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AVIXA · Last updated November 2026

Certified Technology Specialist (CTS): free practice test

CTS is AVIXA's general audiovisual certification, covering how AV professionals create, implement, support and service AV solutions. The exam has 115 questions at Pearson VUE test centers, of which 100 count. Duty weights are Creating 35%, Implementing 30%, Supporting 15% and Servicing 20%.

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About the AVIXA CTS Exam exam

CTS is AVIXA's general audiovisual certification, covering how AV professionals create, implement, support and service AV solutions. The exam has 115 questions at Pearson VUE test centers, of which 100 count. Duty weights are Creating 35%, Implementing 30%, Supporting 15% and Servicing 20%.

What's on the exam

AVIXA CTS Exam
Needs Analysis and Site Survey
8 key facts
AV Project Scope and Solution Design
8 key facts
Integrating AV Solutions
9 key facts
Managing AV Integration
7 key facts
Providing AV Support
7 key facts
Supervising Operations and Maintenance
6 key facts
Troubleshooting and Repair
7 key facts

Each branch is a topic in the official outline. Members see every key fact on the full mind map. Read the free study guide →

How to pass the AVIXA CTS Exam exam

  • Creating AV Solutions is 35% of the scored items, so needs analysis, site surveys, scope and design deserve the most study time.
  • 115 questions in 150 minutes is about 78 seconds each. Mark long math items for review, since you cannot tell which 15 are unscored.
  • Questions test how you perform the job tasks, not only recall. For each scenario, ask what a professional does first or what prevents the problem.
  • After a failed attempt there is a 30-day wait, and a retest application filed within 120 days gets the US$150 fee. You can retest two times before a 90-day wait and a new application.

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Create a free account after the test: your score by topic, a mistakes bank, the complete study notes for the first topic, flashcards and the RCDD Numbers & Formulas Sheet.

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What's in the premium AVIXA CTS Exam prep

Premium AVIXA CTS Exam prep is studied one topic at a time. Each step starts with that topic's key notes and flashcard deck, then its own question sets of 25, so you master one topic before you move to the next. When every topic is strong, the 6 full mock exams show you're ready.

3,000practice questions, every answer explained
6full-length mock exams, 115 questions each, timed
800flashcards with spaced repetition, sorted by topic
60comprehensive key notes across 7 topics

Your step-by-step study path

  1. 1
    Needs Analysis and Site Survey9 key notes, 115 flashcards, then 450 practice questions in 18 sets of 25
    Notes free with an account
  2. 2
    AV Project Scope and Solution Design9 key notes, 115 flashcards, then 425 practice questions in 17 sets of 25
    Premium
  3. 3
    Integrating AV Solutions9 key notes, 115 flashcards, then 425 practice questions in 17 sets of 25
    Premium
  4. 4
    Managing AV Integration9 key notes, 115 flashcards, then 425 practice questions in 17 sets of 25
    Premium
  5. 5
    Providing AV Support8 key notes, 115 flashcards, then 425 practice questions in 17 sets of 25
    Premium
  6. 6
    Supervising Operations and Maintenance8 key notes, 115 flashcards, then 425 practice questions in 17 sets of 25
    Premium
  7. 7
    Troubleshooting and Repair8 key notes, 110 flashcards, then 425 practice questions in 17 sets of 25
    Premium
  8. Final step: 6 full mock exams115 questions each, timed like test day. Pass them, then book your exam.
    Premium
Free with an account

Read the complete AVIXA CTS Exam study notes for “Needs Analysis and Site Survey”

Our first full set of comprehensive notes, about 12 minutes of reading: Conducting a needs analysis · Preparing for a site survey · Measuring and recording conditions · Access, power and pathways · Documenting the findings, a worked exam example, the traps examiners use and a one-minute recap. Create a free account to read it and see how premium notes work before you decide.

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Study tools included

3,000 practice questions

3,000 exam-style questions per exam, organized topic by topic in sets of 25. Every answer explained, with the rule it comes from.

6 full mock exams

6 full-length timed mock exams per exam, with real question counts and time limits, so test day feels like practice day.

Exam Readiness Score

One 0 to 100 number that tells you when you're ready to book. Reach 80 and you're covered by our Pass Guarantee.

800 flashcards + spaced repetition

800 flashcards per exam, in a deck for each topic, that come back right before you'd forget them. Five minutes a day keeps every number fresh.

