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Line 6 Digital Wireless Systems


boswell

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Line 6 Mics

Now is the time to update BR on my experiences with Line6.

All below relate to the XDV70 Lavaliere mic, I do not not have any experience with the XDV70 Handheld.

 

I took the plunge last year and bought a Line6 XDV70L Lavaliere mic system. It performed very well out of the box, no problems.

To test the support side of Line 6, I asked them how to connect a CPC headset mic to the beltpack and for the values of the resistor/capacitor on the pcb that was inside the 4pole mini XLR mic plug. After many emails, I got some sort of answer after 14 days. They don't seem to have thought that a user may want to use a headset, never mind solder their own plug on!

I (and others) then asked on the Line6 website & on BR (see above) how multiple systems will work, interference etc. We asked could we have 12 systems on sale/return to test out in theatre use. I offered an 18 performance run of Panto to test them. Line 6 didn't appear to be interested.

As the CH69 surrender was just around the corner, I took a chance & purchased another 4 XDV70L systems, making 5 in all.

The 4 new systems arrived, one beltpack was faulty in that it would not switch off, I didn't have time to return it as the show was imminent. Racked up all 5 systems.

Then found out via Line6 website that although the blurb says you can daisy chain 12 systems off one pair of aerials, they only recommend that you daisy chain 6. They say there is unity gain across the receiver aerial in/out but they could not explain why you should restrict it to 6.

I fitted a pair of Solwise Cantenna directional aerials and daisy chained all 5 Receivers and then made up 5 headsets using the £5 CPC lav mics.

Panto time, fitted the lead actors with the 5 new Line 6 mics and the rest of the cast had Ch29/69 Senns.

I turned the mics ON 1 hour before the curtain up (Dress rehearsal) and issued them to the cast. Audio quality was very good, better than the Senns. After 2 hrs, just before the interval, the Line 6 mic on one of the energetic leads cut out. At interval, checked the TX and it had stopped transmitting and was very hot. Put a new set of batteries in, all started working OK and I put it down to bad batteries. OK for rest of the show. Next night, the same thing happened so I swapped the Line6 out for a backup Senn. No further problems with that actor. Then over the run of the show, the same thing started to happen to the other Line 6 kit (just the 4 new systems) the original Line 6 was OK. The TX's were getting very hot, over 55C and flattening batteries in 2 hours.

We had the TX's in a pouch under the costumes and they seemed to be overheating and going into thermal runaway. Tried a faulty unit on a belt under the costume and it was OK.

At home, I put a suspect TX into a pouch with a digital thermometer and then wrapped it in a blanket. After 2 hours it was near 60C

Reported all this to Line 6 and they tried to blame the way I was using them. I pointed out that Senn/Toa/Shure equipment all works fine in a pouch under costumes and they then agreed to swap them. 24 hrs later they arrived at my door with 4 new systems and took the old units back. No problems with the new units so I presume it was a batch fault in the Chinese factory.

The Tx's have the facility to set up the TX name, set the channel etc and then lock them so they can't be turned off, muted or interfered with, fantastic, just what I want for the talent. Then it transpires that changing the batteries unlocks them. Line 6 say that is a 'design feature'.

So every show, when I put in new batteries, I have to go through the menu setup and lock them again, it would be a real bind with 12 systems. Senns retains the lock over a battery change!

I store the TX's with no batteries in them and the RX's can be switched OFF for extended periods (they have been off since Jan 18th) I asked Line 6 how long they would retain the user settings, answer, they didn't know! So I face the possibility that when I turn them on next month, I may have to go through all the line6 kit and set it up again.

Enough of the rant, The audio quality is excellent, they work fine with the CPC £5 & £35 headsets, I had no trouble with dropouts. The Rx's are at the FOH position about 20m line of sight from the stage. All RX's are daisy chained with a pair of Solwise 2.4Ghz Cantennas with 12dbi gain 30 deg acceptance angle. 5mtrs of RG58 between the Cantennas and the RX.

Pro's

Cheap, good audio quality, Metal cased TX, good battery life, indication on RX of battery life, RF, AF, Mute condition, channel selected.

