Q-SYS Corner

[Steve Guttag]

Q-SYS For Cinema Blog-21 Plugins and User Components

_9/13/25

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Current QDS Versions: 10.0.1 and 9.13.1 LTS Introduction

A continual theme in my blogs about Q-SYS is that it is not just a sound system. It is an entire ecosystem that includes audio, control, and video. Plugins and User Components are one of the means to better integrate Q-SYS in your cinema environment and tie everything together.
Additionally, note that QDS 9.13.1 LTS has been released and should be, in my opinion, the QDS of choice, if your Core choice so permits. There are a LOT of bug fixes included in this release.

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.

The Hierarchy

User Components

User Components are a bit of a broad area. Anything can be a user component. If you have a single component or an entire schematic*, you can store it as a “User Component.”

*Left Side Pane items, like snapshots or speakers, and amplifiers, will not be stored in the User Component.

Key Concept: User Components can be passed between QDS versions (and between users). So long as the components used in the User Component are available in a lesser QDS version, you can pass a User Component from a newer QDS version to an older one. So, if you are going to share a creation of yours, share it as a User Component rather than as a Schematic (unless you are both on the same QDS version).

When it comes to making your own components, be they just a single component, a schematic, like your “test kit,” a collection of logic components, a script you’ve made using the Block Controller, or even via LUA scripting (Control Script or Text Controller). These all are stored as “User Components.”

Plugins

Plugins are scripts (they all start as scripts) that have gone through the extra steps to finish them off as a plugin. If you are interested in turning your LUA script into a plugin, information on that process can be found here:

https://q-syshelp.qsc.com/DeveloperHelp/

https://developers.qsc.com/s/resourcespage

A key advantage of a plugin over a mere script is the ability to revise it without having to remove/reapply the component within your designs. Let’s say you’ve deployed a bunch of your favorite plugin and you decide to update it for a new feature or to fix a bug. You can update the plugin and the next time you open designer with the updated plugin and a design that uses the plugin, you’ll be greeted with a question of if you want to continue to use the version that is in the design or if you want to use the newer version that is part of your QDS. This can save a lot of time and reduce mistakes caused by remove/replace of user components.

If you want to be a Q-SYS partner (where you develop plugins, as a business), then you can also get them listed in Asset Manager and have them certified for use with things like “Reflect.” But that is beyond the scope of this blog.

I will note, however, just because you have a plugin within Asset Manager, it does not mean that it is “free.” Asset Manager can be just like the various App Stores for phones where the plugins can be free or require some form of payment. Generally, if they are made to support a particular manufacturer (where the manufacturer had a hand in its creation), they are free. Those that are not brand specific or are made by an entity other than the manufacturer, then they are often with some form of payment (license keys obtained from the company that made the plugin).

Cinema Plugins

There are, already, a collection of cinema-specific plugins, within Asset Manager, that can help greatly with Q-SYS integration.
At the time of this writing:

• Barco Series 2 Projectors.
• Barco Series 4 Projectors.
• Christie Series 2 Projectors.
• NEC (Sharp) Series 2 Projectors (which includes the current laser ones).
• Dolby IMS3000 Server.
• Integ JNIOR.

If you want to see more plugins for cinema, you’ll need to convince the manufacturers to create them (or you can create them yourselves, if you have access to the API).
So, what do the cinema plugins do? Let’s look at the Barco Series 4 plugin, as an example:

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It covers a lot of ground. All of those buttons and text boxes can be brought out to your UCIs. So, you can create a full user interface for the projector that goes beyond the mere 9 presets the projector itself offers. Here is what it looks like on one of my UCIs:

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So, the user has control over the laser/dowser, preset, test pattern and we provide the “taillight” that Barco omitted. We, clearly, also have more than 9 presets available on the physical projector. But this is just one example.
Here is an example of the Dolby IMS3000 plugin turned into a UCI:

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You can get all of the information that you would, normally, have to login with a web browser right there on the UCI, including full manual control. The IMS3000 plugin is pretty feature laden. I highly encourage you to check it out. An entire blog could be done on everything it can do.

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[Steve Guttag]

The Christie Series 2 projector plugin looks pretty much like the Christie UI on the Christie TPC:

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Again, these are all draggable controls so you can make it into whatever suits your needs. The same goes for the NEC (Sharp) projector plugin.

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All of the temperatures are there. When you put them in a UCI, you can format the window as desired. On one of my UCIs with the Sharp/NEC projector, it looks like this:

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Remember, you can use as much or as little of a plugin as you want/need. And you can augment that if there are features/information you desire that are not covered by a plugin. Additionally, not shown, are the properties section, where you can specify your needs even more. Like what flavor of projector you are using, how many Titles/Presets/Channels/Macros do you need.