60 comprehensive key notes

60 key notes per exam, split across its topics and each explained in full: the concepts, worked exam examples, the traps examiners use and a quick recap. Your first set is free with an account.

Mind maps

See the whole exam on one screen: every topic and the facts under it.

Sample questions with answers

These are the questions in the free test above, with answers. Try the test first. You'll learn more by getting some wrong.

1. A facilities manager opens a needs meeting by asking for a 98-inch display in the boardroom. What should the AV professional do first?
Answer: Ask what tasks and meetings the room must support. A needs analysis starts with what users must do, because the equipment should follow from those tasks. Quoting or measuring first locks in a solution before anyone knows it fits the purpose. The rule is functions before hardware.
2. A site survey covers a training room with unshaded east-facing windows and morning classes. What should the surveyor do about the windows?
Answer: Measure light at the screen at class times and raise shading. Ambient light at the image, at the actual times of use, drives image contrast, so morning readings at the screen matter here. Shading is a cheaper and more effective fix than brightness alone, so raise it with the client during the survey. Midday or ceiling readings miss the real viewing condition.
3. A meeting room's ambient noise measures 48 dB SPL. The design goal is speech 25 dB above ambient, with 10 dB of headroom. What peak level must the system deliver at the listener?
Answer: 83 dB SPL. Add the two allowances to the measured noise: 48 + 25 + 10 = 83 dB SPL. The 73 dB figure is the speech level without headroom for peaks, and decibel levels stated this way add directly.
4. Twenty-four ceiling loudspeakers on a 70-volt line are each tapped at 6 W. With the 50% headroom AVIXA uses, what is the minimum amplifier power?
Answer: 216 W. Multiply watts per tap by loudspeaker count, then by 1.5 for headroom: 6 x 24 x 1.5 = 216 W. The 144 W figure is the total tap load, which leaves no headroom. Doubling instead of applying 1.5 oversizes the amplifier.
5. Equipment in a rack draws 3,200 W, all of which is treated as heat. What heat load should be sent to the HVAC designer?
Answer: 10,880 BTU/hr. Use total BTU = total watts x 3.4, so 3,200 x 3.4 = 10,880 BTU/hr. Dividing by 3.4 reverses the conversion, and the wattage itself is not in BTU. Giving the HVAC designer the correct figure early avoids an overheated rack later.
6. Four 8-ohm loudspeakers must connect to one low-impedance amplifier channel rated down to 4 ohms. Which wiring keeps the amplifier in its rating and delivers useful power?
Answer: Series-parallel wiring, for an 8-ohm load. Two series pairs of 16 ohms in parallel give 8 ohms, safely above the 4-ohm limit. All four in parallel gives 8/4 = 2 ohms and overloads the channel. All four in series is safe but 32 ohms draws too little power to be useful.
7. Installed AV-over-IP encoders send multicast 4K streams, and other traffic slows because the streams reach every switch port. What should be enabled on the AV network?
Answer: IGMP snooping with an IGMP querier. IGMP snooping lets the switch send a multicast stream only to ports that requested it, and a querier keeps those memberships current. Without it, multicast floods like broadcast. Spanning tree prevents loops, and DHCP reservations only fix addresses, so neither limits flooding.
8. A display and its mount weigh 50 kg (110 lb). The specified design factor is 5:1, and the wall anchors have an ultimate strength of 225 kg (496 lb). What should the installer conclude?
Answer: Reject it, since 225 kg over 5 allows only 45 kg. Divide ultimate strength by the design factor: 225 divided by 5 is 45 kg allowed, which is less than the 50 kg load. Comparing raw ultimate strength with the load ignores the margin the specification requires. Anchors must rate at 250 kg or more here.
9. Midway through an installation, the client's project lead asks the crew in person to add two displays. What should the project manager do?
Answer: Document a change order with cost and schedule for approval. Added work goes through change management: document the scope, cost and schedule impact, then get approval before doing it. Installing first leaves the cost open to dispute, and refusing ignores a legitimate request. Crew availability does not replace client approval.
10. During installation a rack moved to a different closet and a conduit route changed from the design. Which closeout deliverable must capture these changes for future service?
Answer: The as-built drawings. As-built drawings record what was actually installed, including field changes, so that service staff can find the equipment and pathways. Design drawings show the intent, not the result. A bill of materials lists parts and a survey report describes the room before the work.
11. Ten minutes before a town hall, a user calls to say the screen is blank. The room has a remotely monitored control system. What should the support technician do first?
Answer: Check device status and input selection remotely. With little time, start with the fastest and least disruptive check: remote status and input selection, a common cause of a blank screen. Sending hardware takes too long and may be unnecessary. Restarting everything can lengthen the outage, and asking users to handle cables adds risk.
12. In a hybrid meeting, remote participants hear their own voices echoed back, while people in the room hear normally. Where should the technician look first?
Answer: The room's echo cancellation and its reference signal. Remote voices play from the room's loudspeakers, reach the room's microphones and return to the far end. Acoustic echo cancellation in the room removes that signal, and it needs the correct reference. The people hearing the echo are not the source of the fault, and a bandwidth shortage causes dropouts rather than echo.
13. A manufacturer releases new firmware for control processors in 60 rooms. What is the best first step before rollout?
Answer: Back up configurations and test on one room first. Maintenance changes should be controlled: read the release notes, back up each configuration, and test on one system in a maintenance window. A full rollout can break every room at once. Waiting for a fault ignores the update's purpose, and users should not install firmware.
14. Projectors in a dusty workshop shut down from heat about once a month. What should the service supervisor change?
Answer: Clean filters sooner by shortening the service interval. Preventive maintenance intervals should reflect the environment, and dust clogs filters faster than the default schedule assumes. Disabling a thermal protection or running lamps harder invites permanent damage. Swapping spares treats the symptom and leaves the cause in place.
15. A low mains-frequency hum appears when a rack on one power panel connects by an unbalanced audio cable to a rack on another panel. What is the best fix?
Answer: Put an isolation transformer on that audio connection. Hum from a ground loop is treated in the signal path: an isolation transformer, or a balanced connection, breaks the audio ground loop. Never remove a safety ground, which creates a shock hazard. Gain changes do not remove the hum, and a high-frequency filter leaves a low-frequency hum untouched.

