Looks like all the photos uploaded at thumbail-size but from what I can tell, you have a
DSP in your
system. The signal path probably looks like this:
Console Left/Right ----> Normalled
Patchbay ---->
DSP (the
Soundweb) -----> Amplifiers ------> Speakers
The outputs of your
console probably
wire into your
patchbay as "Normalled", which means if nothing is plugged into that
spigot, the
console feeds through the
patchbay into the
DSP. If you
plug something into the Main Left or Main Right
spigot on the
patchbay, it switches from those inputs feeding your
DSP from your
console to whichever device you've plugged in.
It's also a possibility a digital transport is being used. Your
console could be sending audio to the
Soundweb via Cobranet or Ethersound or any number of digital protocols. If you look on the back of your
console, your mains shoud be one of the OMNI OUTPUTS
XLR's. If a few of those outputs are not what's feeding your Left/Center/Right, then you must have a digital transport expansion card in your
console that transmits the audio to your
DSP via a
network cable.
My preference for ringing out the
console is to press "
MONITOR" on your
console a couple times until you get to the OSCILLATOR
page. Select
Pink Noise, then turn the
LEVEL pretty far down, and wheel over to "OUTPUT" and hit Enter. Slowly turn the
LEVEL up a little until you can hear sound come through your
system at a noticeable
level. Now you can one-by-one unplug your OMNI OUTPUTS or
disconnect a Cobranet cable out of the back of your
console and see what stops making noise. If you unplug a Cobranet cable and all of your audio stops for your mains, you know your main signals are routed to your
Soundweb through Cobranet. If you unplug an OMNI output and find your left
speaker stops working, you know that's your MAIN LEFT output and you should label that cable as such.
In a
system of that complexity, you might also be able to find a faceplate
in one of the racks that indicates who installed the
system. They may have some schematics on-file they can
send you for how the
system was set up.
---
The
role of the
DSP is to translate your mix into all of the different outputs of your
system. Let's say you drive your
system with Left/Center/Right (shown below on the left side as a screenshot from a
DSP file I happened to have open). The Matrix
Mixer takes those three inputs and routes them to the speakers appropriately. In most cases, that's much more complicated than just sending the Left signal to the Left
speaker. In this case, the left
speaker has multiple elements -- a
horn for the higher frequencies and woofers for the lower frequencies. The
mixer also distributes the signal out to backstage areas, the assistive listening
system, and the subwoofers, and the Delay Left, Delay Center, and Delay Right speakers at the back of the
auditorium. This particular Matrix
Mixer has multiple presets that allow the
system to be driven by the
console using Left / Center / Right outputs, but it can also be switched over to Left / Right mode, which combines left & right to create the Center mix that gets sent out to the center main
speaker and the center delay
speaker.
This is all to say that you may have a
system configured that gives you the ability to
send a unique mix to the Center
speaker, but you may also have a
system where the Center mix is a combination of the Left and Right mixes, and you have no additional control of what gets sent to those speakers.
--
The Effects
Speaker patchbay is a common theater rig. You have an
amplifier reserved for use with effects speakers. Let's say you have an 8-channel
amplifier in there. You could
send 8 of the OMNI outputs from your LS9 into that
amplifier for effects. Those will get amplified and end up on your Effects
Speaker Patch Panel, which then has connectors on it that correspond to jacks scattered all over your theater. If you find you have EFX #14 on a
catwalk and wanted to route an
effect to that
jack, you would
send a mix from your LS9 to that
amplifier, then patch that
amplifier channel with an NL4 cable to your EFX #14
connector. Then you'd hang your effects
speaker where you want it and
plug your
speaker into the
jack for EFX #14 (or whatever it's called in your particular theater).
--
I'm sure this doesn't
address all of your questions, but hopefully this gets you going in the right direction for figuring out how your
system is driven.