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Adding and Configuring a Paging Zone

A paging zone serves as a destination for paging input. There are three ways to include a paging zone in your HAL audio system: add a Zone Processor block, a Room Combine Processor block, an Emergency Paging Zone block, or a standalone Paging Zone block.

How do you determine which approach to use? If you plan to use Zone Processors to define your system's audio zones, you will obviously use the Paging Zone blocks that are automatically included in the Zone Processor blocks. If, however, you have a paging need in an area that doesn't need Zone Processor functionality (for example, it doesn't need input from the Distributed Program Bus and it doesn't need multiple prioritized inputs), you may want to use a standalone Paging Zone block. For additional clarification, you can review an example illustrating these different situations.

The following procedures explain both methods of adding a Paging Zone to your system. Regardless of how you add the Paging Zone, the block itself and the process for configuring it (which is detailed in the last procedure below) are identical.

note: A Paging Zone block has several configurable parameters with default values that are appropriate for most systems, so configuring these parameters may not be necessary. The parameters and their default values are as follows: Ducker Depth (12 dB), Ramp Back (3.0 seconds), Page Gain (0 dB). You can also link the Page Gain parameter to a remote volume control device such as a DR1.

To add a Paging Zone to your system via a Zone Processor
  1. From the DSP palette in the Processing Workspace, add one or more Zone Processor blocks to your system (depending on your system requirements and whether or not you're configuring your Zone Processors all at once or one at a time).
  2. Open the Zone Processor's properties by double-clicking the block or hovering and clicking the properties icon that appears in the upper right of the block's title bar. Notice that the third block internal to the Zone Processor is a Paging Zone block. It is deliberately placed downstream from the Level block for the zone, as this position eliminates the possibility of end-user volume control for the zone impacting the volume of pages.
  3. Configure the Paging Zone block as described in the last procedure below.
To add a standalone Paging Zone to your system
  1. From the DSP palette in the Processing Workspace, locate the Paging Zone block in the Paging/Room Combine category and drag it into the Processing Map.
  2. Drop the Paging Zone block into the relevant audio flow, taking care to place it downstream from any Level blocks controlling other audio inputs. This placement prevents any impact on the page volume should an end user lower the audio volume in the area.
  3. Configure the Paging Zone block as described below.
To configure a Paging Zone
  1. Open the Paging Zone properties by double-clicking the block or hovering and clicking the properties icon that appears in the upper right of the block's title bar. The following dialog box displays: Paging Zone Properties
  2. Adjust the values of one or more of the parameters.
  3. If end user control of the page volume is needed, create a control link between the Page Gain parameter and a remote volume control device (such as a DR1).
  4. If you want the paging status to control another toggle in your configuration, create a link between the status indicator and the toggle you wish to control. For example, link to an output relay and/or control system Ethernet message so a control system can be informed that a page is occurring in the zone.

    note: The paging status toggle is a read-only control, so you can't link it to other read-only toggle controls such as Logic In controls.

See Also