Bcakground music on MLX Phones

[jwenger]

I have a Legend R7 at home.

Can the music on hold source be fed to the MLX display telephone speakers for background music. I thought I had done this in the past but can not find the feature in the manual.

Perhaps I am thinking of our old Toshiba system???

 

[ttech]

Can't be done.

 

[eltorodeoro]

i have never understood why this is such a popular feature. do people really enjoy listening to barry manilow that much? i displaced an executone system with a merlin a few years ago. never mind that the system was 10 times more functional. the users were pissed they couldn't listen to the MOH. i couldn't believe it. sell them an IP Office. its right up there with toshiba and executone.

 

[tdaugirdas]

Here's an old post by aussie88:

Another one of my experiments that turned out just fine. People complain about not being able to have background music on the merlins, but who says you cant?? Take a patch cable and wire it to a trunk port, than plug the other end into a page port (or a designated trunk port). For music, just access the co port, slap the phone on speaker, and Viola! Background music through the phones.

Tom Daugirdas,
President
STCG, Inc.
stcg.com

 

[eltorodeoro]

brilliant, actually. but only one person can access that at a time, right?

 

[tdaugirdas]

Never tried it - to see if more than one phone can access the line. Since technically you should be able to conference at least 3 inside phones - that gets at least 3 speakers working. Check it out on a lab system - at least it's a start. If you have plenty of extra ports available you could pipe the same music source into several ports.

Tom Daugirdas,
President
STCG, Inc.
stcg.com

 

[FAdvocates]

The only reason why this isn't a perfect workaround is the fact the phone is considered "off-hook", so all of the coverage path logic - as well as your DSS buttons, and even how the phone rings once then stops when you're already "on the line".

I suppose if you understand the drawbacks, and everyone agrees they're not that big of a deal, it'd work great for ya!

- Joel

 

[merlinman]

Allow me to clarify a few things:

First, Connect the MUSIC SOURCE to a LINE PORT that has been progrmmed to be a PAGING port.

IN so doing, you can only have 1 person listen at a time,


HOWEVER, depending on the release, you can have 3 external paging ports on a LEGEND/MAGIX so you can actually have 3 people do this.

I have it set up on my system, but I am the only one who uses it.

 

[jwenger]

Regarding why I would want this? As I said this is in my home and I have a Windows Media Server playing files from my personal library.

It broadcasts to my friends on the Internet and to PCs throughout the house. Some of the PCs are connected to stereos and to my home theatre. I also pick it up on my wireless iPaq.

I thought it would be nice to use as music on hold and background music on the phone system and future paging system.

So I used a MOH adapter to connect to trunk 804 on my system. I programmed this to be a paging port and tried to call it by dialing 804. I get a warble tone. I tried adding it to paging group 793 and calling 793 but I get a busy signal.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for all the help!

John

 

[eltorodeoro]

#9-804?

Sorry for the snotty remarks earlier. I can see where it would be pretty keen in a home setup.

 

[jwenger]

That works great. The sound is surprisingly good for a speakerphone especially considering all the cabling and adapters I am running through to make this work.

I plugged the MOH adapter into a Cat5 jack to get back to the phone system from my server. Then I put a splitter in my MOH port to feed the paging port.

Very nice! Big thanks to everyone for all the help!

 

[jgideon]

This is also a 'standard' feature on Nortel Norstars.

If the Merlin were configured square, couldn't you remove privacy and have multiple people listen, or does the 'two internal two external' conferencing rule still apply?

 

[merlinman]

No, That can not work.

A regular "LINE" can not be accessed without loop current.

The system does allow paging ports to be accessed without loop current.

That's why this work around works.

Most of us on this forum don't care what Nortel does.

 

[jgideon]

thanks for the explantion merlinman--I hadn't thought about loop current.

maybe YOU don't care about Nortel, but others might--someone earlier mentioned where they _thought_ they had seen this working, so I thought the the information was on topic.

 

[2BAvoice]

Partner systems will also let you monitor the MOH source, and I like Partners, but this IS the wrong forum.

 

[merlinman]

I was just being grouchy.

There are a lot of things I tried to get them to change on the Merlin product, but they just didn't listen.

Now they don't even talk.

 

[jgideon]

phashew... I thought I'd managed to make you PO'd....

 

[Danny28]

Slightly off subject -
That's great it worked jwenger, but just be careful about what you are playing. Even if you purchased a CD for the music you play, and even if you are doing it from home, it is illegal for you to broadcast commercial music for your friends over the internet (no matter how few) as per the MCPA. It is also illegal for most commercial music to be used as music on hold unless your have purchased ASCAP licensing or the like.

 

[eltorodeoro]

buzzkill.

 

[HiDesert]

When was the last time you heard of someone getting busted
by ASCAP for having "unlicensed" MOH. And who cares...at
this stage of life....sat tv, internet music...so many
sources for music....ASCAP is a toothless lion and how many techs have followed the rules.?????