The other cinema-specific plugin in Asset Manager is Integ’s JNIOR:

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User Components

You should not feel left out. Q-SYS has three levels of being able to make your own stuff. Good old-fashioned Right-Side Pane components wired up/configured as you want them (I use this quite a bit). You can use Block Controller to fashion your own “scripting” type components (I use this one a lot). And then there is scripting (Text Controller/Control Script) where you will use LUA coding.

Q-SYS has entire training courses (videos) for all three tiers. Here is a link:

https://training.qsc.com/mod/page/view.php?id=2527

Q-SYS is making these available to you for free. Take advantage of them!

So, what can you do with just components and logic blocks? Quite a bit, actually. Here is one of mine that I did during the whole C19 times where I had a bit more time to experiment.:

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So, what does it do? It calculates the surround delays needed for both digital cinema as well as for Pro-Logic (surrounds derived via a 2:4 decoder). The delays are different because they are doing different things. The digital cinema delay is to merely have the side surrounds arrive at the same time as the screen channels. The Pro-Logic delay is trying to ensure that one does not get an echo due to crosstalk between the screen and surround channels. So, it doesn’t just protect for just the person sitting in the reference position of the theatre (2/3rds back, centered).

You just need to enter the theatre’s dimensions in feet or meters and out comes the delays you need. You can use wire tags (Signal Names) to link them up in your design.
So, how does it work? Any guesses? It’s all done with logic blocks. No scripting was done, including the metric/imperial measurements (and the text for the units).

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Let’s work through the digital delay path:

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We take the theatre length and multiply it by 2/3 to locate the standard reference position. If the theatre is 100-feet long, it will locate the reference position to be 66.7-feet. Likewise, for the theatre width, we want the middle of the theatre so we multiply by ½. So, for a 40-foot-wide theatre, it will result in 20-feet. To figure the delay, we need to subtract the width from the length since the time it takes for the sound to travel from the side wall to the center of the theatre already is a delay and we don’t want to add that in twice. This is what the Value Difference block does. We need to then convert these distances into time. Sound, nominally, travels at 1130-feet/second. So, we divide our distance by 1130 to provide a result in seconds. So, if it is a 100 x 40 theatre, the equation is (100x0.667) – (40x0.500) = 47-feet. We need to divide that by the speed of sound so 47-feet/1130-(feet/seconds) = 0.416-seconds or 41.6-miliseconds.

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You can certainly do this sort of math on a calculator (phone) but with a User Component, you can drop this sort of thing in to any design and for as many screens as are in the design and merely input the theatre size and ta-da, it’s all figured out. You don’t have to revisit this sort of thing over and over. And this applies to any User Component.

It doesn’t have to be something that calculates or controls some apparatus. Let’s say you have a set of components you like to use for your equalization. Perhaps, you always want a high-pass filter, bass and treble controls (high and low shelving filters) and equalizers. Great, make that once. Then slide it over to the User Components and you have that for every design you do down the road. Heck, you could set up your entire 5.1 or 7.1 (or immersive) “B-chain” as a User Component that you just drag out for each design. User Components make such repetitive things a 1-and-done proposition.

To make a User Component, select the parts of your design you want to make into the component (it can be just a single thing or a collection of them, like the B-chain section). Once they are selected, drag it over to the “User Components” on the Right-Side Pane and QDS will prompt you to give your new User Component a name and that is about it. To use it, just drag it from the User Component section from the Right-Side Pane into your next design. It is that easy.

Any creations you make via conventional Q-SYS supplied “components” or Block Controller or even full scripting, are made into User Components in the same manner. If you want to share them with others, you will find them in your Documents>QSC>Q-SYS Designer>User Components directory of your PC. Note, your home-made Plugins will be stored in the Plugins folder. The plugins that came from Asset Manager are in the “Assets” folder. However, let Asset Manager take care of those. Remember, anyone with QDS can get those via their own Asset Manager.

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[Steve Guttag]

Scripting (including Block Controller) versus Non-Scripting

With normal components, you can do quite a bit, as shown above. However, it can start to get rather large and confusing. You will also hit limitations based on what components are available. To go beyond that, scripting will open up entire categories of what you can do, if a plugin or other suitable component doesn’t exist.

Let’s use one of my favorite subjects, the linear fader versus dB fader. I’m choosing this one because I have the essentials of it in logic, Block Controller and LUA scripting.

