★Carried & Installed
Q-SYS audio & control · Kansas City.
IntegrateIT carries and installs Q-SYS across the Kansas City metro — the restaurant that needs four zones to behave differently at noon and at ten, the boardroom that has to join a call without a phone call to IT, and the worship room that has to be intelligible in the back row. One precision first, because the trade is sloppy about this word: Q-SYS is a line we carry and install under distribution, not one we hold our own dealer agreement on, so we do not call ourselves an authorized Q-SYS dealer. What we are is the people who write the design, tune the zones and hand you the file. Phone: (913) 804-7575 or office@integrateit.tech.
What we carry and install from Q-SYS
Q-SYS is QSC’s platform — QSC lists Q-SYS beside QSC Audio as one of its own brands — and the range below is the current product tree on QSC’s own site. The reason it is worth designing a building around is that the audio, the video and the control are one system with one design file, rather than three products that have to be persuaded to agree. We specify, install and program to order.
- Cores — the processor at the centre. The Core Nano and Core 8 Flex for a single restaurant or a meeting room; the Core 110f, Core 24f and Core 510i where the zone count is real; the Core 610 and Core 5200 and the Server Core X10, X20r and X50r for enterprise and campus. There is also a vCore virtualized processor for sites that would rather run it as software, and the NV-32-H, a network video endpoint that can act as a Core in its own right.
- Q-SYS Designer Software and the management layer. Designer is where the room is actually built. Q-SYS Connect and the UnIFY Control Panel sit beside it, and Q-SYS Reflect provides remote monitoring and management — which is how we find a dead amplifier channel before a manager calls about it. QSC also sells feature licenses that extend a Core: capacity scaling, the scripting engine, software-based Dante, AV bridging and UCI deployment.
- Amplifiers. The networked CX-Q Series in four- and eight-channel models, the MPA-Q Series and the SPA-Q Series; the non-network MP-A Series and SPA Series for a simpler rack; and the DCA Series on the cinema side. Amplifier choice is a zone-count and headroom decision, and it is the one most often got wrong by pricing it last.
- Network loudspeakers — the NL Series. Power-over-Ethernet speakers that are a complete audio path in a single unit: the NL-C4 ceiling, the NL-P4 pendant and the NL-SB42 soundbar. One cable for power and signal is a genuinely different install in a finished building.
- Passive loudspeakers — AcousticCoverage, AcousticDesign and PL. The ranges that do most of the work in a restaurant or a retail space: AcousticCoverage and AcousticDesign in ceiling, surface, pendant and column forms, with satellite and subwoofer companions, and AcousticDesign landscape bollards for a patio. The PL Series — line arrays, point-source models with directivity control, coaxial full-range boxes and passive subwoofers — is the larger-room answer. This is the hardware behind our restaurant audio work.
- Microphones and audio I/O. The NM Series microphones, including a beamforming ceiling microphone that covers a table in zones rather than asking people to lean in, plus the QIO Series audio expanders, digital and analog telephony I/O, an I/O-USB bridge and the Attero Tech network I/O devices.
- Video, cameras and meeting rooms. The NV Series and NVM Series network video endpoints for AV-over-IP distribution, the NC Series cameras, and VisionSuite for camera intelligence. For meeting spaces there is a RoomSuite modular system and a collaboration bar, plus a UC compute bundle for Microsoft Teams Rooms. That is the stack behind our unified-communications rooms.
- Control and the things that are not on the network. Q-SYS touch screens in the room, a scheduling panel on the wall outside it, and the QIO control expanders that give a Core relays, bi-directional serial and IR — which is how a projector lift, a screen or a piece of older kit joins a modern system instead of being replaced.
- Mixers, signal processors and network switches. The MP-M Series music and paging mixers with their wall controller for a site that does not need a full Core, the DCM, DPM and DCP processors on the cinema side, and QSC’s own NS Series network switches, which exist because an AV network that shares a switch with the point of sale is a support ticket waiting to happen.
How a Q-SYS system gets designed
Nobody buys a Core. People buy a room that sounds right at every hour it is open, and a way to change it without calling us. The design is what delivers both.
- Zones before boxes. A bar, a dining room, a patio, a private room and the restrooms are five zones with five different jobs, and they want different levels, different sources and different limits. We write that list before anything is priced.
- Coverage is geometry, not wattage. Speaker count and spacing come off the ceiling height and the layout. More power through too few speakers produces a loud spot under each one and a dead patch between — which is what most failed restaurant systems actually are.
- The room fights you. Hard floors, glass and an open ceiling are the Kansas City restaurant aesthetic and they are also the reason people shout. Treatment is part of the audio scope, not an afterthought — our restaurant page covers it.
- Day-parts live in the design. Soundcheck, service and wind-down as presets on a touch screen a manager can actually press, so the room does not drift across a staff change.
- The network is part of the system. Q-SYS lives on the LAN, which means the switch, the VLAN and the power are in scope. That is why the commercial network gets designed alongside it rather than inherited.
