<![CDATA[Lambda Audio Visual Inc.

<![CDATA[Lambda Audio Visual Inc. - Blog]]>Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:52:21 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Understanding the Difference Between UI and UX]]>Thu, 20 Nov 2025 21:20:07 GMThttps://www.lambdaav.io/blog/understanding-the-difference-between-ui-and-uxUI (User Interface) is all about the look and feel of a product from typography and color schemes to layouts making it visually appealing and intuitive for users like you. UX (User Experience) focuses on your overall journey, ensuring the product is functional, user-friendly, and accessible. While UI brings beauty, UX ensures it meets your needs and solves real problems together, they create products that truly resonate with people.
The UI/UX at Cross and Crown worked well, but over time and usage, the church staff saw ways they wanted to use the control system differently based on their use case. So, when Cross and Crown reached out to us and asked to help enhance the user friendliness for their space, we were ready!
We focused on adjusting UX while leaving UI the same. Cross and Crown was using a Symetrix Control system that would progress through presets on a dial wall plate. The sequential dial mechanism immediately switched presets with a turn, which presented challenges in precision and ease of use. Their goal was to streamline the process of selecting room modes, such as switching audio and video inputs or combining rooms, while reducing the risk of user errors.

To address these concerns, we reimagined the system to prioritize user-friendliness and adaptability. We pivoted from a sequential dial, only to be turned clockwise, to a system that would allow turning the dial both directions to pick the preset desired. We also added slight delays into the dial so no preset would be triggered unless a position was held for a couple seconds. Along with this we added a room reset position that only triggered after 5 seconds of selection to prevent accidental room resets. Another feature we added was an additional room reset that triggers on a schedule every night in case the system was left on overnight. This way the room would be reset to a standard and ensured the system was always ready for use each day!
These UX improvements transformed the Symetrix control system into a more user-friendly solution tailored to Cross and Crown’s needs. The revamped dial, with its added delays and bidirectional functionality, minimized accidental preset changes and simplified operation. These small changes delivered a seamless and efficient control experience that aligned perfectly with Cross and Crown’s vision for their space.

]]><![CDATA[A Fresh Take On User Interface]]>Thu, 20 Nov 2025 21:03:22 GMThttps://www.lambdaav.io/blog/a-fresh-take-on-user-interface

A user interface (UI) is the interaction between a human and machines. Think of the screen on your phone. It includes the visual elements, controls, and layout that allow users to use a device or software. A well-designed UI simplifies tasks by making it easy for users to navigate. UI should be a pleasant and efficient user experience. For Lambda AV a UI is an important part of our system design process. We build specific and custom UI for AV control systems including all the elements in the AV system to create a streamlined, easy to use application. So, if these are built custom for each client, why would you want to redesign a UI?

There are many reasons why a UI could need a refresh. A user’s needs have changed, hardware upgrades have made an engineering/functionality shift necessary, or perhaps a bit of customization would make a huge quality of life improvement. Our goals for the District 20 Boardroom were chiefly to bring the UI in-line with our new programming innovations and current aesthetic, as well as to enhance the capability of the Home Screen. Lambda’s goal in all our Control System designs is to focus the core functionality to Home Screen. With everything essential on the Home Screen, users only need to navigate to other screens to fine-tune specific settings but are not required to regularly jump from page to page. Simple is more…less is, better? Anyway, it’s simple and intuitive. And we can customize it to suit the needs of the space, user, or use-case.

Present on a typical Lambda designed Home Page are Display Layout options, Audio Master Controls, Camera Presets, Auto mix and Auto cut, a business Logo splash screen toggle, and a handy Video Feed so a user may never need to navigate anywhere else during a meeting. However, the other control pages are just a single button away if needed!

While the touch screen size and resolution remained unchanged for D20, we did attempt to reclaim some unused real estate on the screen by resizing buttons and controls, fonts, and adding some minor aesthetic touches to communicate more clearly to the user. A little drop shadow goes a long way and if there appears to be some design cues shared with a certain popular fruit company, well, that is intentionally by…design. Ahem.

