CTS · Week 04 · AVIXA Ch. 3–7 · Milestone

Milestone — Practice Exam 1

Review: Analog/Digital Signals, Audio, Video, Networks, Signal Management (Ch. 3–7)
CTS Prep · Week 04 of 16
Course: CTS — Audiovisual & IT Systems  ·  AVIXA Ch. 3–7 · Milestone

This is a checkpoint, not new material. Before moving to Phase II, work through the questions below from memory first, then check answers. If more than two or three feel shaky, revisit the corresponding week — the rest of the course assumes this vocabulary is solid.

AVIXA's own CTS practice exams group Chapters 3–7 together as the first of four blocks, which is exactly the grouping used here. Treat this week as a self-test, not a lecture.

Practice Questions
  1. What's the difference between sampling rate and bit depth, and which one primarily affects dynamic range/noise floor?
    Show answerSampling rate is how often a signal is measured (affects frequency range captured); bit depth is how precisely each measurement is stored (primarily affects dynamic range and quantization noise).
  2. Why is gain staging described as setting levels "as high as possible, as early as possible, without clipping"?
    Show answerBecause noise gets added at every stage; a strong clean signal early in the chain stays well above added noise at later stages, while a weak signal amplified later also amplifies whatever noise was picked up along the way.
  3. What problem does EDID solve between a video source and a display?
    Show answerIt lets the display tell the source which resolutions, refresh rates, and formats it supports, so the source can output a compatible signal instead of guessing.
  4. Why would a technician put AV control traffic on a separate VLAN from general office traffic?
    Show answerPerformance isolation and security isolation — keeping bandwidth-sensitive AV traffic uncongested and limiting what a compromised AV device could reach.
  5. What does a DSP do in an audio system that a simple mixer cannot?
    Show answerApplies real-time digital processing — equalization, automatic mixing, feedback suppression, routing logic — well beyond basic level mixing.
  6. Name one advantage of SDI over standard HDMI for long in-building video runs.
    Show answerSDI (coaxial) tolerates much longer cable runs before signal degradation than standard HDMI without extenders.
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