Adding music to a P.A. system

Status
Not open for further replies.
ultramegabob

ultramegabob

Senior Member
Location
Indiana
I havent done much with P.A. systems, but I have a customer that has an old Bogen 15 watt 70 volt P.A. system in thier store, the speakers are all wired mono of course, but they bought a stereo reciever and want to play background music, but want to be able to cut in and call for more help up front when needed. Is there a practical way to make this happen, or do they need to scrap the old P.A. for something new? and of course they are on a budget....:rolleyes:
 
Last edited:
First problem you will have is hooking an Amplifier to an Amplifier, to do music through the Bogen Amp, you will need something with a line level output such as a CD Player, FM Tuner....etc. just hook the device to an Aux input , Paging should have priority.
 
I'd probably just change out the existing amp. The existing amp is probably at end of life, and Bogen has lots of trick amps now with exactly what you need already built-in.
 
If you feel like building up a system or reusing some of the stuff you already have, I would recommend Viking Electronics, search their site for gobs of pieces parts for this application (and many more!)

Jim
 
If you're lucky......and it's a big if......

If you're lucky......and it's a big if......

Hopefully, you have a stereo receiver that has a pair of preamp to amp jumpers in the back. Remove these. You won't be using the amplifier portion of the receiver. Then get an RCA 'Y' with male plugs (if the receiver has a mono switch, you wont need this, just connect a single RCA patch cord to either the left or right preamp out to the Bogen). Plug the red and white of the 'Y' cord into the preamp out of the receiver, and the single into the Bogen amp. Turn on the receiver with the volume all the way down to start. You can now play any source plugged into the receiver, or just the radio. Let us know if you've been successful with this, we'll get you the paging part working next....
 
ultramegabob said:
Is there a practical way to make this happen, or do they need to scrap the old P.A. for something new? and of course they are on a budget....:rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Of course.

Bob, it depends on whether there is an extra input on the amp. Look for one labeled line, tuner, aux, etc.
 
Apparently what you have is a PA amp that is only used for paging, probably from a telephone system? So now you want to add a background music source from a stereo receiver.

First the receiver must have line level RCA outputs. Assume it does and since you are looking for a mono signal the two channels will have to be combined. Problem is you can't just splice them together because that may do bad things to the output devices in the receiver that supply those outputs.

The second problem is that you want the music to go away (duck) when a page comes along. There are ways to accomplish this, might be possible to use a VOX "black box" between the amp and the music and page depending on the page source.

What I'm getting at is you are going to have to spend a few bucks here and as long as you are going to do that you might as well spend it on just replacing that Bogen with something that will do everything you need. The Bogen TPU series is usually what I would use but they won't combine your stereo outputs and they are a bit pricy. Speco is more economical and will do the job:

http://www.specotech.com/cart/products/productDetails.asp?prodID=399

That one happens to be 30 watts, they do make the same thing with a 15 watt output. While you are there I would check to see what the speakers are actually set at. They should add up to LESS than 15 watts. The rule is load the amp to only 80% and 15 watts is pretty small.

-Hal
 
quogueelectric said:
In stores by me the pa/music systen is required to shut down upon fire annunciation just like fan shutdown in an hvac unit.
Click to expand...
Which, if it's a brandy-new install, do it all through the voice evac on the fire alarm.
 
In stores by me the pa/music system is required to shut down upon fire annunciation just like fan shutdown in an hvac unit.

Easy enough to do by killing the power to the receptacle the amp is powered from.

-Hal
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top