Q-SYS Corner

[Steve Guttag]

Q-SYS For Cinema
Blog-7, QDS–Part-3, Sample 7.1 Part-2, Audio Flow Part-1, Inputs

_1/22/25

Current QDS Versions: 9.13.0 and 9.4.8 LTS.
Sample 7.1 design version: 4.2.0.0 Introduction

In the previous Sample 7.1 Blog, I went over the general overview of a Q-SYS design for cinema.
In this Blog, I will start the process of going through the audio path of the Sample 7.1 design. If you don’t have that design on your computer, you should check out my previous blog as it will describe how to get the design installed on your computer.
In addition to describing what is going on in the design, I plan on also posing alternative ideas. Part of my point will be that you can always build off of what has already been done and make changes that suit your needs. There isn’t any single “right way” of doing a Q-SYS design (providing that it actually works). In fact, I’m hoping to show these alternative designs so you can see the pros and cons of some decisions.
If any of the content in this blog happens to show up in a Q-SYS exam, it is not my intention to provide an answer-sheet beyond the discussion of good practice. I have not seen any form of the cinema final exam (my Level-1 was before there was a cinema version).

Disclosure
I do not, in any way, work for QSC/Q-SYS. These thoughts are my own based on my own interactions with the product(s) and implementing Q-SYS within actual cinema environments. I do work for a dealer that has sold QSC products since the 1980s, including Q-SYS and its predecessors. For the purposes of this blog, I represent only myself and not my employer(s) or any other company.

Target Audience

I am targeting these blogs towards the cinema community, in general. As such, in 2025, there is going to be a rather wide range of knowledge from the uninitiated to the familiar, with respect to Q-SYS. The way one should think about Q-SYS is significantly different than working with purpose-built cinema processors. However, before long, you can have the same speed and familiarity you have become accustomed with other sound processors.
As such, I’m going to go a bit slower, particularly at first, since, for the new comer, all of these pieces are going to be new. For those of you that are already familiar with Q-SYS and have done your own designs, you can skip past the parts that you already know.
For those that this is new or relatively new, I’ll probably show things in a bit more detail than just stating what the component does.
There is a presumption that you have either:

• Gone through the Q-SYS Level-1 online course.
• Are currently taking the Q-SYS Levl-1 online course.

It would be impractical for me, in a blog form, to cover all of the minutia (with respect to working within QDS), that are already covered, very well, in the Level-1 videos.
Link for Q-SYS Level-1 Cinema training

Inputs
As the song goes, “Let’s start at the very beginning.” So, in the upper-left of the design is the “Inputs” group.

DCIO-H
I have already written a blog on the DCIO/DCIO-H and will refer you to that one for details on it. It is going to be one of the most common Q-SYS peripherals in cinema systems. You will need one per screen. The choice of whether or not to get the “H” version for HDMI is dependent on the needs of that particular screen within the cinema complex.
There are four pieces to the DCIO-H within the QDS design.

1. The Digital In.
2. Analog In.
3. GPIO.
4. Status.

You can bring, (or not) any/all of those pieces in, as your needs dictate. It is worth selecting each section, one at a time, and observing the Right-Side Pane (RSP) to see what the properties are for each.
For example, there are a LOT of potential control pins we could expose, if we need them for part of our design.

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We need to decide if we are running a redundant network and, if so, declare it on the RSP and we should also specify its physical location so all of the Auditorium 1 things are grouped together in the inventory (and in other parts of Q-SYS).
Most peripherals have an “Is Required” setting. If that is set to yes, then if the Core finds it to be missing, it will come up as an error. The DCIO-H is definitely required. However, if you had a lectern that gets plugged in and within that you have a Touchscreen, you probably don’t want that to be “required” because you don’t want the system to be showing an error just because the lectern is in storage or in another theatre.
The “Analog In” will have far fewer control pin options but they are specific to the “Analog In.”
For the “GPIO” portion, you should note that you can choose to expose, or not, any category of pins that are not relevant to your design. What is different about this is that audio components normally default to not showing control pins but the “GPIO” defaults to showing them. In the Sample 7.1 design, they have the GPIO pins set to “No.” If you want/need them, change that to yes and see how it changes in the Sample 7.1 design. If you are not using something, save on clutter by not showing unnecessary things.
Let’s look inside of the “Digital In.”