It might sound like a small change, but the details can make or break a system! In the end, D20 was excited to see the improved usability and reliability of the changes. Less experienced users can easily navigate and operate the room with ease without mistakenly making any changes to the overall system. D20 staff was excited by the ease and successful meetings these updates helped them to achieve. Perhaps you have a UI in your building, but it never works quite right or has become your least favorite, complicated app to use. Perhaps you’ve had a changed in room use or arrangement, no matter the case, Lambda is only an email away! Our goal is to see you succeed and we can help make that happen with intuitive designs that fit your business goals. Give us a call or email today!

So, there you have it. A little about how Lambda is building the User Interface for your next control system upgrade. Thanks for reading and tune in next time. Same Lamb Time, Same Lamb Channel.

]]><![CDATA[SuperRack Performer]]>Thu, 20 Nov 2025 21:01:12 GMThttps://www.lambdaav.io/blog/superrack-performer

Have you considered adding Waves but have concerns about practically doing so for your system? SuperRack Performer can be a great option to add low latency Waves plugins to your audio system at a low cost! It’s not a solution that will work for every setup, but if you are interested in looking into it, let us know. Lambda offers free site specs and could help you see if this would work in your setup!

What is SuperRack Performer? This software from Waves is a simple addition to your existing laptop and natural extension to a mixing console. Add in your desired plugins for the absolute best sound no matter where you go!

]]><![CDATA[Seeing Waves in Audio]]>Thu, 20 Nov 2025 20:55:39 GMThttps://www.lambdaav.io/blog/seeing-waves-in-audio

Recently we were able to partner with Foothills Bible Church (FBC) in adding a Waves audio setup to their Main Auditorium. Seth, the Technical Director at FBC, reached out asking about the possibility of adding a Waves server and controller to their Yamaha CL5. After chatting with Seth, we were able to put together a system for the functionality they wanted to add to their setup. We started with a Waves Server, 2 Yamaha Waves cards, and the Waves Control software. This would give them 32 Waves channels to use with their Yamaha CL5.

The obvious powerhouse of the system is the Waves Extreme Server C. This server gave FBC the ability to fully use all 32 channels of Waves we provided, while also giving them plenty of headroom to expand in the future.

FBC had an existing M2 Mac Mini, so we were able to utilize that to run SuperRack SoundGrid. To add in functionality for the Mac Mini, we added a 27 inch Planar touchscreen on a monitor arm so that Waves control could literally be at their fingertips!

Paired with the hardware, Lambda completed the upgrade with Waves Ultimate plugin collection. This gave FBC access to every Waves plugin currently available and any new ones that are released. Once the system was up and running, we walked through the new setup with Seth, and patched his whole show into waves from the CL5. It's always important to Lambda that you get a chance to play with a new piece of equipment, gear or software before “Show Day”. In this case they had a band rehearsal the same night of the install, which gave Seth plenty of time to get everything dialed in before Sunday.
We were excited to partner with FBC to upgrade their audio system and take what they are doing on a weekly basis to a new level!

]]><![CDATA[Open Collaboration Space]]>Thu, 13 Nov 2025 19:25:13 GMThttps://www.lambdaav.io/blog/open-collaboration-space

Children's Hospital Nebraska reached out about building out their new collaboration space's. They had several areas that needed flexible use. They needed capabilities with touch screens, zoom rooms, and wanted to know what our recommendation would be. Right now is a great time to be looking for solutions for spaces like this as the technology is really advanced.

When picking a solution we like to know how the space will be used and who will be using it as much as possible. This helps us to narrow the selection of technology that should be used in the space and bring focus to the design. The areas in this new center needed to be used by a large variety of people with a large variety of use cases and usually a complete lack of training. With this in mind we choose a solution using a common interface, zoom rooms. Zoom as a platform provides a common interface that most in the working world are familiar with. Children's Nebraska already had Zoom licensing and was using Zoom for the organization so this provided another natural point of tie in. Zoom rooms are flexible and allow collaboration, easy device sharing, and white board functionality in spaces.