Again, in 2020, I decided to see if I could make a linear fader based on nothing but logic blocks. The answer is, yes, I could:

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To start, what are the parameters? Well, from 0-4, we move in 10dB increments but from 4-10 we move in 3.33dB increments. It looks like this, inside:

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How about if this was scripted? I’m going to use the “Classic Cinema Fader” by Jay Wyatt:

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Note, in the properties section, one can change the channel count, as desired (up to 128-channels)…which is another advantage of scripting. They’re more flexible. But let’s look at the code behind it. Instead of assembling math blocks, we define the math in, relatively, simple code:

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The last bit “chopDecimal” just handles the formatting overhead of displaying the number as 7.0 instead of some never-ending fraction and to always put one unit past the decimal point. Did you notice that on my logic blocks, it has 2-digits past the decimal point?

Which do you think takes more time to construct for this sort of thing (logic blocks or scripting)? But you need to learn LUA scripting to know how to put it together and use the right commands.
The full plugin is much more lengthy to support it as a plugin (including the graphical properties) but this is the part that is doing the “math.”

And, speaking of blocks, what if you don’t know how to script but you do know what you want? There is the Block Controller. And I use the Block Controller a lot!

So, here is the linear fader done as a block controller.

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Now, since I made it for my uses, it has additional inputs/outputs to suit my needs. This is one of the great things about being able to use some form of User Component…you can make things to suit your needs and not be constrained to what someone else thought was sufficient. So, let’s look inside:

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To be clear, this is not all that is going on in the component (and I have a routine that formats the output as desired, that is the “Update 0-10 Text” function). There are press-and-hold aspects to the ramp buttons as well as the various conversions, inputs/outputs but you can see, in this case, the Block Controller has about the same number of parts as the script for doing the math of the dB to linear conversion. The Block Controller is all drag and drop and there are excellent videos on its use.

3^rd Party Control

I’d say that the bulk of the time one is making some form of Scripting, it is to control or monitor some 3^rd Party device.

Something to keep in mind, while audio signal flow cannot be simulated while “Emulating.” Ethernet control is fully functional while emulating. You can send and receive commands while emulating as if you had a Core present. So, you can test your creations without needing a Core.

Command Buttons

If you just want to send commands (ASCII type) to a device to control it. Q-SYS has “Command Buttons” which can send TCP, UDP and even Serial commands. So, if you have the API ASCII command set for a device, you don’t need to know any scripting, just input the information and you are pretty much done.

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So, if you have a Blu-ray player or some other device you’ve set up Command Buttons to control, once you are done, drag it into your User Components and you’ve got it forever.

The downside of Command Buttons is that you can’t monitor the device. Command Buttons are 1-way…they send and ignore all responses. What if the device wants a dialog where you establish a connection and it wants a password…etc.? You could, I suppose, use a stepper that times out presuming the timing and responses (have the stepper press the password command or whatever the device wants). But this can get very kludgy very quickly and prone to not being reliable.

There is a, relatively, new plugin in Asset Manager for a “Command Send And Receive Utility.”

It is just like Command Buttons but, it can receive and parse the responses.

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Then, you can determine if some known/desired response has occurred and then act upon that.

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[Steve Guttag]

Scripting/Block Controller

With Scripting, including Block controller, you can absolutely have bi-directional communication. With Block Controller, you are limited to what blocks are available, unless you can LUA script, at some level (there is a LUA block so you can insert LUA scripts within a Block Controller design).

Scripting really opens up the world to 3^rd Party control. You can do a lot with Block Controller. Examples of some of the 3^rd Party components I’ve made Block Controllers for include:
The CP950/CP950A:

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Yup, I had it look like the CP55. It polls the CP950 for the format names and what preset is selected for full bi-directional control/response.

CP650:

Do you have a CP650 in your system handling film projectors? Chas Phillips developed a way-cool CP650 Script (User Component, based on a Text Controller):

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This is one I developed for the Tascam BD-MP4K Blu-ray player using the Block Controller:

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It shows up my UCIs like this:

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So, you have full control over the player, without the remote. You can even set the credit start time to trigger your lights just like a DCP.

This sort of thing is the power of scripting. And, if you master LUA scripting, you have even more possibilities for what you can communicate with.

You shouldn’t feel like you can’t do this stuff. Just the opposite. Unlike many other systems, Q-SYS provides the tools/training to allow anyone to utilize it as a sophisticated control system.

Summary

Hopefully, I’ve shown that Q-SYS can be a very powerful control platform. Furthermore, it is a platform that allows you, the Q-SYS designer to customize it to control whatever devices you encounter.
There is an ever-growing list of plugins that make 3^rd Party control just about plug-n-play, including cinema-specific plugins.

If what you want does not exist, it can be created by you, relatively quickly/easily Click on the link I provided near the top of this blog. You can choose from three different paths (logic/no-code, block controller/low-code and LUA/full code).

