atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Vodavi Telephones & Systems Starplus STS Music on Hold

Hey all,

Sorry for the rudimentary question - but is there a line gain adjustment for the MOH on this system?

Our MOH is provided by an MP3/Cd player, through a mini-RCA mono-cable to the punch down block, and it sounds pitiful - soft, cuts out and is very erratic and horrible sounding. When the volume is turned up on the player, the sound on the MOH is just as lousy, but now it is distorted too, which is just not pleasant.

Finally, does anyone know why Vodavi uses he punch down for the MOH and not just an RCA jack?

Thanks -
K

The problem probably isn't with the STS but with what you are supplying it with and how you are doing it. Your player has a stereo output that is "mono'd" by the cable you are using. It bridges or shorts the two outputs together which will have the effect you experience and will eventualy permanently damage the output devices in the player. I have seen the output of CD players and radios supplied by customers die within a few months.

Then also there is the question as to whether that derived output is even appropriate for driving the STS MOH input.

Your answer is to use a player designed for MOH applications. Be aware also that using music from any source for business purposes requires you to pay royalties unless you use royalty free music or a music service.

-Hal

Hal is right on the money with his reply.

Probably because Vodavi tries to discourage DIYers from making such connections themselves. They don't want to have any part of people breaking the law by just hooking up FM radios or CD players to their systems. They know that trained technicians will warn customers of this, where if it just involves a trip to Radio Shack, they can't do their part in this curtailing this theft.

Your concerns are understood and appreciated, rest assured that the MOH that my firm uses has been professionally prepared with personalized hold messages and music in the public domain - we have special knowledge of the ramifications of such violations, and therefore would be under special scrutiny if we violated copyright laws.

That being said, our installers were the folks that stripped and punched down the mono cable (yes, from Radio Shack as a matter of fact) - indicating to us that was the cable we needed to use. I believed that I had also read that a mono cable was preferred (on this board) for MOH, so I did not think it might be the cable, stereo to mono. But now you are telling me that my cable might be what is causing the problem? There are two punchdowns for the MOH, does this relate to the stereo right and left channel? I have decided to do my own testing by using alligator clips to a stereo cord that I have, is this a good plan of action? Right channel to one punchdown, left to the other?

Thanks,

K

No, it is not a stereo connect. You'll have to use one channel off of a stereo cable.

If the installer did this, I would make him come back and fix it. Also, you should consider getting a Message-On-Hold player that would supply a mono output and would have the proper impedance.

The output of any player must be a 600 Ohm output any other rating may permanently damage the MOH input on the phone system.

Does your player have a headset output? I have used headset outputs on players of all kinds for more years than I care to talk about and never had a moh port on a system get damaged. What does this cable look like? Does it have one insulated stranded wire and one uninsulated stranded wire? If so it should be spliced to solid copper crossconnect wire and then punched down on the 66 block. Some techs get lazy (and that includes myself a time or two) and they try to punch down the stripped radio shack cable directly on the block. One of those little hairy wires can touch, short the two pins, and could produce the lousy sound you are complaing about.

I usually have success splicing the two hots of a headphone jack together to produce a mono rather than having to choose between a left or right channel. The hots for a 2.5mm jack sometimes differ between players, ipods, mp3s. Of course I always inform the customer that any music should be royalty-free.

Derrick, thanks -

Since I heard here that the mono cable could screw the player, I hooked a different cable to the block - what is it is a stereo 1/8" jack from the headphone port, and the cord terminates in white and red RCA jacks (the kind that you would hook to a standard amplifier for instance) - this is the kind of cable that allows you to hook an mp3 player to the stereo inputs of a receiver, for instance.

Then what I did was connect two shielded gator clips to each of the outputs and pulled the "shields" over that connection (they fit together rather well). THEN I attached one gator clip to the bottom punch down post, and the other gator clip to the next up punch down post - which were indicated by my installer as being the two MOH block positions.

MOH is louder, still erratic and not sounding very good. What else do you think I can do here?
The mono cable is still connected to the left hand side of the block, and I think I am going to pull that out, so that there are no possible "hairy wires" maybe causing shorts (even though I don;t think that is possible, as I removed the jumpers from the middle between the right and left punchdowns which I assume connected the right and the left signals on the block). ANy other ideas?

When I have gone to investigate purchasing a MOH system, I have seen kits with pre-recorded CD's and *COBY* CD players, the crappy ones that you buy for 10 bucks for your kids? Those aren't mono players, right? What gives? Does Vodavi have a "special" authorized or approval MOH system that it supports? This doesn't seem to need to be so complicated, copyright issues aside. If this complexity and mystery is programmed into this device just to keep the end users pumping money into a system that really should just work and well the first time it is fired up, I would say that they are discouraging me from ever buying or endorsing this product - my opinion.

Thanks again,

K

Your MOH issue is an industry one and not a Vodavi plot. Actually, the old Starplus Digital had an RCA jack and the DHS had a mini mono jack. I think they simply save a nickel by not providing a standard jack. FYI - It's been awhile since I have run into a phone tech that had a problem hooking up MOH.

Re - My FYI. It wasn't meant to be curt and in the back of my mind what I was thinking was that your installers may not have been as helpful as many of the techs on these forums are. MOH is usually simple and by trying to keep any resolution simple you should be able to locate the source of your problem.

Dave, I would have thought that they did away with the RCA connector since so many people would plug a 1/8" phone plug in the hole (perfect fit).