With a common platform picked, we needed to provide actual hardware for the space. The space as a whole had multiple areas for displays including a front entryway, a white board wall, and 4 different meeting areas. Each of the different meeting areas needed to be able to have Zoom meetings showing multiple participants, even audio coverage, and work with Zoom rooms. For a hardware platform we chose DTEN for the majority of the spaces. DTEN manufactures top end multi-camera displays making large groups feel more interactive on calls. One of the best functions of these displays is the "Multi Stream" camera outputs. DTEN takes a large 4k image from multiple cameras and then divides them up based on motion and sound. These divisions use zooms smart gallery feature to show full screen views of each persons face for the call. Zoom participants on the other end see a full gallery of faces as well as a wide view of the room for context. This allows for the best possible connection of what is going on in a room remotely for all participants.

In the large huddle room we used DTEN's D7x dual, this unit has 2 large displays with a total of 5 cameras. We located the display in this room a little lower than you would normally see but it allows for eye-line with cameras and displays to be nearly horizontal. The combination of cameras at eye-line allows a roomful of people to all be represented clearly and separately. This provides an immeasurable amount of information to people in the meeting such as small facial cues and expressions that help teams to function, solve problems, and work together in a more natural way.

Other spaces used smaller versions of the same display type, but with less cameras for less breakups, and one mini team collaboration desk with a pop up Zoom display. All areas included DTEN MATE devices, a small wireless rechargeable touch screen pad providing easy meeting management even if you aren't presenting from the front of the room. Every display offers quick sharing from almost any device using the Zoom app and a simple on screen code. In the front entryway and non touch screen areas we used an even simpler setup, a standard professional grade tv with a simple pc mounted behind it. We call these signage/sharing displays. Zoom provides a free license for signage sharing only that makes these simple setups able to show content scheduled throughout the day, and also allow sharing. A simple rotating code displays above the image and allows someone to walkup and share content with any device.

These are simple devices, and the installation is not a complex one. Lambda AV always works to provide the correct technology for the space even if its simple because we want the technology that is going to add to the experience, but disappear when it comes to complication and use. We look forward to seeing how this space comes to life in the coming months!

]]><![CDATA["Now We Can Hear Everything"]]>Thu, 13 Nov 2025 19:18:33 GMThttps://www.lambdaav.io/blog/now-we-can-hear-everything

Here at Lambda we custom build systems that meet our client’s space and fit what they are trying to accomplish for the long term. One of our long-time clients, First Presbyterian Church in Salida came to us, asking about a new audio system. Their old system was a set of hanging powered speakers and an over 10 year old soundboard. We wanted to design a system that would be able to provide even coverage, high intelligibility, and was cost effective and able to fit into their budget.

Our favorite speaker manufacturer, Danley Sound Labs, recently released some new speaker offerings including the SH-110. The SH-110 is a 2-way, passive loudspeaker with 2 x 8″ low-frequency drivers and a 1.4″ exit high frequency compression driver, all mounted within a single 110° x 60° horn. After building a CAD of the room in Salida and modeling the room in Danley’s software, we chose the SH110 paired with a set of Danley Cubes and subwoofer, the THMini.

Part of designing this system revolved around the aesthetics of the room. We wanted a system that would cover the room extremely well, but also one that wouldn’t distract from the beauty of the space. The SH-110 has a very wide coverage at 110º, but in order to increase intelligibility across the room, we added a Cube speaker on each side to help make sure no matter where you sat, there is even audio coverage. For the final touch, a flown THMini was the perfect sub to make sure they had a nice even low end throughout the room to complete the sound.

With a new speaker system, we also wanted to replace their aging digital sound board. The board they had was an original (first gen!) digital sound board from Presonus. The board had served them well but was at the end of its life. We gave them an Allen and Heath SQ6 with a 24in/12Out stagebox. One of the things we love the most about A&H SQ series is the simplicity of the user interface, with a powerful audio engine that can do everything a small to medium size church would want and more! With the new stage box we were able to sort and patch all their inputs on stage and get all of the monitor output patched as well. To cap everything off we also upgraded and replaced their old analog FM based hearing assistance system to a new WiFi digital system from Williams AV that will integrate with smart phones and Bluetooth receivers such as hearing aids.