This is the link to the Block Controller Videos:

https://training.qsc.com/course/view.php?id=152

Q-SYS is not just a sound system. It is a full sound, control and video platform. Don’t underestimate its control portion. It is every bit as powerful as its sound. I’ve only provided some examples of what I’ve done with it. I’m sure you will have your own needs that Q-SYS could satisfy.

©2025 by Steve Guttag

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[Steve Guttag]

From Post #483: To start, what are the parameters? Well, from 0-4, we move in 10dB increments

The statement in the post above is incorrect, The correct amount is 20dB between the values of 0-4 on a linear fader using the standard Dolby fader characteristic.

[Steve Guttag]

Q-SYS For Cinema

Blog-22 Triggers Versus States

_10/3/25

Current QDS Versions: 10.0.1 and 9.13.1 LTS Introduction

Trigger inputs and Trigger Buttons. What are they? How are they different than normal “state” inputs or Momentary Buttons and Toggle Buttons? This is the subject for this blog. Hopefully, compared to my typical blog, this should be a short (but important) one.

Trigger Vs States

A concept that I see many people struggle with are the differences between a “trigger” versus the various forms of “states.”

State Control
Most types of controls people come across can be, generally, categorized as some form of “state” control. That is, the control is either on or off; high or low. If you turn a light on in a room, by flipping a switch, that is a state-based control.

Within Q-SYS, Momentary and Toggle buttons represent this sort of state control. LEDs and Logic blocks have state inputs. These components respond to something being in either the high or low state. Is the input high or low? Based on that stimulus, we get some form of output from the logic component or the LED turns on/off.

Trigger Control
And then there are triggers. The easiest way to think of triggers is that they have no resting state (no off). But they can have a high state for an infinitesimally small amount of time. They are an “impulse” type stimulus.

Can you use a trigger control with a logic component? No. Other than the fraction of second that the trigger happened; it is neither in a high or low state. A logic or other state seeking component cannot work with that as state controls look for transitions (goes from low to high or high to low). Triggers have no “low” state so there is no transition either to low or from low.

Can you use a state control with a trigger input? YES! From the trigger input’s point of view, the trigger happened. It doesn’t care that you are holding the state high or that it transitioned to low afterwards. It saw that its input went high.

If you compare a button push between a Momentary Button versus a Trigger Button, they can be represented, graphically, like this:

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No matter how long you hold the trigger button, it was active for that moment in time when you pressed it. Conversely, for a momentary button, it’s state will change and be held “high” as long as you press the button.

There are some devices that are natively trigger related. For instance, the Command Buttons component. When you press one of its buttons, it is going to be a trigger since once it fires the command, it is done. If you continue to hold the button down, it doesn’t do anything else. Now, if they were to add a “repeat” function (could be handy for, say, raising/lowering a volume), then a state-based input would be better. But that is not the case, at this time.

So, why not just use state-based buttons and controls rather than triggers? Let me give an example. Let’s say you are going to be monitoring a button press or other like state change and you write a script or use the Block Controller to monitor that event. Here is how they both respond:

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Notice how the momentary button press printed twice? That is because there were two state changes. One for the low-to-high (pressed) and another for the release (high-to-low). If we were to use the momentary button and only wanted to act upon the event once, we’d need to filter out either the press or release state. It’s pretty easy but it is extra overhead to every instance of monitoring the events.

Sometimes, you may find it beneficial to not only use the momentary button but also only care about when the state changes from high-to-low (release). Let’s say you are using a button to navigate a UCI. If you monitor the button for when it is pressed, then you have to pay attention to where the user’s finger will be when the UCI navigates to its new page/layer. Will they suddenly be pressing something undesirable on the new screen? If you only switch the page/layer on the button’s release, you can avoid all of that since their finger would no longer be on the touchscreen at the moment of the change.

Toggle Buttons

I don’t want to forget about toggle buttons. They are state-based controls but they, as their name implies, go to one state when pressed and go to another state when pressed again. It depends upon the application as to which is more appropriate, toggle buttons or momentary buttons.

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[Steve Guttag]

Conversion between Trigger and State

Sooner or later, you will come upon a situation where you have a trigger that you need to only respond if something else is also happening. That is, you have situation where you want to use an “AND” gate. But the trigger source can’t work with logic gates. What are you going to do?

There are two components to always keep in your back pocket for just such emergencies. The LFO (Low Frequency Oscillator) and the Flip-Flop (like a toggle button but with all of the bells and whistles). They will get you from trigger to a state output.

LFO

The LFO can be configured to run as a “One-shot” by turning off the “Free-Run” and exposing the Trigger control pin.

