Multi room pub sound routing

[Sebs_Hotel]

Hi!

I have a pub/live venue with two floors. Main stage (220 cap) and basement (80 cap). The basement is separated in four rooms - main room, pool room, side room and hall/walkway. (btw PA is not yet installed in any main area re: attached images).

On the main floor I will have a c1500 with Dante card in stage rack, a stereo analog line and a PC (background music). Mixer and PC going to a switch connected to Dante 32*32 card in AHM32, analog wired straight in ofc. Basement also has a c1500 (without Dante card for now because money) and a BT receiver/analog line, both hardwired into AHM.

Have set up two of the analog inputs on the matrix as basic mic inputs and routed them to each floor.

I want to be able to send audio from every source (main stage mixer, main stage analog output, main stage pc/background music, basement mixer, basement BT receiver and both floor mics - to different areas depending on situation. I also want it to be really easy for the bartenders in each bar to select what audio source they want, and where - and how loud - they want it.

Matrix is - for now - set up by a friend who knows a lot more about A&H systems than I do, but is not an A&H systems engineer. He is also quite busy with his day job as FOH engineer, so I am usually left alone trying to understand this box!

I have made a really simple Custom Control app which works ok for volume adjustment in the basement rooms.

However, I don’t know how I should set up the whole system. For instance, should I host some closed event in the basement requiring say a mic, some guitars and whatnot, I think I know how to route those sources to the basement only, but not without logging into AHM systems manager and selecting Xpoint routing manually. When there’s a live show on the main stage, I also want to have the possibility to route the live audio to the basement. I would really like this to be simplified to the point where a bartender could simply select from a screen where sound should come from, and where it’s heard. From all sources, to all areas.

How should I do this?

Thanks in advance!

[MarkF]

Hi!

Sorry that it’s taken a little while to get to this thread.

Presets on the AHM are your friend here. My advice is always to create presets with as narrow a scope as possible - so in the instance of what you’re describing, you can have all the routing/xpoints in place already, and use the presets to toggle fader/mute adjustments based on the required routing.

If your sources are always exclusive (i.e. one at a time, rather than a mix) this can be done using the Selector on AHM - which automatically switches between inputs.
This is by far the easiest way. Simply add your sources to your zones as normal, and all the sources that you need to switch between using the Selector block. Then, add a selector on CC and point it at the right zone. You can also add sources to the zone’s crosspoints that aren’t in the selector, which is great for things like emergency systems or announcement mics that you wouldn’t want to be turned on or off automatically.

If you’ve got multiple Custom Control endpoints, you can have a separate layout on each (Controlled by who logs into it) so that each zone gets either a selector (to pick what audio they’d like to pick up) or a series of on-off buttons to enable/disable crosspoints.
How are your users typically accessing Custom Control? Is it via their own devices or installed ones?

There’s a few ways to approach this particular issue…! Perhaps if you’d like a more in-depth answer to go back and forth with some config files, you could reach out to us in support@allen-heath.com and mention this thread, and I can help you out some more.

[Sebs_Hotel]

Hi and thanks for the reply!

After some youtubing, I eventually wound up setting the whole thing up more or less exactly the way you proposed - with a zone selector in the custom control app. Works pretty well!

Would there, however, be a way to simply switch to “whatever source plays will sound everywhere” mode easily?