Elk M1G Voice Announcements over Russound?

I'm planning on using the M1G and I'm also planning on using Russound CAV6.6 with Compoint for my whole house audio. Can the M1G play its voice announcements over the whole house speakers?

I'm trying to decide if I need Elk speakers or not.

I've seen this thread:
Elk M1G and Russound
but I still don't understand enough about the Elk to be 100% sure what this means.

Thanks.

I know you can change output 1 on the elk to give line-level output. I would assume you could plug this into the Compoint stuff. I haven't played with the Compoint equipment at all, but if there is a contact to key up the paging/intercom system, it should be possible to key it up with an output on the ELK every time there was a voice announcement.

I'm also eager to hear if others are doing this.

It certainly can be set up to make Elk annoucements through a whole house system. The main question is: is it worth the hassle?

I think the biggest issue that need to be addressed is if using the whole house audio system, you need to make sure it is quick enough to change inputs so as to not cut off any of the ELK annoucement. I think this is probably the hardest part of the whole project. It the whole house system has a paging input, then it would be relatively easy to close an Elk output just prior to any voice annoucement and that would trigger the whole house system to change over to the paging input.

The other concern is if there is a power outage, then you potentially loose your main source of annoucements. If you use the ELK speakers and a properly designed system, it can all run off battery power during an outage. Of course having the whole house system on a UPS cuts this down some, but I think you'll still want some ELK speakers in strategic locations as a failsafe backup.

I've looked into using the Elk three zone two way communication board to provide up to three zones of outputs using ELK speakers. I personally like this idea because I can cheaply have zones and build some logic in to prevent normal annoucements going to certain zones at certain periods of time (like the kids rooms at night). This can be done using some relays to turn on and off each zone as needed.

Just my 2 cents.

This is my plan as well. ELK announcements over COMPOINT intercom. I think nobody else has done it yet though. I just placed the hardware order, but the house is still a month away from drywall, I think. I bought an extra intercom keypad I intend to hack as needed to pull it off. I was hoping russound had a serial protocol so I could direct announcements to specific rooms, etc.. They laughed at me when I asked about it though. I'm hopeful I can hack the protocol anyway, but we'll see.

I'm hoping the delay will be minimal as the intercom is expected to be ready for immediate messaging. Whole House audio systems often have significant startup delay.

sic0048's backup idea is a good one. Of course you still need to have the horns for sounding alarm. My idea is that during a fire, the horn goes off and the intercom tells you what zone is triggering.

--Bob

You can pick up a multi-channel mixer on ebay that is serial port controllable for under $100. I don't remember the name of the one that people recommended, but it's been posted here on the forum elsewhere.

Thanks for the replies. I'm leaning towards staying with proven configurations so I may just add Elk speakers...we'll see.

rbroders: I hope that you'll keep posting here about your results. I haven't even broken ground yet so I have time to plan. Good luck!