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The Square waveform is fine for this and a 1-second period is fine for triggering the command button (and LED). So, in the example above, if the “Required State” is on (toggle button), then if we get a Monitored Event trigger, we will send the Command Button (and light the LED while the LFO is on the upper part of the waveform). But, if the Required State is off, then the Monitored Event will be ignored.
The LFO lets a trigger button behave as a momentary button.

Flip-Flop

The Flip-Flop can allow triggers to have Toggle Button like properties.

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It is worth looking at the help file to understand the various pin offerings (in fact, it is always a good idea to check out the help file on any component to see how a component should behave).

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So, if we connect a trigger button to the “Toggle” input, its “State” output will behave just like a toggle button. Conversely, we could connect two trigger buttons with one going to the “Set” and the other going to “Reset” to get the toggle function from two disparate triggers (have a separate “On” and “Off” buttons).

The “State” and “Out” (output) pins should track with each other. I will often use the Out/Not out pins to switch a Router, Layer Controller or like component where I want to both turn something on and another thing off. Otherwise, the State button/pin is often preferred (and is available with both input and output pins).

Note, the Set, Reset and Toggle outputs are all “triggers.” The Flip-Flop will not generate triggers for you. You can’t press/change the “State” button and have that turn into Set/Reset or Toggle triggers. The output pins are merely pass-throughs from their input pins. If a trigger is connected to the “Set” input, when the trigger fires, it will also fire on the “Set” output.

Conclusions

Hopefully, this blog has shed some light on the differences between triggers, momentary and toggle buttons and other “state” components. Which one you should use will be dictated by the creator of the component as well as what you need the component to do in your design. You should be comfortable working with any of the above and transitioning from whatever you have to whatever you need.

I’ve been spending a bit more time on the “controls” than the sound side of Q-SYS for a reason. Q-SYS can really open up the ability to automate and provide control within the cinema more than a traditional sound system could ever do. You can leverage the power of Q-SYS to be your “automation” system by interacting with the fire alarm, lighting, drapery, environmental (HVAC). There really isn’t a limit to what it can do within a cinema environment. You may need to add specific output devices, like relays, in some cases, but it can talk serially, via Ethernet, as well as GPIO. And remember, the DCIO has 4 dry contact relays (and 6 contact closure inputs). Each CX-Q amplifier has one relay in it as well as GPIO. There are a lot of control based I/O built into most every Q-SYS system already.

You can have Q-SYS monitoring your projectors like a NOC would. If there is a problem or a lamp that needs to be changed, Q-SYS can be set up to notify the appropriate people to address the problem. You can have the Q-SYS Reflect service become your NOC-like dashboard for all of your locations. You can have the E-mailer component send out custom messages based on what the system is detecting.

Understanding how to use the various forms of control components and how they interact are key to taking advantages of these possibilities.

©2025 by Steve Guttag

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[Leo Enticknap]

10.0.2 is now available for download.

Hardware Support Update

• v10.0.2 supports a NIC hardware update for TSC-70-G3 and TSC-101-G3 touchscreen models. For more information, see Hardware Compatibility: by Product Revisions.

Resolved Known Issues

• Video: Resolved an issue that could cause an NC-20x60 camera aperture to close when using the zoom function in auto exposure mode.
• Control: Resolved an issue that prevented plugin and user component files from installing on double-click.

[Steve Guttag]

It should be noted that, while there is no timeline yet, they do plan to port these hardware updates to the 9.13.x LTS branch. This is one of the things I don't like about Q-SYS. Something like a touchscreen, due to a hardware change in manufacturing, could force an entire system into a later QDS version...which may not be compatible with other equipment. This is especially true with QDS10, which deprecates quite a bit of equipment, including the not too old ones like the I/O frames, TSC-7 and even the I/O 8-flex (the Core 8-flex is still current, just the I/O version that came before it).

[Leo Enticknap]

Agreed: a situation should not be allowed to develop whereby replacing a dead unit with another one of the same model, but a later hardware variant, causes an entire installation to be unusable unless other, working units of separate equipment are also retired or replaced to enable the necessary firmware updating.

[Steve Guttag]

Q-SYS For Cinema Blog-23 Steve’s Favorite Components

_10/17/25


Current QDS Versions: 10.0.2 and 9.13.1 LTS Introduction

Continuing along the lines of my previous blog (22) where I discussed the LFO and Flip-Flop components, these are some of the standard components that I find myself using in many designs. Now, I don’t plan to go over the obvious ones like the Gain component, the various EQs, or Routers. These are going to be less obvious ones that you might find as handy as I do.

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.

The Components

I’m not going to go over the LFO or the Flip-Flop because they were covered somewhat in my previous blog. So, let’s look at something else.
All of these are going to be Right Side Pane (RSP) components.