Con's

 

1. No adjustment on RX for display contrast and the display is faint.

2. Tx looses settings over a battery change.

3. Technical backup almost zero, if the information is not in the manual, don't bother.

4. They do not appear to be fully tested or designed in a theatre environment.

5. The intended market seems to be solo/duo/trio performers with little/no tech knowledge.

6. UK support consists of swapping out faulty units, little/no tech knowledge.

7. Line6 say they have 100% testing & quality control on every item but they still manage to send out kit with obvious faults and batch faults.

8. It wipes out any WiFi in the vicinity of the TX's

9. The aerial in the XDV70 handheld mic is at the bottom near the battery, holding the mic in this area can reduce the signal and result in drop out. (From the Line 6 website)

 

Will I buy any more?

I don't know, if the license fee for the white space is reasonable then I'll buy Senns, if the license fee is extortionate then I get Line 6, but we will not know until post 2012 sell off probably around end 2013.

Link to Line6 support forum http://tinyurl.com/63gu23w Link to Solwise Cantenna http://tinyurl.com/6jfytnv

 

Moderation: I had to remove the formatting as the large font and big spacing spread the post of many pages, and worked even worse on my mobile. I've left the content - but removed the bbcode.P

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Does this need to be in its own topic, many people may not be looking at this topic that they remember from a while back?

 

I think it's very important. And a definite concern. You state good battery life, but under clothes it's as if it's trying very hard to "hand shake" or whatever the equivalent is and thus consumes much more power (also explains the heat). A little bit like a mobile telephone on O2 has to try harder to get a signal in many areas than one on Orange resulting in poor battery life on O2 based phones, yet better on Orange ones in theoretically identical circumstances.

 

Rob

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This is where the specs a little blurred - it's in the wi-fi band, but uses none of the computer style two way hand shaking, it's purely a simplex system - I think? So the battery life explanation that makes so much sense, is probably wrong? However, if it is - then what causes the excess heat? Don's been very clear on the interference aspect in his earlier posts, but I suspect he simply means that computer wi-fi activity doesn't have an impact on the Line 6's performance because if the data's not recognised as Line 6 data, it gets ignored. If the receiver cannot ask for a packet to be repeated, then all it can do is error correction, similar to MD, DAT, CDs and DVDs where missing data packets can be reconstructed into valid data, but of course, not perfect data, as what is missing is missing.

 

I'm a little confused by the advanced manual.

2. Looping – Antenna Distribution System

If you are operating more than one system you may conveniently connect multiple receivers to a single pair of antennas using XD-V70’s built-in antenna distribution system. After attaching antennas to the primary receiver, simply use the supplied cables and connect from the BNC connector marked “A Out” to the “Antenna A” input of the second unit. Similarly, connect from the “B Out” on the primary unit to the “Antenna B” input on the second receiver. You may continue this process connecting up to 12 systems total. For XD-V70 Receiver

2•4

For best results, no more than 6 receivers should be connected to a pair of antennas.The last receiver in the chain must be terminated by connecting the supplied “BNC terminators” to the last “A & B Outs”. It is highly recommended to use a 50 ohm low leakage type of antenna cable such as LMR-195 for these connections (such as the ones supplied with the XDV-70)

 

I can't work out why they mention 12, when 6 gives the best results?

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Thanks very much for the gen Boswell. I can't imagine for one moment you got the only units that overheated so doubtless we shall hear of more.

 

Plus the suspicion that the txs would interfere with local wifi seems to be confirmed. It that happened then possibly wireless DMX could be compromised?

 

Presumably the design will be improved as more user experience ends up back at their HQ.

 

It would interesting to hear any comments from DB???

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Normal use in a theatre is in a pouch worn under several layers of clothing, heavy costume etc and in use for 3-4 hrs, if Line 6 is lucky, maybe the others in the batch may have been bought by 'Artists' for short term use while they do a 30 min spot.

I think the overheating is caused by the lagging of the TX with a pouch and heavy costumes next to a body at 38.4, then the TX slowly heats up over 2 hrs, gets too hot and goes into thermal runaway and ends up flattening the batteries. I did not try on low power as I think I need the power to get through the sweaty body, damp sweaty clothing, RF path losses over 20mtrs, aerial cable losses etc.

