Assistive Listening and ADA & CBC Compliance offered by Listen Technologies Corporation

This webinare covered Assistive Listening and ADA & CBC Compliance. With one in five Americans having some form of hearing loss, the ADA requires each assembly area to have an active listening system. This areas are where audible communications are integral to the use o the space per the ADA. Signage and loops are also required.

Cisco and Audinate Networking Shorts: PTP – It’s About Time

This is a webinare about PTP in the context of Dante audio. It is a highly technical analysis of network timing synchronization. Dante is unicast but uses PTP which has multicast traffic for clocking.

Chris Lapp – Technical Solutions Architect from Cisco
Lucas Moreno – Technical Sales Engineer from Audinate
Julian Carro – Solution Sales Account Director from Audinate

Cisco and Audinate take a closer look at PTP and how it relates to Audio networking, and more specifically, Dante.

Agenda:
Media over IP review
NTP vs PTP
Sources and Applications of time
Dante and PTP
PTPv1 vs PTPv2
Best Mater Clock Algorithm
Inner workings of PTP
Time Sensitive Networks
Advanced PTP Concepts for Dante
PTP Profiles

QSC House of Worship Training

QSC overview of the basics of audio engineering for houses of worship. Covering everything from properly rolling a cable and setting up a PA system, to building monitor mixes and running sound for your service.

This also included QSC TouchMix monitoring systems, K.2 loundspeakers, CP Series and line arrays.

SDVoE Certification

SDVoE (Software Defined Video over Ethernet) is a 2017 topology that is competing with traditional matrix video switching and HDBaseT. Instead of switching video routes based on hardware transmitters and receivers, SDVoE uses software to encode the video stream over a standard 10G ethernet network using the API to configure and control the streams.

This certification is an introduction to SDVoE.

Zoom Rooms Certified

Zoom’s platform is hitting the AV industry by storm and I’m seeing lots of corporations integrate Zoom into their infrastructure. This comes in examples like the Logitech Tap and Crestron FLEX using an interface such as the Mercury or TSW-1060.

This certification was thorough and took several weeks to complete (since I predominately did it on the train while commuting to Chicago). This covered the Zoom story, meetings, hosting webinars through Zoom, account management, Room administration and integration with 3rd party systems such as Polycom and Microsoft. The integration portion covered protocols such as H.323 and SIP. It also provided procedures for activating licenses per the many platforms upon which Zoom can integrate.

This certification was first achieved December 2019.

Microsoft Teams Rooms Technical Assessment

Since the COVID-19 pandemic corporations have started utilizing “soft codecs.” These consist of video conference software like Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Webex. The traditional conference room utilizes hardware such as Cisco Webex Room Kit Pro or Polycom GroupSeries. Soft codecs provide a USB for a user laptop to connect to the conference room’s microphones, camera and speakers. So the world is now about USB connections and platform licenses on the soft codec.

This training was for Microsoft Teams Rooms. Microsoft historically has lead the market in hardware compatibility. Teams Rooms are no different. The Microsoft Teams Room is compatible with many hardware types including Lenovo, Logitech, Crestron and Hewlett Packard. The training covered the entire process of installation, to network configuration, to deployment all the way to user implementation.

CTS-I Certification

AVIXA offers three industry standard certifications. The CTS (Certified Technology Specialist) is the base and prerequisite for the others which was earned in 2015. I earned my CTS-I (Installation) last week by building upon the foundation of the CTS. My situation in Chicago is a bit strange since I’m in the engineering department and not a union installation technician. If I were employed in a non-union area I would be doing both install and engineering. Since I’m in Chicago, most of my work is engineering in the field.

A Certified Technology Specialist – Installation (CTS-I) certification confirms the AV system installer is capable of installing and maintaining audiovisual systems by following specifications, schematics, codes and safety protocols; administering installation process logistics; troubleshooting and problem-solving systems; maintaining tools and equipment; and communicating with clients, designers, other trades, other installers and staff to provide the best audiovisual solutions for clients.

Zoom Room Refresher

I’m already Zoom Certified but this webinar was nice to keep current. It was a technical discussion focused on integration. They discussed size of room, types of peripherals required and licenses required based on the platform. It was covid-19 style. I’m an essential worker which means I don’t work from home – which is both good or bad depending on one’s attitude for the day.