Where Q-SYS sits beside the other lines we carry
We carry more than one answer on purpose, and none of them pays us to be recommended. In a commercial room the control comparison is usually Q-SYS against Crestron, and it turns on whether the room is audio-led or video-led — we are a Crestron Elite Partner and we program both, so the answer is not a preference. On loudspeakers in a commercial space the alternatives we carry are 1Sound where the fixture has to disappear into a designed interior. In a house the whole conversation is different — that is whole-house audio on a Control4 or Crestron Home system, not a Core in a rack.
Common questions
Who designs and installs Q-SYS systems in Kansas City?
IntegrateIT (Overland Park, KS) carries and installs Q-SYS across the Kansas City metro — restaurants and bars on both sides of the state line, boardrooms and training rooms in Overland Park and Leawood, worship rooms, and multi-zone retail out to Lee’s Summit. To be precise about the relationship, because the trade is sloppy about this word: Q-SYS is a line we carry and install under distribution, not one we hold our own dealer agreement on, so we do not call ourselves an authorized Q-SYS dealer. What we hold is a Control4 Platinum Dealer with a Control4 Certified Showroom, a Crestron Elite Partner, a Lutron Certified Installer and a CEDIA member, with hundreds of projects delivered since 2021. Phone: (913) 804-7575 or office@integrateit.tech.
What is Q-SYS, in plain terms?
It is a single platform that does the audio processing, the video routing and the room control together, instead of three boxes from three manufacturers arguing across a rack. At the centre is a Core — QSC’s processor — running a design you build in Q-SYS Designer Software. Everything else on the network registers to that Core: the amplifiers, the microphones, the loudspeakers, the touch screens, the cameras. The practical consequence for an owner is that the room has one place to change something and one place to look when it breaks, and that changes can be made without a truck roll. The practical consequence for a restaurant is that the day-part presets actually hold, because they live in a design rather than in somebody’s memory of where the knobs were.
Which Q-SYS Core does my room need?
It is decided by channel count, by how much of the processing is audio versus video, and by whether you want hardware in the rack at all. QSC’s current range runs from the Core Nano and Core 8 Flex at the compact end — a single restaurant, a couple of zones, a meeting room — through the Core 110f, Core 24f and Core 510i for a building with real zone counts, up to the Core 610 and Core 5200 and the Server Core X10, X20r and X50r for enterprise and campus work. There is also a vCore virtualized processor for sites that would rather run it as software, and the NV-32-H, which is a network video endpoint that can act as a Core. We size it on the walk, against the zone list and the source list, and we leave headroom — a system that is exactly full on day one is a system you cannot extend in year two.
Does Q-SYS make the speakers and amplifiers too, or just the processing?
All of it, which is one of the reasons it is worth designing around. On amplification the network range is the CX-Q Series in four- and eight-channel models, the MPA-Q Series and the SPA-Q Series, with the non-network MP-A and SPA Series alongside them. On loudspeakers there are two families: the network NL Series, which are Power-over-Ethernet speakers — the NL-C4 ceiling, the NL-P4 pendant and the NL-SB42 soundbar — and the passive installation ranges, AcousticCoverage and AcousticDesign, in ceiling, surface, pendant, column and landscape-bollard forms with matching subwoofers, plus the PL Series line arrays, point-source and coaxial models for a larger room. There are also NM Series microphones, including a beamforming ceiling microphone. In a restaurant we usually mix these — AcousticDesign ceiling speakers inside, bollards on the patio, one Core running both.
Can Q-SYS run the video and the conferencing as well?
Yes, and that is increasingly the reason it wins a boardroom. The video side is the NV Series and NVM Series network endpoints for AV-over-IP distribution, the NC Series cameras, and VisionSuite for camera intelligence. For meeting rooms there is a RoomSuite modular system and a collaboration bar, and a UC compute bundle for Microsoft Teams Rooms. The control side is Q-SYS touch screens, a scheduling panel for the wall outside the room, and QIO control expanders for relays, serial and IR to the things that are not on the network. Q-SYS Reflect gives us remote monitoring and management across all of it, which is how a problem gets found before somebody calls about it.
Who programs it, and what happens when we want it changed?
We program it, in house, and the design file is yours. That matters more than it sounds: a Q-SYS room is only as good as the design somebody wrote for it, and a room programmed by a contractor who has moved on is a room nobody can safely change. We document the design, hand over the file, and keep a copy in your portal with the rest of the project record. Changes — a new day-part, a zone split, a source added — are usually a remote session rather than a site visit, and we say up front which ones are and which are not. Every install carries a five-year workmanship warranty from the final invoice; the equipment carries its manufacturer warranty.
Tell us the zones and the hours. The design follows.
Or read about restaurant audio · commercial AV · the conference room · the network underneath it
Written by Daniel Alon, founder of IntegrateIT LLC, with twenty years in IT and AV integration — Control4 Platinum Dealer, Crestron Elite Partner, Lutron Certified Installer, CEDIA member. Overland Park, KS.