01:22
and mixing it in with my foreign caller’s voice
01:24
to go to the loudspeakers in the room.
01:28
Again, I’m referencing that out right there and also sending it to a display.
01:32
Not a lot going on here,
01:33
just talking you through some things that
01:34
might be in these various rooms.
01:36
We want to integrate these zones into these rooms. We’ll just do the lobby and the conference room.
01:43
We want to duck down the rest of the audio in
01:46
those rooms when this happens.
01:50
There are a lot of ways that you can do this,
01:52
and if the way that you do it successfully makes
01:54
the audio duck down, well, all right, you did it right.
01:58
You could do it in a really manual way.
02:01
You remember that in the PA router’s control panel,
02:03
we get this active LED that lights up when you’re
02:07
sending something to that zone.
02:08
You could use that LED to wire to the mute pins
02:14
of these audio sources to turn off things that are
02:16
in that room when the zone is active.
02:19
That’s just kind of forcing your way through it and punching a lot.
02:22
We want to do it a little bit more nuanced,
02:24
a little bit more subtly than that. There are two real different ways you could
02:31
think about doing this.
02:33
Option one is to take the outputs of the zones and
02:37
then integrate them into the signal paths of these various rooms.
02:41
Option two is to take these various rooms and
02:44
funnel them to the PA router and back again.
02:48
I’ll show you the difference between the two of them.
02:51
We’ll do option one first, where we take the
02:53
zones and send them to these rooms.
02:56
We’re going to do that using a component called the priority ducker.
03:02
It’s under your audio components.
03:03
I’ll grab this in here.
03:05
The priority ducker is not specifically a paging component.
03:09
You could use the priority ducker for all kinds
03:11
of different things and situations,
03:14
which means that in order to use it for our system here,
03:16
we are going to have to finesse it just a little bit.
03:19
The priority ducker by default comes in with eight channels.
03:22
I’m going to reduce that down to a single channel
03:24
so we can talk about what it does.
03:26
Even though I reduce it to a single channel,
03:28
it still has two input pins. What’s going on here?
03:31
Well, what the priority ducker does is it allows
03:34
whatever is wired into its input pins to flow
03:37
directly out to its output pins.
03:39
Nothing happens; it just passes through unless
03:44
something is detected on its final input pin called the priority pin.
03:50
Here’s how it would work.
03:51
I would insert this, going to break this path right here.
03:55
I’m going to insert it at the end of my signal path here in the lobby.
03:59
I’m going to wire my lobby’s program material
04:02
through the priority ducker, and right now,
04:06
the same thing happens as normal as was previously in that lobby.
04:08
The audio just flows through.
04:10
Then I’m going to grab the lobby PA material and
04:13
paste that onto the priority pin.
04:15
Now, whenever signal presence is detected in that priority pin,
04:21
it will duck down whatever is coming in on its other pins,
04:24
replace it with the priority pin,
04:27
and then when that priority pin goes quiet again,
04:29
it returns back to the original program material.
04:31
So, you don’t need to mix this audio in with a mixer later on.
04:35
The priority ducker does both.
04:37
It both ducks down and replaces,
04:40
then sends it through to the output,
04:43
and that’s what we want in this scenario.
04:46
If you had multiple channels, that happens to every single channel.
04:50
A priority ducker does not mix its inputs together.
04:55
These are all separate.
04:56
What goes in one goes out one;
04:59
what comes in two goes out two.
05:02
Those one and two are not mixing together.
05:04
So, you might want to use a priority ducker to
05:07
apply a particular channel to duck down
05:10
multiple different signal paths that have no
05:12
association with each other whatsoever.
05:14
You could do that in our case.I’m going to use independent, uh,
05:17
priority duckers for each of our rooms,
05:20
and let’s actually see if we can get this to work.
05:24
But before I get it to work, I want to warn you about something.
05:27
Whenever you start integrating paging into a
05:32
particular signal flow, you want to think very
05:34
carefully about where it goes in that signal path
05:38
and what it might affect in that signal path as well. Be careful.
05:43
I chose to put this at the end of the signal path.
05:47
Now, that might not have been the best choice because
05:50
this room has a continuous ambient compensator.
05:53
The point of the compensator is that it’s going to
05:56
rise or lower the gain of the things that you’re
06:00
hearing in the room if the crowd is loud.
06:03
If the crowd is loud, I probably want that same
06:06
thing to occur to my announcements so that
06:09
the announcements are also loud and louder than the crowd.