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What do you find inside there that would be handy to have outside so you don’t need to open it later? In my opinion:

• Status LED.
• HDMI Enable/9-16 Enable.
• And possibly the Audio Format.

Those are things that will aid you during troubleshooting since they are “at a glance” sort of things.

Picture3.jpg

(I have resized and labeled/colored the buttons to better fit and make clear what they are doing).
With those on the outside, we know that it is in DCP mode (using 9-16 rather than HDMI) and that its status is “OK.” Conversely, if it was in HDMI mode, that grey box would be showing the HDMI audio format. If it had just a dash (-) we would know why there is no sound…it isn’t getting an HDMI audio signal.

After initial configuration, what other reason is there to open that component? None other than to see the input meters. That is going to be exceedingly rare as you should have some form of metering or signal presence in your design, elsewhere. I would advise against dragging its input meters out since, as we’ve already discovered (in the previous blog), LSP items like the DCIO-H, do not copy from design to design. So, if are going to copy your design from screen to screen or complex to complex, that just becomes more work to duplicate. You would be better served by adding a meter component so that it will copy.

In fact, about the only thing inside the DCIO-H component you really need to consider adjusting is the “Upmix” dropdown (for HDMI sources only). If you have a 7.1 system, setting this to 7.1 will have the upmixer avoid things like the 2.0 mixes from only playing from Left and Right…which creates a big hole in cinemas. It is better to have a “Prologic” decoder create a Center (and surrounds) out of that. Using 7.1 will ensure that the typical cinema speakers will get a more traditional channel assignment. Since we don’t have a physical DCIO-H in emulation mode, you won’t be offered the upmix options. However, if you did have a real DCIO-H to connect to, it would look like this:

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Key Tip: Help <F1>
While we’re at it, this is a good time to get acquainted with the F1 button on your keyboard. That is the hot button for “Help.” If you select any of the DCIO-H components in the design and press <F1> (or go to the Help menu…it is the first option), it should open your default browser and pull up the Help page for the component you have selected. It is like having a custom instruction manual at your fingertips.

If you selected one of the DCIO-H’ components when pressing <F1>, it should have opened the DCIO-H’s Help page. If you open up the Control’s section, it will give you information on how the Upmix works as well as other information on the DCIO-H.

If you open the “Control Pins” section, you can see what is available there and how they will respond to components that work with Values, Strings, or Position (how a component’s control pins behave are dependent on what they are connected to; almost all pins have to consider how they will behave with those three categories).

[Blog 7, Page 1 of 3]

[Steve Guttag]

The Start of How-To Create An Alternative HDMI Upmix (Example)

I’m going to take a brief detour to bring up why you might want to expose control pins on components so you can do more with a component than just a canned system.

These are just the beginning steps of how to make an HDMI format decoder. There could be an entire discussion/blog on how to make your own upmixer.

Let’s say you don’t like the way the Upmixer handles various formats and you want to roll your own. How might you do that? The easy part is the actual 2:4 decoder since Q-SYS has one of those in the RSP components. It is called the Active Matrix Decoder so it is best found using the search…or just copy the one that is already in the design. But how do you know if you need to use that or if you just need to pass-through, say, a 5.1/7.1 audio?

If the HDMI signal identifies itself as having a Center channel (in its metadata), the DCIO-H’s “C” LED will light and its control pin will go high. Likewise, if you have content with 7.1, you will have both Left Back (Lb) and Right Back (Rb). Expose those pins (you can use either Lb or Rb since there isn’t a situation where only one will be declared active…these are logic pins, not signal level):

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With “C” and “Lb” status pins you can set yourself up with a truth table of what format needs to be decoded and what channels to send to where. I’d add the “HDMI Enable” pin too since we only care about decoding/upmixing when HDMI is selected.

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This is how it might start to look if you use a Container to hold your own HDMI decoder. As you look at other components in the design, take a moment to see what control pins might be available to you and how they might allow you to make your design fit your needs a bit better.

