[nathanm]

Does anyone have experience installing 70V systems for public address?  We have PA speakers throughout the building at work which play Muzak and also paging\announcements which can be made through the phone system.  What we want is to be able to kill the muzak in our department, but keep the paging.  Other areas may want the f%#*$@ Muzak.  Is there any way to wire this up?  Could a master amp speaker output perhaps feed two separate inputs on a secondary amp that fed our department speakers?  I know this is not a hi-fi issue, but I thought I'd ask.  Thanks for any advice!

[turkey]

Does anyone have experience installing 70V systems for public address?  We have PA speakers throughout the building at work which play Muzak and also paging\announcements which can be made through the phone system.  What we want is to be able to kill the muzak in our department, but keep the paging.  Other areas may want the f%#*$@ Muzak.  Is there any way to wire this up?  Could a master amp speaker output perhaps feed two separate inputs on a secondary amp that fed our department speakers?  I know this is not a hi-fi issue, but I thought I'd ask.  Thanks for any advice!

You would want to have one amp that is fed only the output from the phone system. The other amp would be fed that signal plus the output from the muzak source.

So your department would be hooked-up to the first amp, and other departments that also want muzak would be hooked-up to the second amp.

Unfortunately, a lot of places are wired with all the speakers connected together, so you may need to do significant rewiring to accomplish this.

One thing I've seen done is to play muzak where it's wanted through the phone. Some phone systems (Panasonic is what I'm familiar with) let you play the hold music through the speakerphone at each station. So you pipe your muzak into the phone for use when you put people on hold, and play it over the speakerphone in the reception area or wherever you want to annoy people. I don't think this works as well as ceiling mounted speakers though.

[Russtafarian]

70v systems are set up so that one amp can drive lots of speakers that are all wired together.  So separating paging from muzak for some speakers and not others would be impossible to do.

If your lucky, there may be an option at the mixer/distribution point to select or adjust volume of paging vs muzak for specific banks of speakers.

[nathanm]

Yep, that's kinda what I was afraid of.

But this fight is not over...

[KDus]

Until you check the wiring, don't get discouraged. It may have been installed with extra conductors for zone paging.
It is common to group speakers for combinations of paging, music, fire alarm, or "bells"
Also, your phone system may have an option to run paging through the speaker phone, then you could just disable the ceiling speaker and forget it. Mitel does, and I think Avaya does....