Multiple Zone Volume Control via Touch Screen

I have an installation with 2 Matrix Switchers and 16 remote amplifiers (16 zones). I'm trying to set up a 'Whole House' volume control from 4 different CTCs, as well as local zone audio control for each zone via the CTCs, Mark IIs or Saturn keypads that happen to be located in each zone. (House has 4 CTCs and 6 Mark IIs)

I've set up a scene in the CTC containing all 16 volume groups and tried to use the UP and DOWN commands for that scene group, but I'm getting erratic responses from the amplifiers. Say, when trying to raise Whole House volume, some amps ramp as desired, others ramp to 100% instantly then come back to the desired level, and some go to 100% and remain there. Then occasionally the DOWN button seems to be unresponsive and volume on some of the amps remains at 100%. This whole thing doesn't happen all the time, but at random occasions. The system seems to completely lose control of the volume levels when ramping.

Another issue in trying to do this from multiple touch screens is to ramp whole house volume from each touch screen location, each of them must be set to 'Master' on order to have a locally stored scene group to control.

The solution I came up with was multiple 'volume level' buttons on the CTCs, each set at a different preset volume using a scene for each with volume group set to a certain 'volume' percentage in the scene. The other touch screens can remotely trigger those scenes from any other location. This works well.

So my question - what's the preferred way to control volume both collectively and individually for a system with a large number of audio zones? Should it be possible to ramp all volume levels together on 16 independent zones of audio?

Thanks.

 

The fact that some units respond and some don't sounds suspiciously like you're getting communication errors on the network. I suggest you download the C-Bus Diagnostic Utility and run the Traffic Analyser, looking for high message error rates when you try and control the volume.

 

So you're saying I should be able to ramp all of them together?

I forgot to mention that on all 8 of the amplifiers connected to Matrix Switcher 2, I had to manually set up their Matrix Switcher No. and Zone No. They did not auto-populate with the correct Matrix switcher. They defaulted to Matrix Switcher 1 and then it gives me a master/slave conflict since amps 1-8 were already in place on Matrix Switcher 1 and amps 9-16 appeared to be a second amp in each of the first 8 zones. Hitting the 'update' button in the 'currently active zone' field in the Toolkit GUI for the amps made no change. The only way I found to get amps 9-16's zones programmed was to do it manually.

Also, it takes an extremely long time to save programming to any of the MRA devices in Toolkit - about 5 minutes wait each time you hit 'save', while Toolkit searches for 'Master Devices'. This is true for amps on either Matrix Switcher.

Could any of this be a factor in the volume ramping issue? The 'source' function works fine for all channels, and I'm also able to go into the Toolkit Network GUI for each amplifier and manually change volume, bass, treble, etc. for all zones.

I appreciate the help - This job is a 4-hour airplane ride away, and I'm trying to get this figured out before a return trip.