Active Matrix Decoder

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If you’re a real cinema person, you’ll think of this as the CAT150 from the film days. Lt/Rt on the inputs, and L, C, R, and S on the outputs. I use this one all of the time. In cinema, you rarely, if ever want to play just Left and Right as they are spread too far apart in a cinema. You will want the matrix decoder to provide a “pro-logic” decoding such that if Left/Right are the same, it plays out of center.

But, beyond that, I tend to supply a “DCP 2.0” preset to accommodate DCPs that are issued with a 2.0 format.

I also use the Active Matrix Decoder with video sources all of the time.

Cinema Pink Noise

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I’m just going to note, we need to use the Cinema Pink Noise when calibrating a cinema. It will have the correct crest-factor to get a level consistent with other cinema processors and the dubbing stage.

Signal Injector and Signal Probe

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The ability to be able to patch signals, including test signals in a live system cannot be overstated. These guys can be incredibly handy when troubleshooting or getting out of a problem. Some use them for calibration rather than building in an elaborate pink noise routing system. Just connect Cinema Pink Noise to the Injector and inject channel-by-channel.

Blinking LED

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It seems so trivial yet I find myself using it for various things…mute buttons, error indicators. Anytime you want the user’s attention.

Control Functions and Custom Controls

Since they configurable, there is no point in showing them here but I use them in most every design. They are like a bottomless pit of buttons, potentiometers and other semiconductors/logic chips. They are just incredibly flexible/handy.

Control Links

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If you want to link up two or more Cores, Control Links is what lets that happen. You can have meters, buttons, indicators…you name it track between Cores. Audio travels via Q-LAN but Control Links is what allows everything else to move between Cores. You populate it with whatever you need to be shared on each Core.

E-mailer

You set up what you want it to say when an event happens and you’ll get an email. For instance, you can set it to trigger an email to order a spare xenon lamp when the lamp gets to a preset number of hours. If the status of some component indicates an issue, you can have it let you know it needs attention.

Selector

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The value of this one cannot be overstated. If you need a set of mutually exclusive buttons (only one active at a time), ta-da…it handles that. You can have it output most anything you want/need for the design. It is a natural as a layer controller. So, you can use its selection buttons on your UCI and have it controlling a Layer Controller to make the UCI go to the desired layer.

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[Steve Guttag]

Channel Group (Beta)

Channel Group is probably Q-SYS’ best kept secret. If you have a collection of components that you want to use on multiple channels (say EQ and/or Level…or the entire B-Chain), you can build those out individually…or drop one set into a Channel Group and bam you have as many copies as you designate. You can adjust ALL channels (groups) at once, one at a time, or any combination. It is perpetually in Beta but I have yet to have any issue with it.

For example, here is one of my typical “B-Chain” set of filters:

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But, aside from the differences in the subwoofer (having a B6-filter), it could be done with a Channel Group like this:

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It can be a big time saver but watch out. It is super-easy to forget that you might be in a “Select All” situation and start adjusting more than one channel at a time. This could be a benefit, if you want to have, say, all of your screen channels start out with the same tuning and just tweak Left and Right to compensate for their boundary conditions. In the example above, channels 1, 2 and 3 (Left, Right and Center) are all selected so one is adjusting all at once. When you select “Exclusive” you are just adjusting one at a time (only one button will be lit blue).

Container

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Containers are used in just about every design I’ve deployed. They can really neaten up your design, protect your custom work and make deployment much more pleasant.
You define how many, if any pins you want on your container so you can bring any connections that are on the inside, outside. I use them all of the time for my B-chain EQ. In my example above (Channel Group), you can see inside of my container.

Containers can have multiple pages too. It is like a mini-schematic that takes very little room in the main schematic.

Containers are lockable. They remain operational but if you want to keep people out or if you’ve created something proprietary that you don’t want to just give away, lock it in a container. Everything works but nobody gets to see your secret sauce but you.

If you read my blog on User Components and Plugins, all of my User Components had a container to hold the logic blocks or the script.

Popup Button

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The Popup Button is used all of the time by me. If you want to provide instructions or make pressing a button a 2-step ordeal (make sure they really do want to shut things down or turn the amplifiers off), the Popup Button is the fast and easy tool.

It can be used in the schematic or the UCI, which makes it particularly useful. Real Estate on a UCI is precious and the Popup Button can expand that. Here is a typical power/status section on one of my UCIs:

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They know that all is good due to the green box with the “OK” in it…but what if there was an issue? Click on that Status button (Popup Button):

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Now you get much more detail and control, without having to flip pages and without buying a larger touchscreen nor any overhead of showing/hiding layers.

