Rane HAL1x Design Guide - Page 126

HAL SYSTEM DESIGN GUIDE About Room Combine Designing the audio for a room combine environment is easy, right? It's no big deal that the system must adapt to changing physical spaces. In fact, it's probably one of your favorite types of systems to design. Or is it? Our guess is that you're shaking your head no while memories of merged automixer nightmares, complex matrices, myriad presets, and math and control-intensive designs swirl through your mind. But what if we told you that designing a HAL System room combine is SIMPLE? Would you believe us? What if we went on to say that not only is it simple, but, unlike the matrix mixer blobs to which you've grown accustomed, it actually LOOKS like an audio system? Hard to believe? And to further bend your mind, what if we told you that a HAL System room combine design uses a fraction of the DSP resources required by existing solutions? Too good to be true? Not at all. Read on to learn more and to get started with the simple task of designing your room combine system. What is the purpose of the Room Combine Processor block? The HAL System Room Combine Processor is designed to simplify the task of configuring the audio system for a set of rooms containing movable walls that can be opened and closed in a variety of ways (configurations that are common in hotels, churches, schools, and conference centers). It is also perfectly suited for meeting rooms that do not combine since it makes paging and background music feeds into such rooms automatic and easy. In these situations, audio inputs and outputs as well as remote controls for volume and source selection must change based on the configuration of the rooms. Most existing room combine solutions force designers to think about all the possible rooms all at once while working with all the parameters in a giant matrix mixer. The experience is akin to juggling five flaming swords while simultaneously riding a unicycle and reciting a Shakespeare sonnet! The HAL System Room Combine Processor simplifies the design of a room combine audio system by allowing you to think about one room at a time, without worrying about specific walls or previous configurations for other room combinations. In other words, you can get off that unicycle and drop those flaming swords! But the HAL System room combine is so simple, you can probably keep reciting the sonnet! Let's say your room combine consists of three base rooms: And let's say that movable walls allow you to create the following rooms: As you can see, there are five possible rooms. Using the Room Combine Processor, you lay out the room configuration and designate which walls are movable. You then choose one of the rooms and configure its inputs, outputs, and controls. You then choose another room, and configure its inputs, outputs, and controls. 122