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AVIXA CTS Exam exam FAQ

How many questions are on the AVIXA CTS Exam exam?

115 four-option multiple-choice questions: 100 scored and 15 unscored pilot questions you cannot identify, with a time limit of 150 minutes, plus a brief on-screen tutorial before and a brief survey after. Format: closed book; an on-screen calculator and a non-erasable note board are provided, and no references or personal calculators are allowed.

What is the passing score for AVIXA CTS Exam?

Scaled score of 350 on a 0 to 500 scale, set by a criterion-referenced process. The scale is fixed, so 350 is not exactly 70% of questions on every form.

How much does the AVIXA CTS Exam exam cost?

US$490 nonmember, US$390 paid AVIXA member (also EUR 475/375, GBP 395/315, AUD 780/620); reduced emerging-economy fees apply in listed countries; retest US$150. VAT and taxes are extra. BICSI fees can change without notice, so confirm on bicsi.org before you apply.

Which languages is the AVIXA CTS Exam exam offered in?

English, Spanish and German.

Where do I take the AVIXA CTS Exam exam?

Pearson VUE test centers only (secure, in person; no remote option).

Is this AVIXA CTS Exam practice test free?

Yes. The 15-question practice test on this page is free, with an explanation for every answer and no signup. A free account also unlocks the complete study notes for the first topic. The full AVIXA CTS Exam prep is Premium at $147 a month for this exam.

What's in the premium AVIXA CTS Exam prep?

3,000 practice questions organized topic by topic (Needs Analysis and Site Survey: 450; AV Project Scope and Solution Design: 425; Integrating AV Solutions: 425; Managing AV Integration: 425; Providing AV Support: 425; Supervising Operations and Maintenance: 425; Troubleshooting and Repair: 425), 6 full-length timed mock exams of 115 questions, 800 flashcards and 60 comprehensive key notes split across all 7 topics, plus a mistakes bank and the Readiness Score.

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15 free questions3,000 premium Qs · 6 mocks · 800 flashcards · 60 key notes
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Exam details are summarized from the official candidate information available in October 2026. BICSI changes formats and fees, so confirm with AVIXA Certification Committee before you book. RCDDQuizBank is not affiliated with BICSI or Pearson VUE.

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