The church was so happy with the new system and as we on site for support the first Sunday after install, we received multiple comments of “It was so clear and we could hear everything!”
And that’s what we like to hear!

]]><![CDATA[Building to Last]]>Thu, 13 Nov 2025 19:11:13 GMThttps://www.lambdaav.io/blog/building-to-last

As a student, a teacher, and now an AV professional working in schools, I have used many school AV systems. These systems typically were installed when the schools were built and lasted 15 or more years, untouched and unmaintained, before failing or exhibiting some signs of ending their functional lives. School budgets are tight and can’t be used to refresh a major room audio-visual system every five years. Lasting reliability is how we approached a new AV system in the natatorium for Pine Creek High School in District 20.

The primary requirement, and place we started, was audio coverage. First, all speakers needed to be weather-tight with sealed connections for the highly corrosive pool environment. Second, school pool is a highly reverberant and ample open space. The sound echoes a lot, and by the time you add cheering parents, it can be a nightmare to hear what’s going on clearly. To address the clarity issue, we used higher-power speakers to get audio above room noise-level. We added more speakers to ensure each audience area around the pool had direct coverage rather than reflected coverage.

The primary audience seating area is supported by 3 of the newest Danley Sound Labs OS-15CX weathertight speakers to provide high sound level and clarity. Around the pool, audio is supported by Sound Tube SM82WX waterproof loudspeakers. Rather than use one speaker mounted higher up to cover an area, we mount more speakers lower, providing direct coverage at a short distance to the audience. More speakers lower help us solve what I call ‘the restaurant problem’. Many times, a restaurant can seem loud and crowded when music is playing, and it can be hard to hear what’s going on, while other times, it seems the music is quieter and in the background. The times it is hard to hear often have the problem of too few speakers that are adjusted to a higher volume rather than more speakers adjusted to a lower volume, providing a more comfortable atmosphere. This is why we added many smaller speakers rather than a few large ones.

The control for the system needed to be simple. Transitions between staff members and coaches as well an inconsistent use to build habits, prevent a clean handoff of training and procedures. Because of this, we use a control system with a custom design touchscreen interface rather than a soundboard. A simple start button turns on the room, and then our intuitive “One Page” allows a user to make any adjustments within everyday events in one glance without needing in-depth training. Our one page design provides the adjustment of microphone levels and the routing of a presentation video signal all from one location. Fewer adjustments and fewer controls also offer a longer service life and a gap between service events.

To complete the system, we placed XLR audio inputs around the room as well as HDMI display inputs for easy use wherever events were happening. A true digital Audio Technica ES wireless system rounds out the package with interference-free use and extremely long battery life. Teachers and staff can walk in, press start, grab a microphone, and get to work. The TV’s power on automatically, the microphone levels are automatically mixed, and the system functions day in and day out. When the system is turned off from the touch screen, all levels and buttons reset to a standard point, allowing the next user to come in and work with the system without troubleshooting anything left in a non-standard state.

We love building systems that meet the user’s goal! We want to help end users do what they need right away rather than force them to spend time learning complicated systems. We use our experience in picking high-reliability components and pairing them with UI/UX pathways to guide the end user through the task they want to accomplish. Do you have a space with an ageing audio-visual system? Or a new one space that needs a reliable system? I often say every AV system costs the same amount of money. The only difference is whether you spend that up front and reduce headaches or spread the spending over time and add headaches in between. Let reliability be the goal for your system!

]]><![CDATA[A New PTZ Keyboard]]>Thu, 13 Nov 2025 19:07:05 GMThttps://www.lambdaav.io/blog/a-new-ptz-keyboard

The new BirdDog Keyboard has arrived! This control is an ideal tool for PTZ camera operators. It is designed with an ergonomic build and large screen displaying up to four cameras at once. The streamlined menu provides direct access to essentials like camera pairing. It easily integrates with any setup you might have and is packed with enhanced features to provide affordable solution for greater control and reliability.

