Can't figure out my intercom speakers

November 4, 2009 7:24 PM

There are stereo speakers in my ceiling and I don't know how to get them to work.

We moved into a house that has an "M&S" intercom/music system built in. In two of the rooms, there are stereo speakers built into the ceilings and there are wall-mounted dials that I presume control the volume. I cannot figure out how to get any sound to come out of these speakers.

At the control panel, there are 11 toggle switches with Intercom / Radio-Intercom / Off / and Monitor positions. Some of these are labeled with different room names and some are not. One is labeled "Master." None say anything about ceiling speakers or about the rooms that have the speakers. I have been playing with various combinations, as well as turning all of the volume controls up and down, but nothing comes out of the ceiling speakers. I have not located any other wall switches or anything else that might make the speakers work.

Does anyone have a system like this? Thanks

posted by Mid to Technology (3 answers total)

I do, but I was blessed (?) to have former owners who documented this for me, and/or to move into a house where it was probably set up a lot simpler than yours was.

When I bought my place, and we had agreed on a selling price, I hammered the sellers with questions repeatedly -- mainly about tech stuff, since I'm a mild geek. So I got them to tell me how the speakers work, among many other things.

In my case, there was one spot -- in this house, it's in the floor in the living room -- where wires come out that you can connect to an amp or high-powered receiver, and shoot audio out. Whatever you shoot into those wires comes out of all those speakers around the house. Then you can go into each room and adjust the individual volume controls in said rooms to your liking.

Your setup sounds more elaborate, but ultimately, there is a place where you have one Left, and one Right, and you can hook up speaker-level (not sure if that's the term, but I made it up to be a term that's opposed to "line-level") audio. Unless that complicated control panel you referred to has an amplifier somewhere in it . . . in which case you can feed it with line-level audio.

Every setup is different, and when the contractors who set it up don't document anything -- or if the sellers don't pass along the documentation to you -- it can really be a bitch. If your trial-and-error doesn't work, you may ultimately have to hire some audio/wiring people to come out to your place, chase down those wires, and then tell you what their findings are. If so, prepare yourself for the possibility that they may want to sell you some hardware to use those speakers -- not (necessarily) because they're looking to gouge you, but maybe because those speakers are part of an unfinished setup which, of course, these contractors YOU hire would be more than happy to help you finish.

Side note: I LOVE having whole-house audio. It seemed like such a silly, totally over-the-top, stupid, gaudy indulgence when I moved into this place, but HOLY FUCK is it cool when I'm entertaining. It'll be hard to move to a place without it . . .
posted by CommonSense at 7:36 PM on November 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Can you contact the previous owners to ask? Or the real estate agent or the installer of the system?
posted by JohnnyGunn at 7:38 PM on November 4, 2009

Like CommonSense says, look for where the stereo was. Some owners have it in the living room, others hide it in a closet. It will probably be on the main floor. Track down this spot and then tell us what wires you see dangling there, and what kind of connectors they have.
posted by zippy at 7:51 PM on November 4, 2009