RE: TTS and how to do it?

["Kenneth Watt" <kennwatt@xxxxxxx>]

> Yep, I am chasing down this route at the moment also! for me the
biggest
> problem is power on delay...  all of our amps are soft-on to
protect
the
> speakers, so from X-10, on to sound appearing is about six seconds,
or
two
> rings of an inbound call... too long!!

No, you're right that's *way* too long!

What I was trying to work out was could we come up with one central low
power amp that could, say, drive eight zones of a single speaker
install
which could be switched.

Now, not being an electronics guru like some here I'll float the idea
and then get shot down in flames ;)

What if you used a single channel only to drive all the speakers wired
in parallel to the central amp and used a relay board to simple make or
break one of the feeds to the actual speaker, is that feasible? The
reason being that, obviously, for simple speech you do not need any
great quality, only clarity for voice which means bass/treble is not
really a problem so long as the voice can be clearly made out. I know
this is probably not exactly a pukka way to do it, but will it work?

> I am also using the PC, and had thought about grouping my zones into
a
> simple "all-time" and "silent during night-time"
set, then using
stereo
> Amps
> to drive pairs of zones, so that all of the "night time"
zones are on
the
> left hand side, with the "all the time" zones on the right
hand
side...

the above would stop this problem and allow you to simply shut down the
zones you want and, if needed, switch the amp off via an X10/AD10 combo
when in bed, get the controller to power it up again in the morning. In
theory, if the amp was IR controllable then volume could be adjusted
too.

> so, software control can change the balance 100% right during the
> evening.

Only if you want TTS during the night, frankly I reckon it would
probably scare the sh!t outta me if I was sleeping! ;)

> Perhaps not the most elegant, as I imagine there would be a quiet
(but
> probably VERY annoying) hisssss from the muted speakers..

Yes, a very irritating thing, I couldn't live with that either!

K.



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