wireless microphone systems

[pantoman]

Dear All

 

please can you help I have been asked to source a set of 8 radio mic's for my sons school I have hade Quotes fro both sennhiser & audio-technica. The sennhiser was to much for our budget & the a-t system just crept in . I have seen in this months cpc that they have a trantec system ready made up & its £ 1000 cheaper. can anyone advise me as the the Quality reliability of the trantec range of wireless microphones

 

thanks

 

ian

[Bobbsy]

The Trantec system is pretty well thought of and represents good value for money even at the standard price. The CPC special deal looks very attractive to me.

 

Two caveats. First, the Trantec belt packs use fairly expensive 9 volt batteries. Depending how often you use them, this can add a fair bit to the budget and make TX units that work on a simple AA cell more attractive.

 

Second, frequency allocations for radio mics in the future are presently under review by OFCOM. Although it looks hopeful that Channel 69 will continue to be available (and even become licence free) but this is not yet guaranteed.

 

Bob

[timtheenchanteruk]

Be aware that you can also only use the 9Vs in the trantecs for one show, even the duracells, you might get 2 if you are lucky with the receivers on stage.

 

Having said that I have used rebadged VHF Trantecs (beyerdynamics) for years, and have 4 S4.4s and love them.

 

I would hazzard to say you wont get much better for the money

[pantoman]

would you advise siting the receivers on stage & running the outputs up a stage snake or siting them by the mixer at the back of the hall

 

thanks ian

[timtheenchanteruk]

I always use them sat on top of my racks at the back of the hall, and not had any problems, the hall is approx 50m long, control position elevated above the audience.

 

I am always wary of putting receivers at side of stage, its far too easy to change the settings with fiddling fingers, as there is no lock out on the trantecs.

 

you can also only get 4 frequencies on the 4.4s, but believe the 4.16? is the same unit, just open to more frequencies, but didnt exist when I bought mine.

[smalljoshua]

would you advise siting the receivers on stage & running the outputs up a stage snake or siting them by the mixer at the back of the hall

 

thanks ian

 

I would definitely use the receivers near the stage then run the outputs up a multi core to reduce the distance for the wireless signal to travel and therefore the chances of interference with it.

 

[edit]

timtheenchanteruk you beat me to it but I would have to dissagree with you on that if you have the cables running out of the back you can just put the front on the case or leave the case in the hands of a backstage crew member.

[/edit]

 

Josh

[pantoman]

so thats 1 each for the position any more takers ?

 

please can some one tell me what apart from the obvious it the difference , advantages & dissadvantages between uhf & vhf

 

ian

[Ynot]

I would definitely use the receivers near the stage then run the outputs up a multi core to reduce the distance for the wireless signal to travel and therefore the chances of interference with it.

 

timtheenchanteruk you beat me to it but I would have to dissagree with you on that if you have the cables running out of the back you can just put the front on the case or leave the case in the hands of a backstage crew member.

Hmmm... ©

 

There are actually good and bad reasons for either location.

Siting receivers by the sound desk is good because then the sound op can see the displays and diagnose some problems - eg if there's no carrier signal displayed the problem could be power on the pack, or a dead aerial, for example, whilst no AF but a good RF signal, then the mic could be disconn, or even a mute switch inadvertently switched.

 

However, over longer distances (depending on the packs) there may be a resulting weak signal which can lead to problems with picking up the RF. But with packs down on the stage, IF you have the room to site them safely and out of the way (which isn't always possible) you can't get an immediate read on what problems there may be if things gos wrong. AND you have the extra expense of cabling back to the sound console.

 

My money, if only for the reasons above, would be to ALWAYS site the packs at the sound desk. If you got a weak signal, then you may be better off getting an RF amplifier for the mic sets, which can help enormously.

[cedd]

You obviously have links to CPC from your previous posts.

Whilst they aren't a "name brand" I have to say the JTS kit is really quite nice. CPC sell a cased set (though I believe it's only 4 channels) at quite a nice price.

 

I find their kit particularly well engineered and the receivers have full LCD display with battery level and RF level displays. Transmitters take 2 x AA's (I think!) which are a bit handier to get hold of and battery life is pretty good.

