This month we successfully completed the upgrade of the Public Address System at the Park Cakes Bakery in Oldham.
The brief from Stanley Security Solutions was to design a replacement for the sites aging PA system. This comprised of two racks of Whiteley Electronics Series 8000 amplifiers providing 1500W. In addition to the central racks a satellite rack, located in a production area, provided a further 600W of power. The amplifiers formed a single ‘All Call’ zone, hence any announcement was broadcast to all areas of the site.
Inputs to the system were provided by a microphone at reception, a telephone interface and a AM/FM radio.
The New Public Address System
We decided to base the new system on a RCF mixer amplifier since it offered four prioritised inputs. Input 1 being for the new reception microphone while input 2 would be for the telephone access unit. As a result the microphone announcements will always override announcements from the telephone access unit. In addition the mixer also provides a low priority auxiliary input for the replacement radio. In this case a FM/DAB unit.
The mixer output feeds three QSC Audio ISA300Ti power amplifiers providing 300W more power than the original. As a result additional loudspeakers can be safely added in the future without the risk of overloading the system. Two RCF2321 slave amps are also driven from the mixer and these form the satellite system.