 

I 'Daisy chained' the aerials by taking aerial A to RX1,RX2,RX3,RX4,RX5, The Aerial B went to RX5 first then RX4,RX3,RX2,RX1.

 

If a TX goes within about 1 mtr of a laptop or access point then the WiFi slows down then the link is lost, move it away and the link is restored. I could put a TX next to a laptop and the TX still sends and the RX receives audio OK. I didn't find that it killed all WiFI in the area, just the devices close to TX's.

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It would interesting to hear any comments from DB???

I doubt that will happen. My observation is that DB and Line 6 don't seem interested in answering specific questions, particularly those relating to technical info or problems with their products. :(

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It would interesting to hear any comments from DB???

I doubt that will happen. My observation is that DB and Line 6 don't seem interested in answering specific questions, particularly those relating to technical info or problems with their products. :(

 

Not wanting to get into a discussion about a product I don't have experience of, but I think we could be a little more generous than that - I haven't noticed many other manufacturers of kit on this forum, and Line6 have given quite a lot of info about the specs of their stuff. It's perfectly apparent that they have little experience of this market sector - but then that's true of many other producers whose kit is widely used in theatre world. Maybe expecting a detailed response about specific failure modes is just expecting a bit too much of a public forum?

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Spot on revbobuk, Line 6 do not appear to have experience in this sector as you you so rightly state.

 

However, many of the folk in the relevant thread were only too willing to field test a system for them...would have been very useful to all concerned. I would say the last thing anyone wanted to do was knock a product as yet untested. Quite the opposite in fact what with the pressing need in UK to sort out alternative systems from 2012 on.

 

The feeling from some posters is that by not being too helpful, Line 6 have not exactly distinguished themselves. Add to that (from an earlier post) their "helpdesk" so to speak, were not, initially, sympathetic to the overheating problem...and started off criticising the way in which their kit was used.

 

Ref the public forum, this is exactly what a public forum does, it discusses whatever, warts and all. We see many references to "any" other kit throughout the forum and we all read of the pros and cons.

 

So even if Line 6 or any other manufacturer were concerned about product confidentiality once folk start discussing stuff on any forum then it's in the public domain, and, if you start with a questionable reputation then it is very difficult to redeem yourself.

 

That is one of the advantages of the internet for the planet as a whole, dissemination of information is very difficult to control (Wikileaks anyone?).

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I must admit that for new manufacturers of this type of kit, our sector has just had an event leaving many people with a big wadge of funds to invest in new equipment. The really odd thing is that none of the manufacturers seem to be doing anything at all to secure the business, apart from the ads having Channel 38 ready labels - no special pricing - I really expected the big boys do offer special deals and big quantity discounts - after all, many people are looking at buying a very large number of systems.
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For anyone that would like a businesslike answer in a businesslike timeframe should contact me directly ... dboomer@line6.com. If you post in a forum I might not even see it for a week. .

 

Overheating ... if you have a unit that seems to be getting hot and the battery life is short you should contact out repair department. It likely has failed. We experienced a run that had some tolerance issues that are probably presenting with this problem. We will be happy to take care of it.

 

Wi-Fi ... you can only drive so many radios in a given amount of bandwidth. Wi-Fi may be slowed down to a crawl. It is not a very robust technology and lots of things affect it besides XD-V. It rarely affects XD-V wireless in normal use. You have the advantage of switching to higher Wi-Fi channels that are prohibited here in the USA. So the first thing I'd recommend is switching to 12 or 13. If you want to eliminate any upset of your Wi-Fi you could switch to 802.11N on 5G and double your throughput at the same time.

 

While it is possible to connect 12 receivers to a single pair of antennas, more reliable results will be had by using fewer. It depends on how strong the noise floor is locally. You might have good results with 8, 10 or even 12, but you will have better results with 6. We recommend no more than 6. It also makes for a neater installation as you don't have to cross any cables over when doing 2 sets of 6 in a 12 pack. And since all the components come in the box, there is no extra expense involved (unless you employ paddles).

 

Don Boomer

Line6, inc.

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4 of the units arrived today. One handheld will have to go back, it refuses to switch on. Not a good start. When I have a chance to test them, I'll report back on the working ones.

 

Not a good start! Please tell me ... the transmitter or the receiver that is not turning on?

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