With the development of digitalization in audio system solution, people have higher and higher requirements to audio system: signal needs to be sent in digital; audio system needs more free space to operate. As post-part of a sound reinforcement system, many users require not only speakers be active but also remote control and monitoring on the active loudspeaker’s working condition, having this requirement because in many cases, loudspeakers is far away from the remote control place, and this poses a new challenge for monitoring and modulating professionals. C-MARK network audio system solves the problem completely.
The digital network audio system under C-MARK brand is a system based on CobraNet technology, among which K series network loudspeaker is one of the hi-tech digital hardware, audio signal, monitor signal, modulated signal all being sent through a Category 5 cable. This article will give detail introduction about the system hardware with a project in Huang Pu Theater.

System Project:
The writer had the honor to do the installation & modulation for the project. The weather condition for the installation was tough and it’s very hot inside the room. People were sweating even doing nothing. With no heat dispatching facilities in the control room, audio system has to face severe challenge. The audio source is DENON CD player, SONY MD player, microphone is SHURE wireless microphone system and mixing console is C-MARK CB2846, transfer system is DRC0808A, which is an 8-in-8-out signal terminal, the processing center uses DRB-1 audio processing platform. This platform processing needs to work with analog input and analog output terminals, because this unit itself doesn’t have any analog in & out ports. It works as a signal processor and scene memory. The post part uses K series of network loudspeakers, from K12 for monitoring to K15 for main sound reinforcement and K18 the subwoofer.

In traditional installation, the most time consuming part is the cable connection part, however, in this project, I finished all system cable connection within 3 hours, and all this should thanks to the total solution of the network system. Traditional cable connection for equalizers and processors was saved. In this system, you don’t need to go physically to connect cables, because the connection is virtual and can be conveniently done on computer by the software. The only job to do is to connect 2 to 3 audio source, and signal wires for wireless system, and the other is the category 5 cable. 1 minutes is needed to make a RJ45 connector, while 5 to 6 minutes is needed to make a XLR connector including cutting and welding. You may say the writer is slow in making cables, every loudspeaker needs only one network cable and one power cable. And you need of course a stand-by category 5 cable, and in this project, for the sake of safety, we’ve set a analog signal cable and you can use it when the network system fails to work. This of course is a better Plan B if without enough budget. 

After finishing connection of hardware, we come to modulation part. On the platform of the RS1200 software, add every MAC code to the software (the recognition code of loudspeaker in the software), activate the hardware, and you’ll find the preparation of a digital system needs much time too. After all hardware connection done, all your work will be in the software. I think every loudspeaker should have a graphic equalizer, so I take it out from the processing module column, and then I want to add limiter to loudspeaker part, and I take the limiter module from the column. After finishing system modulation on the whole system, I found loudspeaker had nice performance, but when the system worked as a whole, I thought some speakers needed delay, and I put on suitable delay module. After two to three days’ listening probation, the system was tuned to a good level, and the system was working when other projects incl. lighting installation was continuing, all hardware proved to be stable. 

You may find the above steps are too much trouble, but actually these are the work that should be done beforehand, it will be saved in the platform as pre-modulated setting, and what user needs to do is to press three buttons in the platform, and the three buttons are: 1. program down 2 program up 3 confirm, operation is so easy.

Software system:
K series loudspeaker control software is based on RS1200 software platform. Add the K series of hardware icon, activate it, double-click it to open the monitoring & modulating window, as shown in Picture 1. With this, you can see instantly the working status of far end loudspeakers, and monitor info including current, voltage, temperature, output volume, output gain. And at the same time, it can set warning signal point, remote power switch, etc.

Picture 1

The system connection picture of this project

The software platform signal routing picture of the project