I know the basics of how the voice evacuation works. But I’m assuming that depending on how many watts the speaker is set for you have a limited amount of speakers you can use on a speaker circuit. How do they usually set them up in high rise buildings or bigger hotels where they require a lot of speakers to be powered?
For larger applications, there are usually amplifiers all over the place. The appear to be red panels. Sometimes there is no display or buttons that can be seen from the outside.
NAC extenders are the answer. That’s what those boxes are without any buttons or lights. One of the buildings my Dad maintains is a 10 story office building. It’s got Simplex 4009 NAC extenders on every floor.
I think NAC extenders are only for notification appliances that use electricity, so the NAC extender would boost power for the strobes, not the speakers.
Here’s a Notifier XP series Transponder and System Sensor MDLs in the http://www.kahler.com/ Kahler Grand Hotel in Rochester. Note on the one module with the “tag” - it wasn’t the actual expletive word, but I blurred it out because it looked close enough, especially from far away. These are mounted in one of the stairwells. I can’t remember off hand but I’ll be going up tomorrow with Mom and will check out exactly which stairwell it is. Alarms are SpectrAlert ceiling-mount Speaker/Strobes.
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That looks like a nice hotel, from the website.
Yes, it really is a nice hotel. And, I did check, and they are in the central stairwell.
You’d think they would be in an electrical room somewhere, not just in the stairwell.
My elementary school had an announciator in the west stairwell. I never found out where the panel was but I assumed it was in the office. (The principal used a key on a pull station to do fire drills.)
My school has an annunciator in the main office, and I have no idea where the control panel is. It’s probably in its own room, because my school has 10 buildings, and it is a large addressable system.
My high school and middle schools alarm system was all one big system. I got a good look at the annunciator in the lobby one time and it showed all the different nodes in the building located in various closets I’m assuming. I’m pretty sure there were four. 3 in the high school and one in the middle school maybe…
i wish my school had voice evac 
Mine wasn’t voice evac, but I wish it was too! It’s would be so much more comforting to know that they were gonna go off instead of the 4903 horns! However, the older 4903 electronic horns were not loud at all in a decent sized classroom. It was the newer models with the TrueAlert horns inside them you had to worry about! And in most instances the strobes would flash 2 or 3 times before the horns would sound giving you plenty of warning. Wasn’t always the case though… one time in middle school the horns sounded without the strobes going off!
My gymnasium building has voice evac, but I also wish that the rest of my school had voice evac. Although, if regular fire drills were to be conducted, I can see students getting up and leaving during the whoops, before the voice started playing, because they would be used to it.
Voice evac is so much quieter then h/s
Sometimes, it isn’t. Depending on the wattage setting of the speakers, and the amount of speakers in the room, it can be just as loud, or louder than a room of horn/strobe(s). It just doesn’t seem as loud because there is a whoop and/or a voice, which is usually less annoying. Also, the horns put out a steady or pulsing beep which can quickly get annoying (not to me, though). If you’ve noticed the voice evac systems that just play a pulsing tone, the tone is a “relaxing” tone, unlike the sound coming from horns.
ya and a fire alarm system is to get you out of the building
Yeah. I know of a few schools around me that do have voice evacuation, they’re lucky. Haha!
yep i still wish my school had voice evac
I’m not afraid of voice evac, but I like horns better. Just as long as somebody doesn’t slip and say that there will be a fire drill in front of me.