Electrovoice 205-4t Manuel D’Utilisation

At this point an equipment list needs to be assembled and the hardware portion of the job can be 
estimated.  Also labor estimates can be done as well after a site inspection has been conducted 
and physical layouts to scale have been constructed. 

Upon completion of a thorough site survey, the system may be specified and quoted. The sales 
engineer may also generate the design and quote, often at the same time as the site survey. 
Success at this stage depends upon experience and product knowledge. 

To avoid ambiguity and confusion at the installation stage, the specifications need to be as 
explicit as possible. Of course, it should enumerate all of the equipment proposed to do the job, 
and should include both a block diagram and an accurate floor plan with annotations regarding 
construction. In addition, it should provide details such as local volume control locations and 
height, the desired location for amp racks, and even names of the employees who are expected 
to use the system. To forestall disputes and clarify responsibility if changes are required during or 
after installation, the customer should be asked to sign a written agreement governing the 
specification. 

Many contracting companies simply communicate the sales engineer’s design directly to their 
installation department, who are charged with putting the system in and making it work. There are 
potential problems with this approach. For example, the salesman’s natural tendency is to over-
design and oversell when he can; if the client is amenable, the result can be an excessively 
complicated (and problematic) system. Moreover, it is easy to make mistakes in the flush of a 
sale, and these may be compounded when the system goes in. 

To address such pitfalls, it makes good sense to have each proposal reviewed by a second 
engineering employee whose approval should be required before the specification goes to 
installation. At this stage, design details can be fine-tuned and potential problems can be 
addressed to assure that the design is feasible, efficient and free of unnecessary redundancy. 

The distributed sound system market is highly competitive and margins are small. It makes good 
sense to do everything you can to avoid problems at the installation stage and to be ready to 
handle callbacks or last minute changes smoothly. One way to do this is to anticipate problems 
before they occur and build contingency plans into your operation. 

For example you should always have some inexpensive “fixes” at the ready. Say that the 
customer decides to change his floor plan at the last minute, requiring you to add another zone to 
the system. You can offer an additional MA series shelf-mount mixer/amplifier that enables you to 
offer a painless quote for the requested change, and come out a hero. You can even avoid the 
additional cost of installing a volume control in the new zone by putting the amplifier on a shelf in 
the zone. 

Similarly, it may make sense to pull a couple of extra cable pairs (both speaker lines and mike 
lines) when making your home runs. That way, if there’s a base that wasn’t covered in the 
specification, you can make it up onsite. The practice also facilitates expanding the system at a 
later date. 

Be sure that the floor plans you use are up-to-date, and keep communications open with the 
client. Particularly if you are limited to using existing wiring, you need to know if the client’s plans 
for space usage will remain the same. Otherwise, you may end up with a real headache — like 
having the emergency room announcements directed to the pediatric ward 

Finally, it is vitally important to be sure that you know who in the client’s company is authorized to 
make decisions when questions arise on the job site. If the building manager tells your installers 
to put the amp racks in the basement you don’t want the owners calling you and insisting that 
they should have been in the second floor office 

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