An added feature includes a super-fine control mode. When it's time to fine-tune, just shift the camera joystick into 'fine-tune' mode, increasing the sensitivity of the joystick by 10x, making reframing shots on air more artistic flair than nail-biting scare.

We have used BirdDog as a go to for PTZ cameras for years now, and we continue to be impressed by their dependability and control. Looking for a demo? Lambda loves showing off gear and systems! Reach out to info@lambdaav.io for a demo.

]]><![CDATA[All in ONE...Is it a great idea?]]>Thu, 18 Apr 2024 21:37:51 GMThttps://www.lambdaav.io/blog/all-in-oneis-it-a-great-idea

At Lambda Audio Visual we always want to make sure we spec the right tool for the job. As AV integrators it’s our job to take multiple tools and combine them into one functional, practical system. We love it when we find one great product suited for a specific task. This time that product was the Maxhub IFP or Integrated Flat Panel. This is a unique piece of equipment that we installed in a workspace and will continue to become very popular option for many businesses and collaborative community spaces!

When NAMI or the National Association On Mental Illness was moving into their new space they reached out to us for technical recommendations. They had a double meeting room with collapsible divider in the middle. They wanted this space to be functional for just about every type of meeting. Nami’s needs were a Zoom room, Microsoft teams, a white board, PowerPoint presentations, music, the list goes on and on.

NAMI, like many groups, is very good at what they do and with caring for their clientele but didn’t want to spend a lot of time or money managing a complicated AV setup. They wanted something easy to use and something that could easily serve their long list of needs for their meeting space. To accomplish this, we looked to a product called the IFP or Integrated Flat Panel. An IFP is much like a TV in looks but with a touch screen, camera, mics, speaker, computer all in one unit. The Maxhub IFP is what we chose for NAMI; specifically the Viewprov6 86” and 65” displays. These are 4k touch screen displays with a Windows 11 computer module, dual cameras, beam forming mics and loud speakers. They were a perfect fit for NAMI’s use case.

We installed a display on either side of the undivided room. Since one side had a slightly higher ceiling, we installed the 86” on that side with the idea being they could use the room in a combined setting oriented to the larger screen. With an integrated Windows 11 computer, almost any app can be installed for use in the space. Maxhub includes an integrated “Home” interface for easily navigating between different apps and functions. It has a multi-point white board interface that allows easy touchscreen drawing even with multiple people creating at the same time. A quick sharing interface to send meeting notes to anyone in the room with a QR code makes the presenters job easy. A built-in dual camera works with Zoom, Teams, or any other meeting app and shows a Picture-in-Picture wide view of the room with another camera that auto-cuts to closeups based on who is talking in the room. A beam forming mic system uses multiple microphones to “zoom” in on meeting participants and loudspeakers help everyone in the room to hear. The display even integrates wireless content sharing allowing anyone in the meeting to tap the sharing button on the display and be presented with a multitude of options for getting your content wirelessly to the display. These displays provide great customizability such as welcome screens and even power on/off scheduling. Truly a device to do it all!

With all this in one device you might ask, why have Lambda install it? The first reason: training. Spending time with the client to not only show them how the displays work but also to help configure every option of the display. We can also make recommendations based on what we know about the client and how to create the best workflows from using a device like this. The other reason is: even with all the built-in functionality we can’t leave well enough alone... we added some stuff to make it cover absolutely everything NAMI could want. On the large side of the room, we added a Salamander Designs EZ touch mount. This mount allows a user to walk up and move the display up or down up to 16” with one hand. This allows for full touch screen reachability for a small presentation or getting the display up high for showing to a larger audience. We also added a small Stewart Audio amplifier and some SoundTube ceiling speakers for the back half of the room when the two spaces are combined. This ensures clear audio all the way to the back of the room all the time.

All in all, we have a complete and usable space with options for whatever the organization throws at it. Complete flexibility with single point management allows high space usability and positive interactions for meeting participants. Maybe you have a meeting space that you want to make easy and interactive with an IFP? Let us know!

]]><![CDATA[Projector Blending]]>Thu, 18 Apr 2024 21:12:42 GMThttps://www.lambdaav.io/blog/projector-blending"Don't cross the streams. That would be bad."
Or is it?