Kriton: All music on hold inputs to telephone systems are monaural and they all connect with a basic two-wire connection. The brand of the phone system or the music player is insignificant.

K, here's two of the more popular ones.
USB 100
and OHP 8000
------------------------
MrG

Just to make sure, the pins for MOH on the STS are 48 and 23 or violet/green green/violet coming from the CO champ connector on the control unit.

Ok, I have looked at the two systems that you pointed out - and I don't need a 300 Music on Hold system - but the Intellitouch Music on Hold Plus 8000, which I have found from (Sorry, no pricing allowed per membership agreement) Which is rather pricey for something will just play on-hold music, but never the less...how does thing hook up to the block? It has a full size single RCA jack out - but there are *two* punch down points on the block? I get an RCA single cord, strip the end and punch it down on one stud, what do I connect to the other stud? The wires from a stripped RCA cable will have the "hairs" that may short circuit...I have already thrown good money away on this brand new system, and I have no confidence in the installers to fix anything, as we had weeks of attempts to make the system work, and messing with the "inskins" programming, and promises that still have not been kept - and I do not want to toss another couple of hundred dollars at this for no apparent increase in the quality of the MOH system, I hope ya'll can understand this. If I could get (or have a guarantee) that the MOH system can sound really pretty decent, I would pay whatever it takes to get a good MOH system here - again, any suggestions would be appreciated.

K

Thanks again Derrick - I will check to make sure, but I think those are the correct pairs - also, an earlier post said that stereo to mono is *bad* and could damage the player - but MNDAVE says that he can take a stereo cord and twist the "hots" together, making it mono, and it works? Am I just getting confused?

Derrick, I didn't answer your question; the mono cable I was using did have the two wires, one in the center of the wire, the other not, and the wires were very hairy, so that could have been a problem - but when I used the gator clips as described above, the sound still sucked so I am not sure that caused this. What do you think, can I fix this thing? Anybody in Ft. Worth want to give it a shot?

K

Does your player have a headset output? I have used headset outputs on players of all kinds for more years than I care to talk about and never had a moh port on a system get damaged... I usually have success splicing the two hots of a headphone jack together to produce a mono rather than having to choose between a left or right channel.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. You are not getting confused, NMDAVE is misinformed. It's not going to damage the MOH input on the system but rather the output devices in the source. Some radios, CD and MP3 players may be able to handle having both channels of the headphone output shorted together, particularly the older stuff. But the newer stuff will likely be damaged and you will never know until it's too late. Regardless, it's never acceptable practice to "Y" any audio output, whether headphone or line level, because of damage.

If I could get (or have a guarantee) that the MOH system can sound really pretty decent, I would pay whatever it takes to get a good MOH system here - again, any suggestions would be appreciated.

Well, its not like all MOH sounds crappy so I kinda think it's you. Get somebody who knows what they are doing and get a decent MOH player.

-Hal

Lets back up here for a moment. Does the player have decent sound without being connected to the phone system? Moh is only as good as its source.

Hooking up an MOH player to an STS isn't rocket science. Its two wires to two pins, one pin over the other one =

Stereo headset cables can have three wires, red, white and a common. Use the common and one of the other two it doesn't matter. No one on hold is going to know they are listening to left or right channel.

Hey,

To answer your questions, yes, the source sounds pretty good through headphones -

The cable that I am using currently is what I described above - here is a link to a similar cable:
https://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=181-591

Then I have attached double ended shielded gator clips, one to the red and one to the black - and then to the clips - should I just connect two gator clips to just the red large RCA and thence to each of the pins? This is about as clean as we can get, regardless - the ohms coming out of this thing measured at the rca red and black is .475 ohms, FYI.

Still sounds like crap, and I hope it is me.

K

Try another music sourcesuch as an AM/FM radio with a headphone jack just as a temporary measure to verify if it is the source you are using or the system. And just to clarify any phone system only has a mono input meaning you should be using a 1/8 mini plug that only has 2 wires a +/- red/black striped/solid doesn't matter what color it is you just need the 2 connducters connected to the v/gr pair of the system.

hbiss, I've never had any problems shorting the hots from a headset source but I'll amend my ways.
Thanks for the correction!

OK, catch this - I hooked up the connector that I described above - stereo miniRCA in the CD player, and both gator clips on just the RED RCA out, and connected each gator clip to a different pin on the block - essentially splitting the right channel between the pins - as I think you all told me I needed to do - *no sound whatsoever*.

Hooked the gators to red *and* black RCAs, and the other ends to the respective pins on the block - and I have MOH, just sounds crappy.

Any other ideas?

K

Yeah have a phoneman come out and connect it for you. If your in the DFW area we can certainly help you out.

Here is the cable needed anything else like the one you have linked to above will result in problems you are having https://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103854
If you insist on using the cable you have put one aligator clip on the outside BIG part of the RCA plug and the other clip on the center post and try it that way.

The sts is a 600 ohm input & the output to headphones can be 4 to 8 ohms
you are going to need a transformer to ie: a matching one.

https://www.buckscom.com/catalog/in...p;zenid=c9c75091fd41393163587fc332951ec0

Or a Bogan WMT1A www.bogen.com/products/pdfs/specialelectronicspdfs/WMT1As.pdf

I just want to say a thank you again to Hal for correcting me. I failed to mention something however and that is the technique we use with ipods when we have tied two hots together. We use capacitors to avoid creating a direct short. This appears to work without problems but do you have any concerns about this method? BTW, I'm just one old phone guy who was forced to become PC proficient.