The What: Ashly Audio's AquaControl software suite has been updated with new capabilities, key among them a substantial upgrade to the ducking feature on the company's mXa-1502 integrated mixer amp that readies the unit for integration into even more locations.
The What Else: The original ducker in AquaControl software offered 12 levels of priority, user-adjustable threshold, attack and release, duck depth and could be triggered automatically by the incoming priority signal or by electronic contact closure triggers found on the rear panel of the mXa-1502.
Those features remain, but now offer the following improvements:
•Priority Source Control: Ashly has assigned ducking parameters to the source rather than the ducked program, allowing different trigger sources to control the ducked program in more varied way
•Hold Time: A new Hold parameter is adjustable in one-second intervals, up to 60 full seconds. This holds the ducked program at the assigned ducking depth after the trigger source is removed and allows the adjustable ramped return to begin after that hold period has concluded.
• Independent Ducker Assignment; Independently adding or removing input channels from the ducking hierarchy is now enabled. This makes it much easier to interpret the relevant settings by eliminating unnecessary data.
•Increased Return Dynamic Range: The original ducker had the return ramp level jump from mute to -30dB in a single step and then began the adjustable return time in 1dB steps from -30 up to 0dB. Ashly has improved this by allowing the ducking ramp to use a dynamic range of 100dB in 1dB increments. This provides for smoother, less abrupt transitions from muted levels.
The Bottom Line: These upgrades enable greater customization of priority signal management to deliver a better customer experience in schools, hotels, retail stores and restaurants. The new ducker is part of AquaControl firmware release v1.1.8 and is available as a free download at www.ashly.com/firmware-updates
