Centralized background music system offers an efficient and economical method of providing user-friendly control of stereo audio source distribution and paging. Now up to 12 audio sources can be selected from elegant touch wall plates in up to 32 output zones. The user can define or change custom source input names with simple wall plate programming. This robust system is scalable and only the required number of wallplates need be ordered. Audio sources and amplifiers can be placed and terminated in the same location as the BMS-2 centralized base unit. Only power and control signals are present on the wall plate cabling. Touch wall plate is the setup and operating interface for both the installer and user. Both zone and system level setup menus are conveniently accessed from any wall plate in the system. During normal operation the user can control audio source selection and volume for that location. There are also 4 user configurable preset buttons per zone for fast selection of favorite program channels. Touch wall plates can be wired in a daisy chain or home run fashion. Up to 10 wall plates can be daisy chained in any single cable run of 750 feet or less. A very flexible paging structure allows for independent page options within the BMS-2 system environment. A priority page input overrides normal program audio and can be used for important announcements or scheduled prerecorded messages.