DCIO-H Audio Wiring.

Okay, we know that we want to minimize repeat work and that we might want to add some input meters. What can we do lessen the work down the road?

Picture7.jpg

We probably don’t need to worry about AES15 and AES16, at least not at this time. They were an alternate location for HI/VI channels. Note, they are the jagged edge Signal Names. This indicates that they are not mated up elsewhere in the design. So, we can safely delete those.
How can we keep our wiring but eliminate the issue with copying? Signal Snakes. Let’s add Signal Snakes to keep our rework to a minimum. How can we create Signal Snakes?

Key Tip: Signal Snakes
Signal Snakes (note, I may refer to them as Wire Snakes too) are located in the RSP. Just search for “Snake.” However, there is a shortcut! If you select the pins you want to wire to a snake, then drag those pins like you are dragging wires (the wires will start to form), press the <space bar> and presto…the right sized snake, all wired up!
Here is the process for the DCIO-H, presuming we are going to create two 8-channel snakes (we could do one 16-channel snake but we have more flexibility if we make the two since the needs of the HDMI audio may be different than for the DCP audio.

1. Delete the existing wires from the DCIO-H to the “Routing” block.
2. Select the first 8 pins (including the two that have Signal Names AES7-A1 and AES8-A1). You can do this one at a time with <shift-click> or by LTR (Left-to-Right) dragging or even by RTL (Right-to-Left) dragging.
3. Then <click-hold> and drag the top pin until wires form (and hold).
4. Press the <space bar>.

If you got it right, it should look like this:

Picture8.jpg

Repeat for the bottom 8 pins.

Picture9.jpg

Now, over on the “Routing” component, repeat the process.
Let’s move those Signal Names for the ADA channels over to the Signal Snakes feeding the “Routing” component using <CTL-X> and <CTL-V> to cut and paste the Signal Names to where we want them:

Picture10.jpg

We’re still not done because we need to connect the snakes. However, it might be better to use Signal Names rather than wires (it is our choice) so we can have repeat destinations, if we want to add meters or something. Additionally, we should shift the location of the DCIO-H input components and maybe tweak the group box size a little, so things will fit comfortably:

Picture11.jpg

Now, if we copy the design (for additional screens), the only thing we need to do, as far as Digital In goes, is add the DCIO-H and drag its wires over to a Signal Snake. Those ADA Signal Names will also copy fine and will automatically update to “A2” on the next copy.

By this same logic, we should also add Signal Snakes to the Analog In as well (and possibly the Audio Player). Since we’re just using the Snakes to preserve our Signal Names, we can put the Snakes head-to-head and connect with a simple wire:

Picture12.jpg

Note too, if you do not have the DCIO-H but just the DCIO, you could skip everything that pertains to the HDMI audio path and just wire up pins 1-8, 11, and 12.

Key Point: You only consume input channels if you actually connect wires to the input pin. So, you only use 16 inputs if you actually run wires to all 16. If you only run wires to 10 inputs that you need, the empty pins don’t count towards your channel count limit. If you are placing more than one screen on a Core, this could be very important since, in cinema, input channel count is often the limiting factor on the Core’s size.

Input Meters
Since I brought up meters on the inputs, here is how you might add them. I would bring an empty container into the design and declare it without input or output pins. I would then bring in “Level Meters” for both DCP and HDMI (declare them as multichannel with 8-channels each).

Then, wire the meters with Signal Snakes. Copy the Signal Names from the main schematic to the Signal Snakes on the Meters:

Picture13.jpg

Then, I would copy the meters to the schematic and resize them as horizontal meters (if you make a meter wider than it is tall, it will, automatically, convert to a horizontal meter). The final product would look something like this:

Picture14.jpg

You’ll know, at a glance, if anything is coming into the system via the DCIO-H’s Digital In component. If you want, the same can be done with the other inputs (e.g. Analog In) but I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

Hopefully, you can see how using Signal Snakes can make adding something like these meters far easier than just using wires that run everywhere. And, if we duplicate this Screen, these meters will copy/paste just fine and their labels will update to A2 as well.

