What are the rest of the letters after DHY-02? I’ve managed to download the manual and those identify which kind it is.

its a pity I’m not closer as I’ve got an entire phone exchange in my house to test things like that, although I only have analogue extensions or IP-phones rather than Euro-ISDN (and am building a manual switching system recreation complete with a old style magneto ringing generator!)

From just looking at it appears to be a dual analogue model, as the two linecords have BT plugs on the end.

Euro-ISDN circuits are normally presented on an RJ45 socket marked with a phone company logo (some countries will use the existing phone wiring and sockets, or for critical circuits sometimes they are hard wired to the old style block terminal with exposed bare metal (which can be a source of angst and pain if they are fed with “double battery” (-96 to -120 V DC) (not only are they difficult to configure, you can get an unpleasant shock at all times rather than just when the phone is ringing). The telephone company or anyone who wires extension circuits is supposed to put a lightning flash warning sticker and a marker on any wires carrying this sort of voltage; this is not always done.

That is a particularly good hybrid, way better than the ones in our community radio station. Those let through the rough ringing signal into the audio as well as a harsh noise when the circuit is seized (neither of which are good for the monitor LS or the ears of those wearing cans!)

The lack of a ringing detector (it works like an answering machine) isn’t a disaster for radio station use as most of them already have a bright lamp triggered by ringing voltage put up in the studio.

Also, automatically seizing a phone line and not correctly answering it by a human or recorded message eventually gets folk in trouble with the Communications Ministry (as it could be costing the person at the other end money) so that feature isn’t as valuable unless you’ve got some extra call distribution equipment to connect it to, and these days its all done within the internal phone exchange rather than at a telephone hybrid….

@DaftFader 702239 wrote:

I’ve just put one of these up for sale as well!

Sonifex RB-DS2 Stereo Delay Synchroniser and Time-Zone Delay

Seems ridiculously priced for what it does imo (more then £1000 new!), but I guess it’s all about accuracy and versatility (and sound quality ofc) …

Considering I bought an analog delay unit of ebay for £50 :laugh_at:. Although mine only does a few ms up to a second or two of delay, and has no timezone function built in lol. (I jest ofc)

these are widely used in both radio and TV partly to offset the effects of lag and time skew when contributors are in foreign lands on satellite or IP-circuits, (otherwise the time can actually appear to go backwards even on a circuit to Belgium, I’ve heard that on an online station) and are widely used locally to delay a live broadcast with public contributors by a few seconds to keep out “analogue trolls” who would swear on the phone ins.

£1000 is peanuts compared to a fine from the Communications Ministry for letting strong language go to TX before your countries watershed especially at times when many kids may be listening or watching.

Not sure if you’re old enough to remember Ray Cokes on MTV, and his show which had a lot of swearing and adult stuff in it, and usually went to TX at 23:30 UK civil time (thus well after midnight for the more religious European nations).

At first glance was not unlike the sort of kids/youth show we once had on Saturday mornings on most channels; they would usually TX early AM saturday.

When playout was still at the old TVAM building (now knocked in and the site used for offices), one intern at MTV Europe (probably English) got their times mixed up and put a 11:30 (AM) TX barcode on the tape. In those days the tapes went into a big rack and a Japanese robot system automatically picked them out from the barcode, inserted them into the Betacam SP VCR, cued them up and started the TX, and there are less tech ops (sometimes none) at weekends.

By the time anyone there had noticed; the show was already on air, complete with all the language; loads of middle class London parents jammed Ofcoms switchboard; and MTV got fined about €138 000 by Ofcom. It wasn’t long after that TVAM studios were cleared out,all the British staff laid off and playout shifted to Poland (where it is most likely 2 people and a robot system). At least Ofcom did use the €138 000 to fund the community radio stations (which appeared soon afterwards).

by “internal extension” do you mean a telephone socket wired in parallel with the main one for the building, or an extension connected to a PABX (where you would normally have to dial “9” for an outside call?)

Also do you have a multimeter, an “inserter 2A” (the tool used for connecting to telephone sockets) and some spare telephone wire (or cat5/6 solid cable?)

Unfortunately not only does this device try to be “smart” it uses a lot of current from the phone line ( a whole 40 mA ) which is strong by todays standards; some newer telephone circuits do not like kit like this and might not let it seize the line or would present a lower voltage than it expects for a “seize” condition (I would have to check the ETSI standard but its 900+ pages long); and there are a shit ton of internal options on the line cards.

PM me a current email address and I’ll send you the manual…

@DaftFader 702309 wrote:

Oh and by extension, I mean like if it was connected to an outside line you’d have to dial 9 to get out. AFAIK it’s just an internal system for calling different parts of the building, but run through the main building phone network.

you can also get PABX extensions which have level 9 barred (preventing them making outside calls) – with others on the same system being permitted to do so; Dialling 9 on many of them would just return an unobtainable tone; to confuse matters further there are Centrex lines which do go to the Telephone Exchange (either BT or NTL/VM) but work as both internal and external lines.

The telephone network was the worlds most complex device after the original pipe organ (which Christians, Jews, Muslims and many other faiths still often use) and adding computers to it makes everything yet more complex.

Telephone engineers the world over are taught:

• always assume a circuit is defective and/or misconnected at the other end until you have definitely proven otherwise
• a copper pair of telephone wires might be energised to any random voltage including full mains (due to a wiring fault); although this is thankfully uncommon in Europe
• signalling voltages, protocols and timings of these vary not just between countries but between regions of them (its not uncommon to order 3 “identical” circuits from BT and get different signalling)
• the telephone company very often screws things up (even if you work for it)
• don’t strip the telephone wires with your teeth nor hold on to them with bare hands

the “telephone line” you are connecting the hybrid to might be the other end of a VOIP adapter; these often only have -24V battery and often cannot supply more than about 25mA which is plenty enough for a modern telephone with good wiring but a device like that the other end of ropey cable like CCA (copper covered aluminium) or CCS (copper covered steel) might not work.

