Owner manual

4 Universal Control-AI and VSL-AI

4.9 Smaart System Check Wizards

StudioLive

™

AI Software Library

Reference Manual

4.9.2 Smaart System Delay Wizard

Using multiple sets of speakers in a live performance can make a huge diﬀerence

in the quality of the sound. Rather than relying on a pair of front-of-house speakers

to ﬁll the entire room, you can create listening zones throughout the room so

that your front-of-house system only needs to be loud enough to cover the

front of the room. This allows you to lower the level, give the front row listeners’

ears a break, and get better ﬁdelity from your speakers. Sounds great, right?

However, it’s not as easy as just bringing an extra pair of speakers. Any additional

sets of speakers will need to be delayed; otherwise the audience will perceive

that the sound is coming from the walls, rather than from the stage. Even

worse, since electricity travels much faster than sound, listeners in the rear of

the room are likely to hear the sound coming from the nearest set of speakers

before they hear the sound from stage, which can dampen the attack and

intelligibility of the sound and create an unpleasant phasing eﬀect. To compensate,

you need to delay the signal going to the additional sets of speakers.

Sound travels at a rate of 1,130 feet per second, providing that the temperature,

humidity, and air pressure are all “normal.” Therefore, it takes 1 ms for sound to travel

1.1 feet. But what if you’re setting up for an outdoor show in, say, Baton Rouge,

Louisiana, in August, when the temperature and humidity are unpleasantly far above

“normal”? Your calculations might be a little oﬀ, unless you happen to be a whiz at

calculating the eﬀect of barometric and atmospheric pressure on sound waves.

The SSD wizard is an automated process that calculates and sets the correct

delay time between two full-range systems. The purpose of this wizard is to

set the delay time for a secondary system that is being fed from one or more

subgroups. No calculators, slide rules, or ﬁnger-counting are necessary!

STAGE

FOH L FOH R

Side Fill

(left)

Side Fill

(right)

Rear Fill

(left)

Rear Fill

(right)

30 Feet

40 Feet

37 Feet

inconveniently positioned column

30 Feet