Wireless Comunication

[Adam Brinkworth]

Im looking for a Wireless Communication system, to talk between the sound/control desk, to the lighting desk, video desk, and assistant stage manager in the wings.

 

I will have the master controller at the sound desk, but then need wireless recivers/transmitters at the other posts. I will not be able to use a cabled system, as I will often be touring, and will not have the time to keep rigging the system.

 

Any Ideas? :(

 

Thanks in Advance

[mac.calder]

What is your budget? The usual suspects all seem to have wireless systems.

 

Clearcom, Techpro etc's wireless ranges are all pretty good systems.

[Adam Brinkworth]

What is your budget?

 

Budget will be no more than around £1500. Although I dont know how much these things cost, it may go up or down...

 

Thanks

[scjb]

Would it be simpler to go for a set of Motorola radios with headsets? If you bought secondhand you'd get even more bang for your buck...

[mac.calder]

What is your budget?

 

Budget will be no more than around £1500. Although I dont know how much these things cost, it may go up or down...

 

Thanks

 

If you want decent, full-duplex coms, then 1500 pounds will not go far. My rough mental currency conversion tells me that even with a wired system, 1500 will not buy much, and wired are quite a lot cheaper than wireless. A base station alone will more than eat up that budget.

[Tomo]

£1500 might get you a wired system, but will NOT get you any kind of radio communication other than push-to-talk walkie-talkies or mobile cellular telephones.

(And a cellphone is bad news, for a myriad of reasons that you're probably already well aware of)

 

Given that you're running cable to all of those locations anyway (multicore to sound desk, DMX to lighting, VGA or coax to video), adding a single XLR-3 to each of those positions is not a major headache.

 

Most theatres have suitable tielines (if not their own comms system) between the common locations for such positions anyway - the venues thast don't tend to be conference rooms where you need to install everything anyway.

[Jivemaster]

Unless there is budget there WILL be wires! One more wire usually wont be noticed. Can one be run down snakes.

[Dave_NA]

You can quite easily run comms down your multicores. It won't affect the signal lines.

[paulears]

and wireless is far more unreliable! wired systems don't have flat batteries, cause or suffer from interference, and are expensive to fix when you drop them!!

[henny]

one crewd wirless coms system would be the following, I wouldent recoment it but I have built similer with senhiser kit whan I have been despreate

 

Kit List

 

4 x HEADSET RADIO MICROPHONE £184 each

 

1 x 4 CHANNEL MICROPHONE MIXER

 

4 x In ear mon RX

 

1 x in ear mon TX

 

 

then the hookup would be as follows

 

headset mic > radio mic >mic Mixer >In ear Tx >In ear Rx > earpice

 

you would all be able to talk at once and here everyone

 

as I said wone heck of a bodge but it should work

 

ian

[Rowan]

Orbital hire out some wireless cans that would do what you want, I can't remember the name of them right now, but they also interface with tec-pro style rings.

 

They may also sell them to you.

 

someone else may know what I'm talking about, the beltpacks are about half the size of normal ones, and are painted blue.

 

EDIT: Just had a look on google, they're made by HME http://www.hme.com/

[paulears]

one crewd wirless coms system would be the following, I wouldent recoment it but I have built similer with senhiser kit whan I have been despreate

 

as I said wone heck of a bodge but it should work

 

ian

 

A very expensive bodge too. I'm not saying it is that bad, and it would kind of work, but it does eat up 5 channels, and normally only four are free. The cheapie in-ears also seem a bit too cheap to have good rejection characteristics, so finding channels that work may be a problem.

 

I'm not happy with the idea of recommending a system that you haven't actually tried, just by scanning the cpc book - if you recommend something, you MUST have tried it, else it could be a total waste of money.

 

Last thing - sorry to be an old pedant, but 10 spelling mistakes in 38 words has to be some kind of record!

[henny]

I'm not happy with the idea of recommending a system that you haven't actually tried, just by scanning the cpc book - if you recommend something, you MUST have tried it, else it could be a total waste of money.

 

Last thing - sorry to be an old pedant, but 10 spelling mistakes in 38 words has to be some kind of record!

 

sorry, I should have said I have done the above bodge using all senhizer EV100 series kit.

 

re spelling sorry spell check doesn't work on windows mobile.

 

another daft idea, how about theses £80 wifi voip phones that are popping up, have a laptop running a voip exchange,

 

ian

[Steve.Tyrrell]

I have been using the HME DX200 for about 18 months now with typically 4 to 6 headsets and beltpacks. It's directly compatible with Tech Pro/Metro wired systems, with a small adjustment, if you want to plug it into a house system. On big venues it saves me running around 300m of mic cable and works up to at least 60m line of sight.

 

Two drawbacks it's probably outside your budget by a factor of 3. It does suffer from interference from wireless DMX (which I also use) in the form of occasional loud clicks in the earpiece. But if you're still interested talk to Orbital Sound who I got mine from.

 

For anyone who's interested the wireless DMX I'm using is the W-DMX system supplied by White Light with one transmitter and up to four receivers, also saves a lot of time in large venues and seems to be reliable.

 

Merry Christmas

[dbuckley]

The problem of channel consumption is there with most true full duplex wireless systems I've seen or know about. They generally use a channel each to get from mobile to base, plus another channel for base to mobiles, and generally they work on walkie talkie (sorry, "land mobile") frequencies.. If you are in wireless hell to start with then another few frequencies is a lot of bandwidth to find. Some HME kit (inc the 200 mentioned above) and other peoples kit use 2.4GHz rather than wireless mic frequencies, but that sounds even less acceptable, there is a lot of competition in the 2.4GHz space. There was a system using DECT, but it's now vanished, I believe.

 

Production Intercom do a half way house solution that only needs two frequencies, and again they are generally non-wireless mic frequencies, but

 

a) You either need a licence to use appropriate frequencies for repeater use, or take a chance using public channels for family radio (or whatever they call those radios you get from Dixons) use

 

b) It's not full duplex, mobiles need to press PTT buttons to talk. But everyone gets to listen, and depending on your walkie-talkie, you may even be able to listen to the ring whilst talking to it.

 

Feeding intercoms into an IEM transmitter and then having listen only crew with IEMs is a known and well liked solution, as long as you've not got congestion or are willing to use expensive receivers to keep RF problems minimised.

 

I cant see how the OP will improve on a set of wired cans. Going wireless will be (a) more expensive, and (b) much more importantly, potentially put the video crew in conflict with the act being videoed because of wireless contention issues.

 

<_<

I've got a slightly different problem - here in the land of RF honey I want to legally use something similar to the Production Intercom system, but it is fraught with regulatory difficulties; a "mobile repeater" is an unknown entity in licencing speak, because "repeaters are fitted in fixed locations, Sir". The upshot of that is I need to have an all NZ repeater frequency, which means the things can be used anywhere, but this sort of licence has a large recurring annual cost that makes it uneconomic several times over :blink:

 

A pair of simplex frequencies country wide cost virtually nowt, so there is massive temptation to stretch the definition of the word "simplex"...