B

Bushcaddy

Well Known Member
I have a PMA 4000 audio panel. I also have a Garmin 496. I know from research here on VAF that the audio from the Garmin needs to come out of the 1/8 jack on the back of the 496 and go to annother 1/8 accessory jack that is hooked to the music input of the PMA 4000. I would also like to be able to use an Ipod and don't want to have to unplug the 496 and lose any warnings while the music is playing. I'm wondering if I can parallel two music jacks and plug in both devices to the single music input on the audio panel???
I sent an email to PS Engineering as well but thought I'd throw the question out here to see if the brain trust has an answer. thanks....

UPDATE: Spoke to Mark at PS Engineering...can't parallel the jacks, he did think there had to be a way to do this though
 
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Hi Don,
One thing I would consider is that if your audio panel doesn't have enough aux inputs, that you use one on the radio, if it has them. My EFIS has "Betty" and I originally had it piped into my only aux input on my intercom. It was causing a significant audio problem, so I called the people at Flightcom and they recommended having Betty go into the iCom A200 radio aux input. That worked out perfectly.

You'll probably have to strip one end of the 1/8" jack and have the signal wire crimped onto a pin for your radio. That's how I had to do it.
 
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A 4000- many audio in-

Bushcaddy said:
I would also like to be able to use an Ipod and don't want to have to unplug the 496 and lose any warnings while the music is playing. I'm wondering if I can parallel two music jacks and plug in both devices to the single music input on the audio panel???
Click to expand...

I would install the audio in one of the unswitched audio inputs and leave the music input.....for music. Problems with impeadance matching can drag down the audio in with intercom/panels. That 4000 is a good unit with many other audio ins; just for what you are trying to do...my 2 cents
 
You could use one of these:

http://www.vx-aviation.com/page_2.html#AMX-2A_more

or....

Some people just parallel the inputs but use a resistor on each source before the summing junction which connects to the input like this:

source#1-------/\/\/\/\/--------input to intercom----------/\/\/\/\/\---------source#2

This is a simple passive mixer. This keeps the sources from fighting each other.
 
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wired through a switch

I wired my 496 through a switch to the PS3000 so you can switch between the 496/XM or external music input. I also found a circuit on the web that would allow you to feed the 496 external speaker output (brown wire) into one of the other inputs for the voice alerts but decided I did not want to risk frying the intercom :)
If you are interested in the schematics (.sch format) let me know and I will email them to you
 
Others have given some good hints. One thing we usually do in this situation (and even with full blown audio panels) is to use a switching aux jack which normally will leave the music source wired direct (through the jack) and then when you plug in the Ipod/CD Player or whatever, it shuts off the feed from the 496 and switches to the feed of the plugged in unit. No relays needed, no balancing, drain, or backfeed to worry about.

My 2 cents as usual!

Cheers,
Stein
 
Dual Headphone Y connector

A dual headphone Y connector may work. They have them at Radio Shack. "The Shack" as they want to be called now.
 
It's not good practice to parallel audio outputs directly, ie. don't connect two outputs to one input. For your music input, find another existing input, or go with the mixer Brantel suggested.
 
3 audio inputs in to one-works fine

I have a Flightcom 403 intercom with a single stereo music input. I have my D180 audio alarms, stereo Ipod and stereo Garmin 496 audio outputs all connected to the single music input. After fiddling with a few resistors (voltage dividers circuits) the system is "balanced" and seems to work fine. I can hear the Dynon alarms, Ipod music and the Garmin alerts all at the same time. Sure there are a lot of sounds hitting my eardrums concurrently but you can distinctly hear each one.

I don't know if this will be true with your setup but you might want to give it a try. Resistors are cheap.
 
SteinAir said:
Others have given some good hints. One thing we usually do in this situation (and even with full blown audio panels) is to use a switching aux jack which normally will leave the music source wired direct (through the jack) and then when you plug in the Ipod/CD Player or whatever, it shuts off the feed from the 496 and switches to the feed of the plugged in unit. No relays needed, no balancing, drain, or backfeed to worry about.

My 2 cents as usual!

Cheers,
Stein
Click to expand...
Hey Stein, I believe what you are describing is what Brent helped me wire with my PM3000. We wired a "pass through" input jack on the passenger side of the panel and a regular input jack on the pilot side. Is this what you are referring to?

If so, will this allow for what Don is wanting? Will he be able to have the 496 audio warnings come through his headset while he is listening to music from his IPod that is plugged into the other jack?

If my setup is similar to what you described above, I thought, the way Brent described my setup, was that if I have a music source plugged into the pilot jack and then a separate music source is plugged into the passenger "pass through" jack the passenger source would shut off the pilot source.

Of course your description to this post may be totally different than what I am thinking about in my setup but that is why I am asking the questions. If it is different I would like to understand what the differences are.
 
Great suggestions

Guys I really like some of these ideas. I think that AP 60 would definitely be the way to go if I wanted to be able to play music 100% of the time. What I am going to do is what Stein suggested. This is a simple stero jack that has a SPDT switch built into it that will allow the 496 warnings to always flow to the audio panel UNLESS another device is plugged into the jack, then that device will flow to the audio panel and not the 496 . I would only be listening to music at altitude anyway and never during takeoff and landing or while low and close to terrain. This eliminates having to plug and unplug two devices as the 496 would be wired by defualt to the audio panel and I would always be unplugging the Ipod when low or in a landing/takeoff configuration anyway, so I'm going to keep it very simple and install this jack which Stein was nice enough to put in the mail to me today:)
 
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