06:14
Right now, I’ve placed the priority ducker after
06:16
the continuous ambient compensator,
06:18
which would mean that my announcements are
06:20
played at a fixed level no matter what
06:22
—no matter how loud the crowd is,
06:24
no matter how quiet the crowd is.
06:25
That might not be the right choice for this particular room.
06:27
I might want to put that priority ducker earlier in the room,
06:31
before the compensator,
06:32
so that it’s part of the audio that is changed by the compensator.
06:36
That’s probably a good idea.
06:38
Another thing that may go wrong with the
06:40
way I’ve done it right here is that the compensator,
06:45
if you know what the compensator does,
06:47
requires a reference of what’s being sent out of the loudspeakers.
06:51
The compensator is listening to the room via a microphone,
06:54
and it also hears all the noise that you’re putting
06:56
into the room via that microphone,
06:57
and it has to ignore that noise so it can just hear the crowd itself.
07:01
Right now, I am not referencing out the announcements
07:05
that I’m playing into the room, and if I don’t do that,
07:08
then the compensator would think that these
07:10
announcements are the result of someone
07:12
in the crowd yelling really loudly.
07:15
Then the compensator is going to actually increase
07:18
the volume of the program material,
07:20
trying to compensate for the crowd it thinks has gotten louder,
07:24
fighting against the priority ducker,
07:26
which is trying to duck down the program material.
07:29
Lots of complications could arise.
07:31
So, if I really wanted my priority ducker after the compensator,
07:34
I would need to adjust my reference so that
07:36
I’m referencing the last thing that goes to my loudspeaker.
07:40
But more realistically, like I said,
07:41
I would probably actually put the priority ducker
07:45
before the compensator at all,
07:47
so that it is part of what is ducked or it’s part of
07:51
what is compensated to get it louder as the crowd gets louder.
07:55
However, that could also potentially be problematic
07:58
because what if you have something after the priority ducker
08:03
that’s got a mute button on it or a gain control on it?
08:09
What if, after this point,
08:11
I’ve given the user the ability to turn that volume down?
08:15
That’s now being applied to all of your announcements.
08:18
What if you’re sending an emergency announcement
08:20
to the priority ducker and the users have
08:23
muted that audio because they didn’t want to listen to it?
08:25
Now they’re muting your emergency announcement
08:28
and they’re not hearing the call to evacuate.
08:30
So, be careful about the way that you place this.
08:36
Generally speaking, I would recommend that the
08:38
priority ducker would almost always go at the very
08:41
end of your signal path because you want to make
08:44
sure that it is going to be audible regardless of what is
08:51
happening in the room.
08:52
In an instance like this, where I’ve got a continuous
08:54
ambient compensator that is also changing the volume,
08:57
what I’m going to do is I would take the applied
09:00
gain of this continuous ambient compensator,
09:02
which tells you how much it’s changing the gain,
09:04
and I would apply that to the gain that’s coming out of this room.
09:09
So, I can go to my lobby and I can say Zone One Gain.
09:15
I would apply the same gain of the CAC to that
09:19
zone so that no matter what,
09:21
my announcements will also be going up and
09:23
down at the same level as the continuous
09:24
ambient compensator while not being subject to
09:28
any muting or gain change that would otherwise
09:30
happen after the signal flow.
09:31
It gets tricky, right?
09:33
So many things to think about.
09:36
Just be careful where you put that placement
09:39
and what else in your flow might be affected by it.
09:44
Let’s make sure that it works.
09:45
I’m going to save the core and run.
09:48
All right, we’re connected.
09:49
I’m going to pin open once again the hover
09:51
monitor on my output here.
09:54
I’m going to play some music from my audio player.
09:58
I can see that’s coming through.
10:01
And now, I’ll play an announcement.
10:04
An announcement from Fake Hotel:
10:07
“Ladies and gentlemen, Fake Hotel would like to
10:09
remind you that our elevators are also fake.
10:12
Please stop pressing the elevator call button and
10:14
start climbing those stairs. Thank you.”
10:18
Sounded a little weird, right?
10:20
Because—let me close that—
10:22
we needed to adjust the priority ducker controls to
10:26
make sure that it’s actually going to react the way we
10:29
wanted to in an announcement.
10:31
Uh, there might be a little bit of quietness
10:34
as someone is talking.
10:35
Uh, as someone speaks, they might take a breath.
10:38
A priority ducker does not know that they’re just taking a breath.
10:42
They don’t know that the person isn’t going to continue talking.
