Radio Interference 1

[gknight1]

I need some help. We have some major radio interference coming in our bulding. The main problem is you can hear the radio station over paging speakers, so we have to turn down the volume of the speakers, otherwise we can here this radio station playing all day. The cable to the speakers are Cat5e, so I'm thinking that could be the issue, shouldnt it be 18/2 or 18/4 shielded? It's so bad you can turn up the volume of the computer speakers outside and it comes over those as well.

 

[Dexman]

Using proper cabling to run between the amp & speakers would be a good starting point.

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[robertjo24]

I would also ensure all your systems are properly bonded and grounded.

 

[SYQUEST]

The first thing you need to do is, isolate the entry point(s) of the radio interference. You will need to use a step-by-step process to fix this.

....JIM....

 

[trvlr1]

Do you have multiple inputs to a paging amp, and is one of them a radio or Muzak or some such option? If so, turning off or turning down thos inputs may help.

 

[wires]

It's fairly unlikely it is an issue with the speaker wire.

Step 1. Turn off amp.

Step 2. Disconnect all inputs from amp.

Step 3. Turn on amp. Hopefully the radio will be gone.

Step 4. If radio is gone start connecting one input at a time to find where the radio is coming from.

Unless this is a 2-way paging system you will almost always find that the problem is on the input side of the amp. One clue is that the radio volume goes up and down with the amp's volume setting. It's likely that one of your input devices is defective, connected incorrectly or the grounding is wrong.

It is possible that something is wrong with you amp. Substituting another amp would be another thing to try if disconnecting inputs didn't find the problem.

Good luck!

 

[Mountainbear]

Did you use all 4 pair of wires on the cat5e? I had a radio problem with residential phones years ago and ended up using both pairs from the road to the house to fix the problem.
If the radio is fairly loud I would agree with wires that the issue is most likly the input.

 

[KZ9Y]

You may find this helpfull for RF problems (attached).



>****

 

[Lostpbx]

One easy little fix is to take an unused pair from the cat5 and ground it to a good source, you would have to do that for all affected speakers, but it works almost all the time. Like everyone has already said, it's a grounding problem.