2 Best Four Zone Commercial Mixer Amplifiers on Pro Acoustics Tech Talk Episode 9

On this episode of Pro Acoustics Tech Talk, Nathan and Coltin compare 2 of the best four zone commercial mixer amplifiers featuring the Pure Resonance Audio RZMA120BT and the Speco PL200M.

Hey everybody, thanks for joining us for no, for Noah. For Noah. Noah, where are ya?

Hey everybody, thanks for joining us for another edition of Pro Acoustics Tech Talk. I'm Nathan. I'm Coltin, and we are here today to talk to you all about remote zone mixer amplifiers - how they work, how we can use them for your benefit, what they can do, what they can do for you, and just some of their applications. All right, so Coltin, what do we have here today?

All right. We have a Pure Resonance Audio RZMA120BT and right to my right, we have a Speco PL200M. We really want to kind of decipher what the features are with this guy over here. This is going to be one of our favorites over here and the Speco PL200M, and really dive deep into these guys and you know, get you all the knowledge that you'll be needing to make a decision on which one's going to be perfect for what you're doing. So Nathan kind of go over with me what this guy’s story is, why do we like it so much and why do we think people will like it so much?

Yeah, you got it. So, the RZMA, the RZMA120BT is one of my favorite products. I worked on the team on this one. Okay. Basically, we've got a four-zone mixer amp with 120 watts available per output. If you checked out our video a couple of weeks ago we did a basic 70-volt system where I had two zones, basically two different volumes zones. So you can adjust the level inside the restaurant also outside the restaurant. Yeah. Well this takes, it takes it up to the next level, cranks it up a notch. Now we're actually routing the input sources to different areas. So what's that mean? Uh, basically like I mentioned, you got your four zones. Those four zones are 120 watts at high impedance, 70-volt or low impedance, 4-ohm or any combination thereof between the zones.

So, you can do high impedance mains on one side and then do some low impedance subwoofers on the other. Do that a lot in some local breweries we’ve been working with as far as that goes. Yeah, that makes sense. Then you've got this input routing that I mentioned that allows you to actually route any of those inputs to any of the four zones or any combination thereof. So, what's that mean? If you've got, you know, a normal restaurant, you might want to be able to play background music in the main dining room, have a little bit different music playing on the entry area. Maybe even have the hostess be able to page to just the front area, say, “Hey, your table's ready” without interrupting the guys in the back. Yeah. Sports bar needs to be able to play the big game, and then the outdoor patios got some different music playing. Sometimes you need the game, sometimes just need the music. But at closing time you need to be able to shut it off because you don't want to bug the neighbors. Get the cops out there. So, the RZMA lets you do that. No problem. Cool. It's got three selectable mic or line level inputs. That means you can hook up microphones and you can also hook up line level sources like cable boxes, blue ray players, CD players, XM radio receivers, things like that. And then you've also got a couple of spare RCA inputs also. It also does have our favorite Bluetooth Media Player built in. So, you've got Bluetooth streaming and got an SD card and a USB input. You've also got a FM tuner and all of that portion can be controlled by an infrared remote.

There's also some really cool stuff on this unit where we can actually record to that USB and SD card. If you're interested in that, you're going to want to make sure and reach out to us about that for the time being. That's for another video, another conversation. But cool stuff that can be done. You've also got mic one as a priority. So that gives you the ability to mute your other sources. And then you've also got a 600-ohm telephone input for connecting to feed from a phone system. And then you've also got line level outputs on all of those zones. Yeah. So, line level outputs, what are those for? So I can take this mixer amp and actually allow any of those zones to drive additional amp channels so that I can do tons of speakers.

Yeah. So, we can do even bigger restaurants. We can do, um, we've been doing some cool baseball field complexes with these, you know, quadplexes, 10-plexes, things like that. And then you can also use this for large scale paging beyond, you know, the hospital or retail or that kind of thing. Gotcha. We also have our PZM16, pardon me, PMZ16, which is our remote paging microphone. These can be daisy chained with just conventional ethernet cable and they have first the ability to page to any or all of the four zones and then also built in chime to maybe make a tone. You know, if you think about if you're in a department store or something like that and hear the tone overhead, you know, there's about to be an announcement in hospitals, that kind of thing.

That's a game changer. So, a very popular unit there. If you have questions about how you can implement that, definitely reach out to us and give us a call. But with both of these units, like I described, routing the inputs to one zone or another couldn't be easier. You basically have, you know, your rows of inputs and you have big white buttons or black buttons in the case over there. Where you just push the button, the light glows to tell you it's been routed to that particular zone. Easy. Yeah, very simple to do. Once again, you can trust a hostess, a bar tender, manager, anybody like that to route these types of systems and have it go where it needs to without, knock on wood, but very simple. Uh, and the alternative, if you're curious, there are options for like digital signal processing and things like that, which we do love. We sell lots of those types of products from lots of our manufacturers. But to set it up, you gotta know what you're doing and you've got to have some pretty in depth programming, whereas some of these analog solutions, very simple and we can walk you through anything over the phone that you might get stuck on. And definitely get you rock and rolling on what you need. Sure, sure. I guess we should move it on over here. We've got the Speco PL200M - very similar in a lot of ways: four zone mixer amp, everything I said about the analog input routing stays the same, and very similar in terms of number of inputs. But you don't have the Bluetooth media player. You also don't have the ability to hook up the super cool PMZ16, but you still got your 600-ohm inputs, your line level or mic level inputs, and music sources.

And then you've got outputs on all the zones. And with this one, you have 40 watts per channel, low impedance or high impedance instead of the 120 watts per channel. Yeah, we wanted to make sure and give you a plenty under the hood with the RZMA120BT. Street price on that guy, you're looking at around $999, available on our website and then also available on our online channels as well. Check out our Amazon store if you'd like. Whereas the Speco falls in a little bit underneath that. Same basic great concept. A little bit less wattage drive, fewer speakers or maybe not as high of wattage of speakers. Still very, very convenient, very helpful, got tons of these out in the field and it's a great product. But if after the bells and whistles you need the big, big horsepower RZMA120BT is the way to go.

And you also get the infrared remote like I mentioned, and those are shipping now. Ready to rock and roll. Yeah. If we can help out with a system design or a recommending the appropriate product for you and what would be best for your application, a pair of speakers along with it and all that kinda good stuff you can reach out to us directly. Our sales line is (888) 256-4112 or you can reach me via email, nathan@proacoustics.com. Now I'm coltin@proacoustics.com. That’s Coltin with an I. Our URL is www.proacousticsusa.com. You'll find links down below for both of these products. If you want to check them out, drop us a line. Let us know that you're out there. Let us know if we can talk about anything that you're interested in, what we can do to help out with any of your audio needs and don't be a stranger. Now, until next time, I'm Coltin. I'm Nathan.