It’s hard to stay aware of all of the features and capabilities that a robust system like Vocia offers. Here are a few things you might not know:

  1. Vocia knows when paging station microphones stop working
    When a microphone is not in use, the paging station “listens” for ambient (background) acoustic noise.  If it cannot hear ambient noise (which might happen in a very quiet room), a test tone is sent to a separate transducer located in the microphone.  This tone is inaudible to users but is “heard” by a properly functioning microphone.  If the paging station cannot detect the ambient noise or the test tone, a microphone fault is signaled.
  2. Vocia paging stations deliver intelligible audio from even the loudest voice
    Biamp’s paging stations have more than 30dB of headroom (overload margin) between the microphones and the A/D converter. Once signals are in the digital domain, compression prevents signal peaks from causing distortion.
  3. There are no pure amplifiers in the Vocia family
    The Vocia family includes several products that look like amplifiers and act as amplifiers, yet they do much more.  Yes, you can connect almost any loudspeaker to these units, from 4Ω (low-Z) to 100V (“constant voltage”) and 30 watts to 600 watts.  But look beneath the covers and you will find much more than just an amplifier.

    These units process multiple paging and background signals from the CobraNet network so that no central router/processor is needed.  They also store emergency announcement messages, provide a complete range of user adjustable DSP audio processing and comprehensively report on their internal health.  In combination with Biamp’s ELD-1 end-of-line detection device, they detect and report speaker line faults for any speaker load type.

We’ll share more details about additional features of Vocia soon.