10:45
The priority ducker just knows that there’s less audio here,
10:48
so it’s returning us to the music that was already playing.
10:51
So, that’s why it kind of sounded like you’re hearing the
10:53
announcements and you’re also hearing the music at the same time.
10:56
The ducker needs to be finessed.
10:58
So, let’s take a look at what this ducker’s got for its control panel.
11:02
Uh, you saw in here this response graph that was
11:04
bouncing around based on the audio as it was coming in.
11:07
It’s trying to figure out, “Hey, how loud is the thing on the priority pin,
11:12
and does that loudness constitute something that we should react to?”
11:16
That’s based on the threshold level.
11:18
If you lower your threshold significantly down to the very bottom,
11:21
then pretty much any noise that comes in on that
11:24
channel is going to be treated as something
11:27
that is worthy of ducking the other channels.
11:31
And then you choose how much you want to duck it down.
11:34
Uh, we’re ducking it down significantly.
11:36
You can see this red line at 100 dB.
11:39
Maybe you only want it to lower a little bit.
11:40
Maybe you want to hear the audio music just a
11:43
little bit in the background. That’s up to you.
11:46
Uh, you can also choose how much you are
11:48
changing the level of the priority channel.
11:52
And then some time constants down here.
11:54
The attack time is how quickly we duck down
11:57
that material when we get the presence of the announcement.
12:01
Ten milliseconds is pretty quick.
12:02
Maybe it’s too quick.
12:03
Maybe you want to give a slower fade on that so
12:06
that the audio or the music gradually drops
12:09
down while the preamble is playing.
12:12
Hold time and release time are very important.
12:14
I would increase your hold time to at least a second.
12:17
In general, that’s going to help compensate for
12:20
people who take pauses in their sentences.
12:25
You don’t want it to come back in while they’re paused.
12:28
A one-second hold time means that after the signal
12:31
presence has gone away, it will wait a full second
12:35
before it starts to release the program material
12:38
back to its normal level.
12:39
And if that signal presence reignites within that one second,
12:43
then it’s going to keep on going,
12:44
and then that hold time will start again the next time they stop talking.
12:47
The same thing might be true with a nice slow release time.
12:50
A couple of seconds of release time, three or four,
12:53
will allow the background music to slowly and
12:55
gently come back up to where it was.
12:58
Uh, and that way we’re not getting too much interruption.
13:02
So, let’s try that. I’m going to open up my
13:04
PA router as well and make sure we see everything coming through.
13:07
I will once again pin open my monitor.
13:13
Let’s play some music—the best music money can buy.
13:23
An announcement from Fake Hotel:
13:26
“Ladies and gentlemen,
13:26
Fake Hotel would like to remind you that our elevators are also fake.
13:30
Please stop pressing the elevator call button and
13:33
start climbing those stairs. Thank you.”
13:36
Now it’s done.
13:41
It’s returned back to its level.
13:42
Makes sense? You can adjust all of those at your discretion.
13:48
Make sure it makes sound,
13:49
make sure it makes the right kind of sound,
13:51
and reacts the right way that is appropriate for your venue.
13:53
All the controls are here. That’s what you want to play with.
13:56
So, that was all option one, the priority ducker.
14:00
That’s when we are taking each of these to the rooms.
14:03
If I wanted to do that for my conference room,
14:05
same thing. I would take the conference zone outputs.
14:09
We would add another priority ducker down here
14:12
before the output of my conference room,
14:15
and this time I would use the conference channel and send it here.
14:24
I would once again need to update other things in the room.
14:28
In this case, I have an AEC that is referencing all of the audio in the room.
14:32
I’m going to readjust my reference so that it is
14:35
including the announcements in the room
14:37
as the things that it wants to ignore from your microphone
14:40
channels as part of your teleconferencing system.
14:43
Uh, and that way, that is included,
14:46
and we’re going to remove that audio from the
14:48
audio that is sent to the far-end caller.
14:50
If you want the far-end caller in this case to
14:52
hear your announcements,
14:54
then you would just send those announcements
14:56
to the far-end caller as well. In this case,
14:57
I’m going to remove them from the room.
14:59
So, that’s our priority ducker sending this out to
15:03
each of the signal paths, and that might be the right way for you.
15:06
What I like about the priority ducker is that my
15:08
signal flows all stay linear. I can see them on one path.
15:12
They stay straight. I’m not breaking them and sending
15:14
them somewhere else and coming back again.
15:16
That’s what we’re going to do with our second option.
administration
Data retention summary