This is why many telecoms engineers turn to religion (instead of or as well as cigarettes, pipes, booze and whatever other stuff the law or their faith permits) and any Frenchman who had to connect any device to France Télécom would often be reduced to tears (I can’t blame them TBH as analogue circuits had 5 different types and some of them were also at 96-120 V DC.

Funnily enough I was using the newer model of this yesterday, the HY03 (they are common in corporate-AV-world for speakers giving presentations over the phone from America etc). Afraid I don’t know as much about them as I should, as they generally ‘just work’ when you plug it into an appropriate phone socket (for me, it’s usually an ethernet line patched into the venue/company’s phone system and converted to RJ11 for connection to the hybrid). Never really had to fuck with the settings on the unit.

If yours is like the ones I’m used to, it should be as simple as:
– Plug standard phone handset into ‘handset socket’
– Connect phone line to ‘line’
– Power on
– Pick up handset – you should hear dial tone (if you don’t then something not right and needs sorting before going any further – I’d tend to suspect the line rather than the unit)
– Connect ‘output’ to a spare channel on desk
– Connect ‘input’ to a post-fade mix containing everything except the channel you just connected the output to (called a ‘clean-feed’ – prevents the caller from hearing themselves and creating feedback) – or for testing purposes just feed it with an ipod or whatever
– Pick up handset and call your mobile
– Answer your phone. You should be able to have a two-way conversation between the two phones
– Bash the big button on the hybrid to patch the call into the desk

Sounds like GL is a lot more clued up on these things than I am anyway, but that’s the procedure I use and I’ve never had any issues.

Incidentally the hybrid didn’t work yesterday, as the phone lines in the room had been unpatched down in some basement room that nobody had security clearance to enter (being a large, well-known corporate bank), and from what I gathered, all of their network switchgear was controlled remotely from a different site in Bangalore. So it didn’t get used.

@DaftFader 702380 wrote:

I could hear the dial tone, could connect to another phone, but pressing the seize button, would not seize the line on either of the two lines that run through the unit …

could well be a -24V PABX extension (station) connection; many of these would not be able to supply the 40mA the hybrid requires on top of whatever the telephone draws from the line – on many of them the PABX sees this as a short circuited line and automatically disconnects it. The Sonifex manual warns that “some adjustment may be required” to make the hybrid work on a PABX extension; but does not unfortunately specify exactly what is involved. If the PABX objects to what is being connected to it there might be some sort of alarm appearing somewhere but it could be on the CCU (Central Control Unit) or only present on a systemphone/operators console.

The whole system might well be older than you are! The use of RJ11 sockets in the UK (before DSL became widespread) was a reminder to site owners, electricians and maintenance staff or anyone else who had to connect up telephones that “this is a PABX extension circuit, not a direct telephone line”.

You may unfortunately have to cart the hybrid to some random part of the building where there definitely is a normal telephone line and try it out there….

At first I was a bit surprised to hear this about a Methodist church; they are like a more British version of Lutherans and these are the kinds of Protestants who actually have some ear for music rather than just ranting or preaching to everyone they are going to burn in Hell. Some of the C of E are musical enough; my (supposedly secular) junior school always sung Christian songs at assembly.

More than one bit of the Bible advocates “making a joyful noise” for Jesus; music is a big part of most other faith groups.

Coincidentally I read a paper by this USA Professor about the poor quality of many church sound systems; I got the impression he was referring to the churches where most of the congregation would be middle class white people. The Methodists were the inspiration for black people in USA (especially slaves) to set up their own churches (well known for producing excellent musicians). In Europe, a famous musician with a Lutheran childhood is Armin Van Buuren.

To be fair the Americans would not have had the luxury of having ancient churches (often built with acoustics in mind) as in Europe; added to which a lot of buildings electric wiring is not correctly connected to “God’s good Earth” (TN-C-S is bad enough as it is, and gets worse if the neutral and protective earth get swapped round at any point).

Last weekend and the start of this week I actually listened to the entire Radio Maria NL may marathon (they were running into financial difficulties, but managed to raise €36 000!) using a Raspberry PI and cheap USB soundcard (the internal one is not very strong and sounds a bit rough); and the youth programme on Monday evening (presented by Lars (the dude who I previously said was what Daftfader would look like if he were Catholic and Dutch), and Bob (another lad in his 20s). I can now understand all of it and RMNL has played a big part in improving my Dutch.

They had speeches from the Pope set to breakbeats; a phone in with some bishop from Limburg (probably old enough to be my Dad) who told a joke and sung in his local dialect (not unlike that of Groningen), with a house instrumental used as a music bed, as well as a young lad and a woman (who may have been brother and sister) singing and playing guitar in the chapel (in both English and Dutch!). Of course they also said (or sung) their prayers; but it was in a way similar to modern music. It was a very upbeat programme; They actually managed 1,5 hours of Catholic radio without Angst or Pianos (a near miracle!)

I never thought I’d find myself listening to a religious station for many hours but RMNL are a run like a giant community radio station – they are way better than what Hilversum broadcasts and even with resource/technical limitations (such as one set of playout channels on one desk being connected differently to those in another studio) pay close attention to the sound quality.