Omnia Audio Omnia.11 - Manual (Page 40)

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Input Failover (Input Menu Basic Tab)
There are 3 controls for the Input Failover feature, Failover Source, Failover Time and Comparative Fail.
Input Menu (Basic Tab)
The primary input source is set with the “Input Source” control. This is your main input source.
“Failover Source” selects which audio input: Analog, AES/EBU, Livewire 1 or Livewire 2 will serve as the
secondary audio input. Note that the audio input that is selected under Input Source (above) will always be the
Primary audio input. A source selected under Failover Source will always be the secondary source.
“Failover Time” is the amount of time that will elapse after the failure of audio on the primary input source before
the unit makes the decision to switch to the secondary (failover) input source.
For instance, if Failover Time is set for 5 seconds and the primary audio source fails, 5 seconds later the unit will
switch to the secondary audio input if that input is active. If, at any time, audio is restored on the primary input (for
1 second, continuously), the unit will switch back to the primary audio input. It will remain with the primary input
unless another failure is detected.
The “Comparative Fail” control in the Basic tab of the Input menu is normally set to "ON", but, in some extremely
rare cases, this has caused a failover to occur when it should not. In order for this "spurious failover" to occur
several things must be true:
1) The valid program audio (which is on the primary input) must have one channel silent (or very quiet) for
more than the failover time. This occurs in some songs by The Who (and probably The Beatles).
2) The secondary input must not have the same program as the primary input. It must have some program
that has audio on both channels. This is what they had at the station in Detroit; the reason for this I never
fully understood.
So you can see it is a rare case where this will happen, therefore the default is "ON", where it will catch more failure
conditions.
The comparative failover function looks at both the primary and secondary inputs simultaneously. If the secondary
input looks "better" than the primary (it has both channels while the primary has only one, or it is a lot louder), then
it switches to the secondary. The switch when “ON” takes place after the condition of the secondary being better
has persisted for more than the failover time.
The “OFF” mode failover mechanism is "absolute failover", where it is just looking at the absolute level of the
primary input. This mechanism will not react to loss of just one channel. There may be cases where single-channel