Using a Standalone Paging Zone Block vs. a Zone Processor Block

You are designing an audio system for a large hotel. The hotel has many hallways, several public restrooms, and a parking garage in which a single channel of background music will play. The hotel owners want to be able to page into these areas ... individually and collectively.

These public areas (hallways, restrooms, parking garage) require minimal audio configuration and control. Because only one audio channel is sent to these areas, there is no need for selection control. The design question at this point is what type of block to use for these zones. Should you use a Zone Processor block or a standalone Paging Zone block? There are pros and cons to each approach.

Zone Processor Approach

Using a Zone Processor block gives you the Distributed Program Bus which could supply the one background channel to all three areas. The Zone Processor block also provides the needed Paging Zone block. But the Zone Processor is also providing functionality that isn't needed in this particular situation, such as priority selection, selection control, and additional Level blocks that could lead to confusion later when installing and working with the system. If you want to keep the system as simple and streamlined as possible, you may want to use the standalone Paging Zone block instead.

Paging Zone Approach

Instead of using Zone Processors, you could add a Paging Zone block for each area: Hallways, Restrooms, Parking Garage. Unlike with the Zone Processor approach, you would then have to wire the background music channel to each paging zone. This wiring is an additional step, but you end up with a simpler system that does specifically what you want. So the choice is yours as to which approach is best for your situation.

The next section illustrates the configuration of the Paging Zone approach.

1. In the Processing Workspace, open the DSP palette.
2. Locate the Paging Zone block (in the Paging/Room Combine category) and drag three of them into the Processing Map. Because the system requirements include the ability to page both collectively and individually into the hallways, restrooms, and parking garage, you need a separate block for each of the three areas.
3. Customize the zone name on each block (by clicking the green rectangle and then typing the custom name). We'll name them Hallways, Restrooms, and Parking Garage.
4. Optionally, open the properties for each Paging Zone block (by double-clicking the block or by hovering over the title bar and clicking the properties icon that appears). This step is necessary only if you wish to change the Program Ducker values or the Page Gain, or if you wish to link the Page Gain to a remote volume control device. In this case, we will leave the parameters at their default values and will not provide end users with control over the page volume in these areas.
5. Wire the required background music channel output to the Input node on each Paging Zone block.
6. In the DSP palette, locate the Emergency Paging Zone block (in the Paging/Room Combine category) and drag three of them (one for each paging zone) into the Processing Map. Drop each Emergency block to the right of each Paging Zone block. Wire the Paging Zone Output node to the Emergency Paging Zone block's Input node.
7. Now it's time to configure the page routing, which we do within the Paging Manager. In the Processing Workspace toolbar, click Paging Manager. The paging zones we just created appear in the Paging Manager's Zones section.

note: To shorten this example, we assume that the paging stations have already been configured.

8. In the Scenarios section, add five Scenarios by clicking the + icon five times. Define the Scenarios as follows:
   • Hallways Scenario contains the Hallways zone.
   • Restrooms Scenario contains the Restrooms zone.
   • Parking Garage Scenario contains the Parking Garage zone.
   • Public Areas Scenario contains the Hallways, Restrooms, and Parking Garage zones.
   • Emergency Scenario contains the Emergency zone.
9. In the Stations section, assign the Scenarios to the appropriate paging stations. And you're done! At least with the paging part, that is.