sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Avaya - Lucent Telephones & Systems Avaya Partner MOH and Ipod

I have a customer with an Avaya Partner with an external Music on Hold source. it uses an RCA cable to connect to the partner. THey are board with the content and the box they have no longer offers changes. I was thinking of an adapter cable that takes the Ipod headphone jack and plugs it into the Partner RCA jack but have read some things on the web about poor quality audio. Can I do what I was thinking or do I need other equipment? Please advise.

If the impedance of the Ipod's output satisfies the Partner ACS (I think its 600 ohms), it should work.

Although it doesn't directly affect the MOH feature, please be sure that the customer has the proper licensing to play music covered by ASCAP, BMI and other companies.

I know this is a sticky subject...but, paying
BMI or ASCAP royalites for MOH is nothing short
of a ponzi scheme...using a ipod for this purpose
is pretty cool and the music played played has already been paid for,so why pay monthly or yearly to listen while on hold. I guess this goes into the same argument file as Avaya's "Right to Use" fee for used Definity's.

You paid for private use of that licensed property, not public use.

ASCAP and BMI both have enforcement units. You probably won’t get caught, but I know of companies that have received demand letters from BMI.

Ok...Has anybody in this forum ever seen a BMI/ASCAP compliance officer?

----edited by dagwoodsystems----

Good points my man. But I'd like to address the posted question. We can rant about the BMI/ASCAP folks in a fresh thread.

The Partner's RCA jack is designed to mate with common 8 ohm audio outputs, while every iPod document I've read show 4 ohms at the headset jack. Driving those earbuds is nothing, so you'd really have to crank the volume up (probably to the point where distortion is heard) before it can be heard while on hold.

But try it. And don't forget to play with the Music-On-Hold Volume (#614). I'd set the value all the way up to 7 in order to keep the iPod volume as low as possible.

It has never worked for Me, I get these requests all the time. One trick that works is to purchase a valcom power horn amplification module and a power supply, feed the audio output into T&R of the module and the 8ohm output into Partner. Turn volume on the valcom to low, Partner on 6 (#614)

We had 2 customers that recieved demand letters from ASCAP. What they would do is call in asked to be put on hold listen to the music etc. then demand payment.

After having dealt with the politics of MOH my advice to you is the same as my advice to my cusomers. Get a cheap radio from a garage sale or maybe you have one in your attic, set it on a cool jazz station and threaten anyone with immediate termination if they so much as touch the dial or complain about it. Better yet inject super glue into the knob or have it cut off. It's just not worth the hassle. These days you can get your as sued off for not paying royalties for playing a CD on your MOH.

Can we set aside the BMI/ASCAP thing (fodder for a new thread) and just pretend that the device will be playing a company-made marketing message?

I've had some success getting iPods to work with Magix, but I too would be interested to know what, if anything, has allowed them to work with Partner.