Audio in multiple rooms

[IA76]

Hi

 

I wanted your advice on what to do in this scenario.

 

There are 3 rooms within one building, Room A,B & C. Each room already has speakers and each room has it's own amp. All 3 amps are located in one office. Each amp has 1 input and the only output is speaker out.

 

Each of the rooms also has a double mic point and all of them are cabled back to the office but are not yet connected to anything.

 

What we would like to do is have the 6 mics going to a mixer so that we can more control over them but we also want to be able to use the audio in Rooms A, B, C independently so different things going on in Room A, B & C and also ahve the facility to join them eg. audio from room A to also go to Room B & C as well or audio from any room to be sent to the other rooms.

 

How would we achieve this?

[sam.spoons]

I'm sure there will be a piece of kit designed for tis kind of install but those are outside my experience however this could be done with a digital mixer (Mackie DL806 or Behringer X32 Rack spring to mind). I'd probably route as follows :-

 

Room A, mics to mixer CH1 & 2, send to amp from output 1 (DL806 aux 1, X32 Bus 1 assigned to XLR output 1)

Room B mics to mixer CH 3 & 4, send to amp from output 2

Room C mics to mixer Ch 5 & 6, send to amp from output 3

 

Any mic can be sent to any output/room and the desk could be controlled from an iPad (and laptop in the case of the X32) if there is reliable WiFi in the room.

 

You could achieve the same using an analogue desk if it had sufficient aux outputs but most smaller desks don't have enough.

[Shez]

The magic word here is Matrix. Get one with eight ins and outs and you'll be able to program presets for single rooms or all rooms linked fed from room A etc.

[MarkPAman]

If always operated by somebody who knows what they're doing, than 6 in - 3 out is easy to do with many mixers. Watch out for cross talk thought. I think I'd probably give a Soundcraft EPM6 a look; it has 2 aux outputs (+L&R), both of which can be set to pre fade.Link

 

Otherwise you want to find a matrix mixer, but 6 mic ins & three outs seem to be unusual, so you're heading for the more expensive stuff I'm afraid. Some examples here.

 

E2A (While waiting for somebody to point at an 8x8 that cost 2p)

 

Actually, Behringer's ULTRAZONE ZMX8210, does exactly what you want - I mis-remembered how may inputs it has. Link

[Owain]

Sounds like the sort of thing that Cloud do.

 

http://www.cloud.co.uk/

 

 

[DrV]

+1 for the Cloud gear. Even though I've had to fix some, it is generally solidly built and their support was good last time I had to ask

Dave

[dbuckley]

An interesting collection of ideas, but the term you are (or should be!) searching for is room combiner.

 

These boxes have "layouts" of rooms, and you connect mics and speakers into each individual room, and then instruct the box how you would like your rooms to work, like one big room, three separate rooms, or combinations like A+C, B+C, A+B.

 

Usually there boxes are seen in dividable rooms, so when you remove the sliding wall you then press a button on the wallplate where the wall is now hidden behind to say the two rooms are now one big room.

[IA76]

An interesting collection of ideas, but the term you are (or should be!) searching for is room combiner.

 

These boxes have "layouts" of rooms, and you connect mics and speakers into each individual room, and then instruct the box how you would like your rooms to work, like one big room, three separate rooms, or combinations like A+C, B+C, A+B.

 

Usually there boxes are seen in dividable rooms, so when you remove the sliding wall you then press a button on the wallplate where the wall is now hidden behind to say the two rooms are now one big room.

 

 

 

Thanks for all the replies everyone but this reply seems like exactly what we want. Have you got a link to a UK seller for this please?

[MarkPAman]

BSS - from Harman is one example. Nice stuff!

 

I'd assumed this was for the community centre you've mentioned before, and budgeted accordingly. Apologies if this was wrong.

[dbuckley]

Yeah, the problem may be that these days all new room combiners are digital, DSP boxes, so BSS, Symetrix, Rane and the like become the usual suspects. Room combining isn't a fixed function of the box any more, its just a drop-in software module on the configuration screen.

 

Lesser known (and lower cost) is Ateis, I think their UAPG2 will do the job (it's like a Soundweb 8x8 but cheaper and with front panel knobs!), and their bigger products certainly do.

 

I'm pretty sure that Cloud's new digital offerings are in this space too, and Cloud being a UK manufacturer of almost indestructible kit with great local support.

 

If that's all too expensive then an X32 rack will do the audio part of the job, you just need to make it usable by people. If that's still too expensive then you either need someone who is handy with a soldering iron, or an analogue mixer with enough outputs.

[IA76]

BSS - from Harman is one example. Nice stuff!

 

I'd assumed this was for the community centre you've mentioned before, and budgeted accordingly. Apologies if this was wrong.

 

 

It was for the community centre and the products are out of our budget so we will stick to using our portable PA system when we split rooms for now!

[stu00c]

The magic word here is Matrix. Get one with eight ins and outs and you'll be able to program presets for single rooms or all rooms linked fed from room A etc.

Shez is bang on, a matrix should be the answer to your current problem

 

Yeah, the problem may be that these days all new room combiners are digital, DSP boxes, so BSS, Symetrix, Rane and the like become the usual suspects. Room combining isn't a fixed function of the box any more, its just a drop-in software module on the configuration screen.

As David points out, specific room combining hardware doesn't really exist any more but is a feature of more fully featured DSPs.

 

As your setup is not that complex compared to some of the room combining systems I have worked on, you probably don't need to use an 'open architecture' DSP like Symetrix SymNet or BSS Soundweb; a simpler to set up unit with a fixed or semi-fixed signal flow could suffice. Being a bit naughty by mentioning something I sell, but a Symetrix Jupiter 8 might be just the thing.

 

A bit more background on room combining systems can be found here - Symetrix Room Combining

 

Stu

[dbuckley]

It was for the community centre and the products are out of our budget...

Start stalking eBay for a PSR1212. I think mine was $50 or something silly like that.

 

There are probably many other similar boxen, you just how to start hunting...

[richardash1981]

 

It was for the community centre and the products are out of our budget so we will stick to using our portable PA system when we split rooms for now!

 

Try ebay for 'XAP800' or 'POLYCOM Vortex' - I think both of those DSP boxes will do what you want, and can be had s/h for relatively little money. They also feature GPIO pins, so you could configure 'idiot buttons' to switch between the configurations you want quite easily. Setting them up is a matter of connecting a PC and configuring the bits you want to use.