Conclusions

So, that is my list of “favorites” without going into the very common components used by most designs already. In fact, I’m sure some will consider the Selector and Container very common but you’d be amazed by how many people haven’t stumbled up on them or really thought about how useful they can be.

What are some of your favorites? I’m always interested in seeing what others are doing (even non-cinema).

Naturally, there are plugins that are incredibly useful but those are not on everyone’s QDS as they have to be downloaded, from somewhere/someone. The ones I’ve listed come along for the ride on QDS.

©2025 by Steve Guttag

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[Tj Hopland]

With the Active Matrix Decoder has anyone seen a description of or played with the Autobalance feature? I see it at the design stage but always forget to play with it when I'm on a site.

I find myself using containers more and more. In the context of cinema and only doing one screen the overall design doesn't tend to get that complicated and you can just use additional page tabs to organize and separate different sections. You could do something like an input page that handles all that sort of thing sort of like the classic A chain. You could then have those signals transfer to the next page that could be your EQ and routing sort of things like the classic B chain. Works just fine till you start doing multiple screens. You could still do it with multiple screens but it would be a lot nicer if each page was a screen.

I don't know that there is a hard limit on how much you can put on one page so even if you started out with multiple pages you could combine them onto a single page. A consideration in how much you jam onto a page is what sort of monitor do you have to work on the design with? Multiple 4k monitors works great for the initial design but can make things very difficult when you or someone else gets on site and has to do setup or tweaks on a laptop. This got me. Part way though my first design I was having to scroll a lot so no problem, just get a big 4k monitor. Worked great and I was able to fill that screen. Got to the site on a small monitor and it got difficult. I got by since I did the design so knew what I was looking for but for anyone else it would be difficult.

Where the containers come in is you can use them to make everything for that screen to fit neatly on a single page and be easily viewable on even a small monitor. As Steve mentioned above in his example the classic B chain may contain several components per channel. Your 3 screen channels could easily take up a laptop screen causing you to have to scroll or zoom to see other aspects of that room. With all that in a container you can easily get the overview of the signal flow and if you don't need the detail of that EQ its not taking up space. If you do need to deal with the EQ you can just expand it and deal with it.


I also find the pop up button useful. I have used it like Steve described sort of as a 'are you sure' sort of thing but I have also used it as more of an advanced features option. Again this becomes more important when you start doing multiple screens or spaces. With a single screen you can do tabs like having a main tab with the basic always used functions and then an advanced tab with the lesser used functions. Again multiple rooms its nice if each tab was a room and that goes for screens as well as say you have your auditorium but then maybe the lobby and the bar.

An example other than Steve's power button that when you hit it then has the On and Off would be something like say meters. You may not want or need to look at meters all the time, you may be better served using that screen space for more buttons for other functions you use more often but when you hit the meters button it expands out and shows the meters. You do get some control over where it expands to so if there are other things you want to see at the same time you can usually work it out so those are still visible. You could also duplicate needed controls into that popup box to be sure you had access to them.

[Steve Guttag]

I believe that the Pro-Logic component was derived by looking at a CAT150E or CAT150F and making the software equivalent to it. I too have not played with auto-balance. I suspect that it is less of a deal than when we were dealing with film processors where you might have an unevenly illuminated cell and were constantly shifting the stereo image to one side or the other.

In my multi-screen systems, I do tend to put each theatre on one schematic page for audio. For non-audio things, I tend to group like things (projectors, servers) on their own page. There is a balance between having a real clean audio path by having containers hide it all versus having to constantly open/close containers to navigate. I only use a 14" laptop screen, normally, so I tend to zoom/scroll and move to where I'm interested, a bit. I need to put in the "ideas" that when one is using CTL-F to find a signal/component, that it should also zoom to that component rather than just to the page...where based on your zoom setting, may be way off of where you are looking!

This is what my tabs look like in a multi-screen schematic (10-screens). Oh...I'm getting pretty big on the "Change Log." It is so easy to do and it gives a clue as to what has happened to the design...including QDS version changes. It is great for leaving yourself notes as well as anyone that follows you.

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As for Pop Ups...take this one:

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Do you really want the ability to just "tap" the Turn Off Projectors?

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For meters...those I always want visible on the Home page...it is the fastest visual confirmation that you have sound. For my Atmos theatres, I do have a separate page for those meters. I still have the standard "bed" meters on the Home screen...but if one is tracking something down, the Meters page will show all 50+ meters (depending on the system).

