My school has a very weird system. I don’t even know what brand it is. The school once had an older low-pitched Telecor but is gone now due to a major renovation in the mid 2010s. They have a new system now and I cannot figure out what it is. I was thinking a Valcom or Carehawk, but I’m not sure. I have a video of the bell sounding and the page tone.
The school has a Simplex voice evac system as well.
The speakers connected to the intercom are made by Penton and Atlas.
I happen to have 3 of the Dukane systems here at home. My daily use system is the MACS II. I also have the MCS, and Starcall systems. Here is a shot of the MACS console at my desk.
I have this Telecor mcc-3 phone, but it does not work due to not having the amplifier and other parts for it. Does anyone know what parts would get this to start up again?
Thank you!
Primary school: ITC 100-volt analog PA system with automatic scheduled audio player for class-changing bells as well as sports field audio amplification. Ceiling speakers in buildings plus column speakers for the sports field.
Middle & High school: A mix of Plexus and JNC devices including wireless mics, RF coax signal transmission and receiving system as well as power amps for buildings. Class-changing bells are played via a computer software. Voice message is delivered via an AKG studio condenser microphone and a Yamaha MG10XU mixing console (which also receives signals from other sound sources like computers and backup auto-players)
Sports field PA is a set of dual 12" LINE ARRAY SPEAKERS with dual 18" subwoofers. Although they’re all knockoff brand called ORLE (probably fake PYLE?) they sound pretty well with lots of bass power, clear midrange vocal bands and slap-in-the-face transients. The system is controlled by a Soundcraft LX9-24 mixing console and powered by five knockoff Crest Audio amplifiers. (When I was in charge of managing this system, I play some nice EDM music through them before each scheduled workout time. Both my schoolmates and the school headmaster love it!)
University: A mix of JBL, DSPPA, HTDZ, ITC and other brands of systems. Some are 100-volt analog, while most of them are IP-based (not Dantified yet haha, they run on proprietary protocols and have lots of latency) The multifunctional event center has some EV ETX15P+18SP speakers fed by a Presonus Studiolive 24 digital mixer and some LED par lights controlled via MA2 command wing. The 2000-seat main theater has lots of JBL AE series speakers (mainly AM7215, AM5215 and ASB6128) powered by Crown I-Tech amps, which are fed by an enormous broadcast-grade Soundcraft Vi3000 digital mixing desk. There’s also a 300-seat mini-theater with L-acoustics Kara II’s controlled by a Soundcraft Si3 Performer audio console. Both theaters have ACME lighting fixtures and grandMA2 light boards.
My Middle and High school Both use the same Audio Enhancement branded PA System. The class change bell is 4 262 Hz chimes. And the Paging tone is a single 698 Hz tone. the speakers in the hallways are JBL’s and in the classrooms they are Audio Enhancement Branded speakers.
Audio Enhancement is very popular in my state. I would say the majority of schools that are getting new intercom systems are getting Audio Enhancement systems. My school district uses them in all but one school. In 2019, they swapped all of the elementary schools (including one that was only 5 years old) over to Audio Enhancement equipment. They installed JBL 70v speakers in the hallways, common areas, and outdoors, and Audio Enhancement branded 8 ohm speakers in the classrooms tied into their IP interfaces/classroom amplifiers. Since 2019, my school district has built two new buildings (including my school). Those buildings have Audio Enhancement speakers everywhere. The only building that still has its original intercom system is the middle school, and that building is probably the one that is most in need of an upgrade. It has a Dukane StarCall system from 2008 that has been expanded several times and isn’t really working quite right. They can’t use bells because apparently the system doesn’t like that. The classrooms all have Lightspeed sound systems, except for the rooms that were added in 2018, which have Extron systems in the classrooms. Everywhere in the school has some random 70v speakers that I don’t know about.
The bells are extremely customizable on Audio Enhancement systems, so I don’t know what sounds all of the schools are using. I know my current high school uses a recording of a mechanical bell as the bell tone.
I know this is what they use outside in all of the schools that have the older Audio Enhancement systems in my district. Most of those schools have them in the gymnasium too, but the intercom is also tied into the sound system in the gym and the JBL speakers only work when the sound system is off. I’m not sure whether or not it got fixed yet, but I know when I was still in elementary school and the first got the system, some of the JBL amps were having an issue where they would not start outputting sound until around 5 seconds into an announcement, or when the bell tone was basically over. It seems that Audio Enhancement used JBL products for the 70v side of things until they got their own product line.
The intercom system at my district’s old high school was a huge jumbled mess of speakers ranging from late 50’s to 2010’s. It was actually connected throughout two buildings, one of which will be/is being demolished, and the other which will be used as district offices and will not use the intercom system anymore.
Essentially, I have always been trying to figure out exactly what system they had in place that was controlling everything. I know it was a phone based system that played around a 1/2 second 440hz tone as the pre-announce tone. The schools Simplex time clock panel that was connected to the mechanical bells in the school was also connected to the intercom system, and the intercom system would play a 440hz continuous tone whenever the bells were ringing. The only other information I have is that the intercom system was definitely from some time between the late 80’s and the early 2010’s, and that a few classrooms that were renovated in the late 2010’s had CareHawk branded call buttons, but that might not actually mean anything.