Analog In
The Analog input has the typical inputs of a Cinema Processor for Non-Sync and a Microphone. The Non-Sync inputs are on a stereo 3.5mm (mini-phone) jack. The Microphone is via XLR. Note, the XLR input can accept both microphone level as well as line level audio, so it is a bit of a universal mono input.
Let’s look inside it a bit:

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We probably don’t need to drag its status LED out since we have that information right above on the Digital Input (the status is a duplicate). If you are concerned about clipping any of the inputs you might want to drag the “Clip” LEDs out. Depending on your installation, you might want to have a whole microphone calibration set up on your UCI (User Control Interface). For now, I’m not going to bring any of the controls out.

[Blog-7, Page 2 of 3]

[Steve Guttag]

You will need to set the Microphone Preamp Gain based on the mic(s) you are using. This level should be done with this component and not with a digital gain downstream. It is fine to add a fader downstream to balance things out but in terms of getting the microphone’s gain structure right for the system (good level, without clipping), that needs to be done here on the Analog In.

The Left/Right Non-Sync inputs have a cruder Preamp Sensitivity…it is just a high/low setting. Use whatever is appropriate for your source (good level, without clipping).

Key Point:
With analog audio, you want to add as much gain as you will EVER need as early as possible. This is why I’ve stated that you should set the Preamp Gains here and not with other gains downstream. This will result in the lowest noise and best quality audio. Once you are within the digital domain in Q-SYS, it really doesn’t matter (that much, if at all) where you add/remove the gain to balance things out. Analog inputs are one of the few exceptions to my recommendations of not to adjust audio within an input component.

Audio Player
Every Q-SYS Core is capable of storing audio. As such, it can be your music source as well as pre-recorded messages or even just sound effects, if you want to liven up you UCIs. If you want to come up with a snazzy “Red-Alert” sound for when a fault is detected within the system and play out of the booth monitors, go for it (just know, cute things can get annoying, after they’ve gone off 1000 times, so think about the sound and the likelihood of it going off a lot).

Of course, if you use your Core as an audio player for music, you will have the overhead of uploading that content, selecting it and playing it (as well as deleting off stale content). It could prove handy if you want to keep seasonal music that you can switch in/out and nothing is stopping you from using a mix of analog inputs and the Audio Player.

The Audio Player has quite a few controls that one might want to drag out into a UCI if you are providing that functionality to the manger/projectionist:

Picture16.jpg

To get more detail on the Audio player, select it in the schematic and press <F1> to open the help file on it. There you will find its capabilities (file types too).

You can have more than one Audio Player in your design. You are limited by total track count (16 is the standard non-upgraded amount) and storage space. This will vary by Core and QDS version so always check with the Help file on the QDS version you are using. There are both Media Drive upgrades (more storage) and Mult-track upgrades (more total tracks). You should check pricing if you are planning on using the Audio Player beyond “typical” basic playback.

So, if you are using a Stereo Audio Player for music, you still have 14-tracks remaining that you can use for other things.

For a couple of videos that discuss the Audio Player in more depth, including how to get audio files up to your core, check out this video (and the one that comes right after it):
Audio Player Video
Audio File Management Video

Cinema Pink Noise

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Somewhere in your design, you should have a Cinema Pink Noise Generator since you will need to tune the room, somehow. Where it is located will depend on your design. Often, you don’t need more than one because you are not going to need multiple instances of pink noise playing at the same time. You can route one Pink Noise generator to as many signal paths as you need using a Signal Name. However, I’m sure we’ll find that due to how they are routing the pink noise in this design, we will need to have one per screen or they wouldn’t have appended the “A1” to both the output and the Mute control pin.

Key Point: There is more than type of Pink Noise component available. For cinema, we always want to use the Cinema Pink Noise version. The difference is in the crest factor of the noise. In order for the various test equipment to read the same from system-to-system and match what was used when the film was mixed, we need to use, as close as possible, the same reference signal. Additionally, the level needs to be set to -20dBFS when setting the speaker playback level with your SPL meter.

In my designs, I will create a separate Snapshot just to send the Pink Noise Generator to _‑20dBFS. This does two things.