Putting aside my poor Ghostbusters joke we are going to talk about the world of projector blending. What is it and why do it? We hope to answer these questions here today.

In many spaces, it’s hard to know what to do with a large stage area. Updating with new set pieces and lighting is expensive and time consuming. It’s also necessary to work around existing displays being used in the space for content. This is why many people make the choice to merge content display with stage design by using a large screen. Often large screens are made up of LED walls which allow custom sizing, and bright, sharp content display. Unfortunately, many times LED wall displays are out of the price range of many churches and other businesses. So, what other options are there?

Enter projection blending. Projection blending is the art and science of connecting multiple projectors to a single system and using them to display a single shared image. Projection blending and multi-screen projection was very popular more than 10 years ago due to the lower lumen output of projectors. By using multiple cheaper projectors, tech teams were able to create a combined, larger screen of high resolution. These setups though, had many reliability issues. They struggled with early versions of ProPresenter, with troublesome triple head 2 go image splitters, and even with bulb-based projectors that were hard to blend and keep color consistency.

Today, the market has affordable high output laser projectors and great modern software like ProPresenter 7 that now makes this cost saving technology a reliable and obtainable option.

The first step to looking at a projector blend setup is screen size. Screen size is important because it determines the number of projectors you will need for the blend. Blends can be as small as 2 projectors wide or two projectors tall. They can technically be as wide as you want, with computer limitations of course. Using an app like BlendZ can help you determine what you need based on your desired width.

Now, any projector blend setup requires a ‘blend’ or ‘overlap’ region. This is an area on your screen where what is displayed is doubled so the images can overlap. Ideally, this region is 15% - 25% of the overall image; too little or too much will not allow the image to blend correctly.

Screen material can be a few options, but we always recommend a good quality professional screen if possible as it will help to project a bright and clear image. We also recommend using professional grade laser projectors. These types of projectors don’t have bulbs that need replacing, stay consistently bright, have consistent coloring, and have a higher lumen output in the 6000 to 10000 lumen range. You will want to make sure that all projectors match as much as possible in exact model and age for best results not only with image, but with software.
Once you have a screen and projectors selected it’s important to hang them with precision and use as little image correction as possible. It’s useful in ProPresenter to use the "blend grid" test pattern option for lining up the projectors and overlapping the images correctly. This is a great job for a seasoned AV integrator with experience as it can be very tedious process. It’s important to use a blend app to setup overlap as you will need to put this number of overlapped pixels into a software like ProPresenter to correctly divide up the image across each projector. ProPresenter 7 has some great tutorials available on their website to help. But, once it’s set, it will be relatively easy to maintain.
What’s next? Now that you have a beautiful set of blended projectors on a large screen the last piece of this puzzle will be creating content to fill. Usually, a blended screen has a custom resolution and will not display regular content across its entirety. You will need to either build content or in the case of church worship designs, you can pay for a content service and download the "ultrawide" versions to use.

In our most recent blend project, we filled a large church’s back wall with a 2-projector blend, ultra-wide screen. Both projectors are 1080P creating a nearly 4k wide image spread across the back wall. As the projectors are mounted close to in room speakers, we added vibration absorbing mounts to help keep the projectors from moving once they were adjusted. The large screen filled up some space on the tall stage and is now a great option for scenic back drops to be digitally added rather than constructed. This also created a smaller space below the screen for supplemental stage-based lighting, adding to the aesthetic. This is all driven from ProPresenter with a Blackmagic output card. ProPresenter natively sees the ultrawide screen as a single display to show standard 16x9 content centered or on each side, but also adds the ability to divide it up for different service options. To make control easier we added in a free module called Bitfocus companion to create a single webpage-based button for turning both projectors on and off at the same time. No more messing with remotes.
We loved building this project for our client, and they have loved using it. It’s always fun to revisit an old way of using technology, but adding all the new benefits of updated tech. In this case, it allowed a cheaper way of displaying large scenic content and made it more reliable and versatile. Looking at wanting a LED based display, but maybe can’t afford it? A projection blend could be a great option for you.

Let's Talk!

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