 

This is where the crunch comes to positioning in my opinion. If the reciever has LCD display and is UHF, I opt for the mix position as the pros of having the displays available really fo outweigh the cons. A boxed system may well come with some reasonable antennae anyway. I've had trouble with VHF over similair distances and tend to opt for a stage side (but out of reach of fingers) position. Mix position also saves channels in your snake!

[paulears]

The Trantecs have just been discussed in another recent topic - but the package is good. I think we're pretty pro CPC, mainly because they're often cheap, quick and Chris their rep is a decent bloke!

 

One thing - I ALWAYS put the rack as close to the talent as possible and feed back to the desk. Never had trouble with people fiddling. This is important with these new Trantec systems because the power output is a tad less than others - so distance is critical for reliability.

 

I've had a spare rack of receivers at the mix position from a previous show, and during the last one, I thought what I'd do is tune them to the same channels as the other rack. The on-stage receivers were trouble free - no noise, no dropouts, but the RF meters at the back of the room were interesting to watch - signal strengths zooming up and down, and during the finale (a dance show) with 200 sweaty bodies on stage, the dancers with packs on were fine when pfl'd, but had no signal whatsoever on the receivers at mix position, buried amongst all those bodies.

 

My mix position is is 40m from the stage. No way I'd risk it on a show.

[Rob_Beech]

Wherever possible, always on the stage, of course there isn't aot of choice if you are putting a separate monitor board in and they can go near the monitor board just before the splitter, nobody can fiddle, and the monitor engineer gets to know of any problems.

 

If you work with acts that bring their own mics to plug in, always have a nice selection of Jack to XLR jumps for when their receivers only have Jack outputs. You'll often find that it's these receivers that you REALLY DONT want at FOH.

[Ynot]

One thing - I ALWAYS put the rack as close to the talent as possible and feed back to the desk.

Interesting.

 

This is turning into quite a spread of opinion! :unsure:

I guess what suits the venue and the op's is the only straight answer.

 

I smell a possible poll in the making here... Or have we already had one? I seem to recall this isn't the first time we've discussed this...

[Bobbsy]

** laughs out loud **, just to keep the debate (hopefully friendly and constructive) going, I'm a "receivers at the FOH mix position" kind of guy.

 

The mics I used most often (Sony) had a fair bit of useful information on the receiver display (battery life, RF strength, AF strength, plus the usual channel numbers etc) and I found this very useful in both trouble shooting and avoiding problems in the first place. The little green "signal present" and flickering yellow "audio present" lights were a nice security blanket when I didn't have time to PFL every channel before a big scene!

 

The caveat I'll add to all this is that I was scrupulous about getting the antennae as close to the stage as possible and also about using high quality RF leads and a good divider network. I was also in the very fortunate position of being able to borrow very expensive RF test gear from my (TV) employer to check all this out and get things lined up. Alas, not many (not even me now!) have a selection of Tektronix and Hewlett Packard spectrum analysers lying about!

 

Bob

[paulears]

Sound on Sound's new Performing Musician magazine has a review of the Trantec 8 way rack. To be honest, it isn't a very good review - a few small actual errors and although there is a photo of the pack, he comment relats to the handheld only. They quote the price at £3995, which is a bit daft. However, they did like it, and once you pick out the factual stuff from the kiddie comment, I'ts quite useful. No on-line version of this issue yet - and it's quite difficult to get - not all WH Smiths stock it.

[Shez]

It varies for me, depending on circumstances. In the venue I usually do musicals in, space is incredibly tight backstage and I'm usually working with an inexperienced no.2 op so would rather have the racks at FOH so I can see what's going on. Ideally I'll have the antennae remoted close to the stage but that doesn't always happen. It's a small venue so not a major problem.

 

On other occasions, in bigger venues, I've happily had the rack in the wings, but I'll only do that if I've got someone there who can identify problems and with whom I can talk on cans.

 

My preference is to have them at the stage, with someone who can keep an eye on them as it frees me up from worrying about that & I can concentrate on mixing the show. Trying to simultaneously diagnose problems and keep up with lots of cues really isn't fun...