1/12/2005

UHB Status Report from Dennis

I just got off the phone with Scott from Network Services and he cleared up most of the connectivity problems with the Crestron Units in UHB. I am not sure what he did but he looked at each room specifically for the switch settings, etc.

The only Crestron Units that have no connectivity are in the following rooms:

UHB 1003 – dead Crestron Unit
UHB 2000 – still unknown reason. Scott said it is not broadcasting a MAC address. I will be calling Crestron to ask about it.
UHB 2034 – Cannot connect when the Crestron Unit has been disconnected. Will be looking at with Laptop/Serial conn.
UHB 3082 – dead Crestron Unit

1003 and 3082 are on my check list to see if they have since come back to life. Will recheck both rooms as they become available.

UHB 2000 will be checked again for settings to see if there is a reason it is not broadcasting a MAC address after checking with Crestron.

UHB 2034 will have it’s firmware updated to see if this helps with the problem. (2008 was updated last week and is still functioning well)

Otherwise, the rest of the rooms need to be checked again for sound issues, control panel issues such as controls that do not function, etc., e.g. mute button mutes the sound. This is just to make sure the firmware cleared up the problems we were experiencing.

UHB 3145 was troublesome yesterday. This is also on my check list to see if it is wired correctly due to having no effect on the volume control of the Crestron but having sound generated by the PC. Since the PC has it’s own volume control, this indicates to me that the sound output (green mini jack) is connected to the “Aux Out” of the Amplifier. I have done this with these units while troubleshooting the audio problems (especially in this particular location) and that is what happens when it is connected incorrectly. It back feeds sound into the amplifier.

Short explanation of how sounds from the devices are connected to the amplifiers and Crestron Units:
(edit…OK, so after I wrote it up, it isn’t so short…sorry about that)

Sound comes from the device (doesn’t matter which device) and enters the amplifier in the audio input. All of the inputs are put together into one audio signal and sent out through a preamp output on the amplifier rear right corner and sent to the Crestron Control Unit for volume processing. The Crestron Control Unit then sends the processed volume back to the Power Amp in of the amplifier. The amplifier then sends the audio to the speakers. The volume input control knobs on the front of the amplifier control each of the individual channels (inputs). The Master Volume control increases and decreases the sound volume to the speakers. These all interact to produce the volume of sound that comes out. This is why the amplifier needs to be set to specific standardized levels in all of the rooms. I suggest we test with one of the set ups and then make sure that all of the amplifiers in each of the rooms are set to the same standardized level.

The computer can cause another problem with standardization as it has it’s own volume control. If it is set too low or too high this may cause users to adjust the volume of the Crestron unit and when they go to play a source other than the Computer, the sound may be too loud or too low depending on the adjustments of the Computer volume output. This complicates things for most who do not understand how audio works in an integrated system. We could disable volume adjustment in the Computer at a preset volume that we can adjust as administrators. The only problem I see with this is that audio sources that are played from different web sites, digital sources, etc. seem not to have a standard level of audio and may be needed to be adjusted beyond the range we have preset. I really do not see a hard fix on this problem.

To be more specific to audio connections in UHB 3145…this room is also utilizing software that needs to have a microphone source connected to the computer input. The amplifier has an “Aux Out” as mentioned above. This is the source to enable the microphone plugged into the amplifier to send the audio to the computer. Normally the input should go into the “aux in” (blue mini jack) of the Computer. When we tried this, the audio was not clear and was poor. We then fed the sound into the “microphone in” (pink mini jack) of the computer but the sound was over modulated (raspy and unusable). By unchecking the “microphone gain” box in the control panel of Sounds and Audio Devices / Audio / Sound Recording click on Volume then click the advanced tab under the microphone volume setting, the sound was modulated to a lower level and was then usable.

Sorry this was long but there have been some questions circulating about how this all hooks up and works and I thought I would take this chance to try to explain this to everyone at once.

Dennis

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1/11/2005

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