1. It allows me to set the pink noise at reference quickly.
2. It provides a visual confirmation of its level without having to open the component.

Now, we could drag the level out so we know what the level is and adjust it, if necessary.

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And, if you prefer, we can select that “knob” and turn it into a text display using the properties on the RSP. They will function the same and you can key in your desired level.

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Why would you want to adjust the pink noise level in the first place? I will, often, start a new system with the pink noise set to -40dB or so until all speakers have been tested to ensure that nothing was hooked up wrong (HF components, connected to amplifiers playing LF signals). Also, you don’t want to blast anything. So, if you left any level controls for your “B-chain” at “0dB” that may be a bit loud. Starting the pink noise a bit low, at first, is just a safety thing.

So (optionally), if you want to create a Snapshot that sets the pink noise to -20dBFS (reference), create a new Snapshot and label it appropriately. Drag in just the pink noise level control. You only need 1 preset in it (unless you want to set up a couple of levels).

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While the pink noise level is at -20dB, “Save” that to preset 1. You can then drag out the “Load 1” button and give it a suitable name:

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Let’s say you adjust it down for initial testing to -40dB:

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Notice how the button went dark? This lets us know that the pink noise level is not at reference. You can copy/paste this button anywhere in your schematic that it will be handy during your testing (near the EQ, for example). The same goes for the level adjust. You don’t have to scroll around, if you don’t want to. Just copy and paste elements to where they suit your needs.

Now, as we will discover in a future blog, the Pink Noise component is included in the “PINK-A1” Snapshot bank so, by virtue of recalling its presets, the pink noise level will adjust back to ‑20dB that way too. There is nothing to stop you from using the same schematic components in multiple Snapshot banks. So, you might have to think things out a bit since you might have two Snapshots that “fight” each other.

Loudspeaker Monitor

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The Loudspeaker Monitor component is a LSP component since it pertains to the Core itself so there can only be one in the design (and it doesn’t copy/paste from auditorium to auditorium).
In simple terms, it is the amplifier output monitor. As we are accustomed to within cinema, we want to be able to monitor the output of the amplifier to know that the audio signal is getting all of the way out to the speaker. If you hear the audio in the amplifier out but not in the theatre, then we know that either the speaker has failed or a wire has become disconnected (which should trigger a load-fault too).


You can only monitor one output at a time, with the exception that if you have a multi-way speaker (2-way, 4-way…etc.), you can monitor a summed output.

Another catch is, it only works with Q-SYS native amplifiers (DPA-Q, CX-Q, SPA-Q) and Dataport amplifiers (DCA, CX) with Dataport cards mounted in a suitable I/O frame (now discontinued) or the Core 510i. Both the amplifier and speaker components have the “Listen” button that feeds the Loudspeaker Monitor component. While they are equivalent buttons, only on the speaker component can you monitor all sections of the multi-way speaker as a summed signal. Listen buttons are mutually exclusive. But you can see that between the speaker and mating amplifier components, they track together.

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If you were to try and select the speaker from the amplifier side, in the example above, you’d only be able to select Channel A or Channel B.

Note, you can set the “Listen” level for each output, if you want to balance out the response.

Since there is just the one Loudspeaker Monitor, you may have some overhead, if you are using one Core for multiple screens to ensure that one is always listening to the theatre you are working with. For instance, if the last person was monitoring the Center speaker in theatre 1, if you were to go to theatre 2 and send the Loudspeaker Monitor to the booth monitor output, you’d still be listening to theatre 1 until you changed the selection.

Conclusions

We’re on our way to understanding, and possibly modifying, the Sample 7.1 design. Hopefully, the concepts of those input components make sense. Don’t be surprised if the design evolves a bit more as we go and some of the things discussed in this blog continue to evolve too. Depending on where you are reading this (if comments or replies are allowed), you are welcomed to ask questions and start a dialog.
©2025 by Steve Guttag

[Blog-7, Page 3 of 3, End of Blog]

[Leo Enticknap]

Update for the IMS3000 plugin:

image.png

[Steve Guttag]

Cool beans. 3 for 3 of my requests. Now to see how well they implemented them! My IMS3000 "companion" module can get smaller and smaller!