Simultaneous Cued Mic, Monitor Speaker?

Factual Questions
1

I do various work with PA systems for live and recorded messages. Many have no monitor speaker in fear of feedback. Yet, if the mic’s “push to talk” feature can “cue” a mic, why can’t it simultaneously “uncue” the monitor speaker?

2

I should clarify: By “uncue” (above), I mean interrupt the connection to the monitor speaker the instant the “push to talk” feature of the mic is engaged.

3

In walkie-talkies and other similar devices, the push-to-talk switch does cut out the speaker, but that’s easy to do because the mic and speaker are in the same unit and it’s easy to do the wiring.

In a situation like you’re describing, the switch on the mic does nothing more than complete a circuit inside the microphone and enable it to transmit. The amplifier that the mic is plugged in to doesn’t know or care whether you have pressed the switch.

It would be possible to build some kind of circuitry into the amp to sense whether there was a complete circuit or not, and cut out the speaker accordingly, but that would be a feature of the amp, not the microphone.

4

Thanks for the reply! Perhaps, this is not done simply because, as they say “the view’s not worth the climb?”

5

What would be the sense of the monitor if it did not come on when you used the mic? Not trying to be smart, we just use them so we can hear ourselves.

6

But, Luvly, don’t you struggle with generating the annoyance of feedback???

7

Are we talking about “Your attention please…” public address and paging, or are you asking about stage audio? It’s unfortunate that the term “PA” has come to mean either a “squawk box” paging system (aka Tannoy or 1MC), as well as a high-fidelity and high-power sound system for concert and stage productions.

Your reference to push-to-talk makes me think you’re paging rather than singing. With dedicated hardware, there’s certainly no technical reason the PTT button can’t also cut out a speaker, but how often does a person making announcements need to hear themselves?

One alternate that I’ve encountered in stores is a phone-based paging system that queues the announcement as it is being spoken, then once the user has finished, it is transmitted. This makes it possible to abandon an announcement without anyone hearing it.