Designing an Installation Plan

If you are a professional installer, you’ll probably want to skip over this section, however if you are setting up your system for the first time this section can help make your installation a little bit easier.

Before you start plugging, stripping and connecting wires, it a good idea to have a clear installation plan. To create your installation plan you need to consider several design parameters including what sound sources will be used, if announcement paging in necessary, which rooms need to have sound, is remote volume control required, which type of speakers will do the best job for the room they are covering, and your wire plan.

Selecting the Sound Sources

The S zone provides four input channels with the ability to connect up to six input sources. On input Channel’s 1 and 2 there is an input for connecting microphones with phantom power to operate condenser type mics. You can connect line level signals on all four input channels, so sig- nals from TAPE, CD, DVD or Karaoke players, Audio Video TV monitors, Radio Tuners, DJ mixers or any other line level device can be used as a sound source. You may also be able to connect the output from a Home Hi-fi receiver if it’s equipped with a line level output. For example, in a small to medium size restaurant you may want background music from a CD in a room, Disco Karaoke in another room and have the ability to have a hostess paging parties for their tables, and a cook paging a waitress to pick up an order. The S zone can accomplish all of this easily.

Creating the Audio Zones

You can create separate audio environments using the S zone’s four output channels. Obviously, (or not perhaps not so obviously,) we call an output a zone on the unit, but a zone is also the area where you want to have sound. So, think about where you want to distribute the sound. The S zone can accomplish all of this easily. In addition, the

S zone let’s you easily connect a remote control level for each of the zones, so you can control the volume in the room even if the audio equipment is located somewhere else.

Now, take some time to consider where you need to have sound in your particular installation. After you have decided where you need to create sound zones, you can consider your speaker selection, but first decide where you are going to locate your equipment rack.

Locating Your Equipment Rack

Since the S zone is standard19-inch rack mount device, you should consider using an equipment rack, such as the Samson SRK8. To select a good location for your equip- ment rack you should consider several points including the proximity to each of the sound zones, if the users need to access the gear like to change CD’s or to adjust a volume level and if you have a convenient location to the electrical service, to name a few. You will need to consider the length of wire runs and routing necessary to make the connections from the equipment rack to the various sound zones. Depending on the speakers you choose, and the length of cable runs you need to make, you may choose to run speaker level or line level to the sound zones. If you are using passive (non-powered) speakers you will need to connect the S zone to a power amp and run speaker wire, however you need to be careful to pay attention to the wire gauge and total length of the wire run. If you are us- ing powered (active) speakers you can run long distances using the balanced outputs directly from the S zone.

Another type of installation is one that uses speakers and amplifiers with 70-volt transformers. The benefit of these systems you can run long lengths of wire and have many speakers connected to a single amplifier. Since the equipment used in these types of installations are fairly specialized, you’ll probably need professional help. Only a licensed and insured professional sound contractor should perform installations of 70-volt systems.

Selecting Speakers for Each Zone

To select the speakers you need to consider a few impor- tant issues like where you are going to place your power amplifiers, using powered or un-powered speakers, or if you need to run a 70-volt distributed sound system. The following sections provide an overview on how to connect passive speaker or active speakers in a typical installation.