[Arny Krueger]

"Kruse" wrote in message

Okay, this might be a long post, but please bare with me.
Our church as a Maas-Rowe carrilon. To anybody who
doesn't know what this is, basically, it's a jukebox on a
timer that plays music through an outdoor loudspeaker at
programmed times. You can program this machine to play
one or as many songs as you want and when it is done,
will shut itself off and wait for the next time the timer
tells the program to operate. It counts the songs played
by listening to an almost inaudible buzz after each song.
When it hears this buzz, (probably about 5K hertz) it
counts that as one song. THE BUZZ IS IMPORTANT FOR THIS
MACHINE TO COUNT, and without it, will not work. This
instrument is about 20 years old and the music is stored
on 8- track tapes and is played with a rack mounted 8
track player. While it originally came with about 12-15
tapes, they are now all dragging and are wore out. (Yes,
the head has been cleaned and it has a good belt)
Maas-Rowe does not make any more 8 tracks because they
want you to upgrade your machine to CDs, at a cost of $8K
to $15K.

As was already pointed out, a comptuter can replace the specialized hardware
of a carrilon.

Here is an example of software that was written for the purpose:

http://www.topshareware.com/ChurchBe...nload-3125.htm

We've got a Carrilon that was implemented as specialized hardware, too. The
basic bell sounds are stored in the dedicated logic unit.

Interestingly enough, the least reliable part of the system has been the SR
equipment. The logic unit's analog output is mic level, and the system came
with a small PA amp. A Bogen or a Toa or something like that. The PA amp
fried its power amp section, which was replaced with a mono amp. Later on
that fried, and that function is now replaced by one channel a Behringer
A500. The preamp section of the PA amp fried later on, and that is now a
little Behringer mixer.

We're thinking of replacing it, not because it is broken but because we have
to keep it set for correct time.

If we replace it with a PC that is on the web, the PC will automatically set
its time to the web, and that will solve our (less pressing) problem. I've
been working to wire the outlying parts of our church for networking, which
will enable this change.