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

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