CTS Skills 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: When troubleshooting a video system that displays a green tint across the entire screen, which component should you suspect first?
- The blue channel in the display calibration
- A faulty red channel in the signal path or display (Correct answer)
- Incorrect aspect ratio settings
- A failed sync separator circuit
Correct answer: A faulty red channel in the signal path or display
A green tint typically indicates a missing or weak red channel contribution in the signal path or display panel.
Question 2: A client's conference room microphone system produces an echo that worsens when the room has more occupants. What is the most likely cause?
- Gain before feedback set too low
- Insufficient acoustic treatment causing increased reverberation (Correct answer)
- A failing DSP processor
- Incorrect microphone polar pattern selection
Correct answer: Insufficient acoustic treatment causing increased reverberation
More people in a hard-surfaced room reflect more sound energy, increasing reverberation and perceived echo.
Question 3: Which protocol allows a control system to discover and control AV devices automatically over a network without manual IP address configuration?
- RS-232
- Dante
- Auto-IP via mDNS/Bonjour (Correct answer)
- EDID
Correct answer: Auto-IP via mDNS/Bonjour
mDNS (Multicast DNS) with Bonjour/Zeroconf enables automatic device discovery and addressing on a local network without a DHCP server.
Question 4: A CTS professional is calculating the maximum throw distance for a projector. The room is 40 feet deep and the screen is at the far end. With a throw ratio of 1.5:1, what screen width can the projector fill from 30 feet away?
- 15 feet
- 20 feet (Correct answer)
- 45 feet
- 30 feet
Correct answer: 20 feet
Screen width = throw distance ÷ throw ratio = 30 ÷ 1.5 = 20 feet.
Question 5: During a live event, a wireless microphone suddenly drops out intermittently. The technician checks RF spectrum and sees strong interference near the mic's operating frequency. What is the best immediate corrective action?
- Increase the microphone's transmitter power to maximum
- Change the microphone's operating frequency to a clear channel (Correct answer)
- Switch to a wired microphone connection
- Replace the microphone battery
Correct answer: Change the microphone's operating frequency to a clear channel
Frequency coordination — moving the transmitter to an unoccupied frequency — is the correct real-time fix for RF interference.
Question 6: What is the primary purpose of a signal flow diagram in an AV system design?
- To show the physical rack layout of equipment
- To illustrate how signals move between each system component (Correct answer)
- To document the IP address schema of networked devices
- To specify the power consumption of each device
Correct answer: To illustrate how signals move between each system component
A signal flow diagram maps the path of audio, video, and control signals from source to destination across all system components.
Question 7: A CTS professional needs to ensure speech intelligibility in a reverberant space. Which acoustic treatment approach is most effective?
- Adding bass traps in room corners only
- Installing absorptive panels to reduce mid-to-high frequency reverberation (Correct answer)
- Increasing loudspeaker output level
- Adding diffusers to all parallel walls
Correct answer: Installing absorptive panels to reduce mid-to-high frequency reverberation
Absorptive treatment targeting mid and high frequencies reduces RT60 in the speech-critical frequency range, directly improving STI/intelligibility.
CTS Skills 4
When troubleshooting a video system that displays a green tint across the entire screen, which component should you suspect first?