I've thought about doing formats more like the CP750. That is, instead of separate 5.1, 7.1, 2.0 DCP buttons...have one button with three decode modes. A popup button could allow one to switch the mode. This would cut down on clutter on the Home screen as you could get it down to 4 or so buttons, in most cases (DCP, HDMI, Non-Sync, Mics...or equivalent names). I like fewer buttons. Fewer things to confront the user with. But to each their own!

Thanks for sharing!

[Steve Guttag]

Q-SYS For Cinema
Blog-24 High Density QIO 2025

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Current QDS Versions: 10.0.2 and 9.13.1 LTS (QDS 10.1 or later required)

Introduction

Redundancy returns to Q-SYS in 2025! With three new Cores (Core 24f, Server Core X10, and Server Core X20r), all with network redundancy, plus aux ports, and now these new “high-density” QIO peripherals that, not only have network redundancy, have peripheral redundancy, Q-SYS has stepped up their reliability game quite a bit.

The three new QIO peripherals, the QIO-ML24i, QIO-L24o, and QIO-24f offer quite a bit for some cinema installations, that desire a degree of redundancy for mission-critical installations. They also provide a substantial amount of analog I/O for working with existing and legacy film systems.

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.

High Density QIO Peripherals

By high-density, these peripherals all have 24 analog channels (instead of the typical 4 of the initial QIO offerings). They even have a higher analog channel count than the I/O frame of yesteryear (16-channel analog, max). They are situated to replace the Synapse line of analog I/O components, acquired with the Atterotech brand (Synapse units are now End of Life).

They are offered in three flavors:

• 24-inputs (QIO-ML24i).
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• 24-output (QIO-L24o).
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• 8-inputs, 8-outputs, 8-flex (QIO-24f), which is the same make up as the Core 110 and Core 24f, but wait, there’s more.
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They also have the GPIO that is consistent with Core 24f. So, if you are using some analog amplifiers, like the QSC DCA series, you have ample outputs as well as the ability to put them into standby mode via the GPIO.

If you have a more complex system, with film and/or video, these might just be the solution that allows a smoother integration to get all of the channels in/out.

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If you’ve thought about, perhaps, handling the film sound completely within Q-SYS, you’ll still need to handle the noise reduction and probably optical preamplifier externally. You’ll also need to process the digital audio (DTS and/or Dolby Digital) externally. These boxes could be the means of looping the audio out/in as it picks up the processing it needs. The QIO-ML24i could handle both DTS processor, a Dolby DA20, plus have channels available for noise reduction and possibly be your optical preamp.

I’m not saying that is a preferred design as I think film sound processors were designed for a long-life and have exactly the processing (and changeover functions) that you need but I have heard fellow designers discuss omitting the film processor and wanting to handle it all within Q-SYS. We’d need to convince the powers that be to add an A-Type and SR-Type NR to the component list. Somehow, I don’t see that has gaining too much momentum, unfortunately.

But, if you have a sophisticated system and are looking for that CP200-esq flexibility of yesteryear but in a DSP platform, the new QIO peripherals might just be the ticket for those needs.
Clearly, between the three types of QIO High Density units, you could create an almost limitless (within your Core’s channel count capability) number of inputs and outputs.

Redundancy

So, a quick look at the rear panels will show that, unlike the smaller QIO peripherals, the high-density offerings return us to having network redundancy, to ensure that the show goes on, even if a simple patch cable has an issue.

However, Q-SYS took it a step further. The outputs have actual relays, reminiscent of the COL4 card used in the I/O frame, Core 510c/510i and earlier Cores. What this means is you can also stack two of the units for a fully redundant peripheral. Whichever is active will have its outputs active. This makes the QIO-24f even more valuable than a Core 24f in a fully redundant system (as the primary analog input/output). Q-SYS has also offered a wiring kit to allow for a fast combining of two units.

Another advantage of using the QIO-24f over the Core 24f may be that you can locate the QIO-24f right where you need the analog I/O rather than where the Core needs to be. It all depends on your installation.

I could see an installation using the Core 24f just as a Core for its processing capabilities (remember, it has about double the capability of the Core 110c/f or a scaling licensed Nano/8-flex) and its channel count (160x160) and then use a QIO-24f for the analog I/O. This allows for full Core redundancy AND, if desired, full analog I/O redundancy. Plus, if you don’t need the processing or channel count of the Core 24f, you could use the QIO-24f (or the other QIO products) with a pair of Core Nanos and “right-size” the system.

Conclusions

I think these new QIO high-density peripherals are going to hit the mark in those installations that still need all of the analog I/O. They clearly are not going to be needed in the typical cookie-cutter 5.1/7.1 cinema unless existing analog amplifiers are being retained.

But for those theatres that need not only analog I/O but the redundancy features lacking on the smaller offerings, these are a welcomed addition.

©2025 by Steve Guttag

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