Dan Appleby Posted November 12, 2007 Share Posted November 12, 2007 This is an interesting one. We have a job coming up where we put up a distributed sound system around a town centre for a carnival procession... The system we use is powered (active), and in the past we have run hundreds of metres of cable around the town to make it work... just wondering if there's another way we can do this using the wonders of wireless technology. I'm not sure a 'traditional' UHF tx/rx system would work - it's at least 70m (probably more) between speaker locations and from where control is located. Does anyone know of any long range wireless audio systems that might be able to cut it (if there is such a thing)? I've done a bit of a google on it, all I can seem to find is wireless data transmission, which is not an area I want to delve into! Any help would be much appreciated. Ta! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonny DMX Posted November 12, 2007 Share Posted November 12, 2007 Hey mate, hope all is well? Any way you could use some form of Audio over ethernet (wireless ethernet)? or even a short term, short distance FM radio licence? I don't really know just thinking out loud! in fact even as I write this I think I'm just being an idiot! I'll go back to my lights now! Jonny Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mervaka Posted November 12, 2007 Share Posted November 12, 2007 I'm inclined to believe wifi would inherit the same problems as a UHF system being too low powered to transmit the distances. however like jonny said, maybe you could run an ethersound bus down the street, and tee off some analogue lines? other than a single central radio transmitter as also mentioned, I dont see many other ways of doing this! its a tough one.. dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkPAman Posted November 12, 2007 Share Posted November 12, 2007 Is it 70m to first speaker, then 70 to the next, or are all the speakers within 70 m? If it's the latter then a good UHF sould do the job for outdoors, line-of-sight locations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sully Posted November 12, 2007 Share Posted November 12, 2007 The system we use is powered (active), and in the past we have run hundreds of metres of cable around the town to make it work... just wondering if there's another way we can do this using the wonders of wireless technology. I'm not sure a 'traditional' UHF tx/rx system would work - it's at least 70m (probably more) between speaker locations and from where control is located. Does anyone know of any long range wireless audio systems that might be able to cut it (if there is such a thing)? I've done a bit of a google on it, all I can seem to find is wireless data transmission, which is not an area I want to delve into! In principle it should be similar, if the positions are fixed you can use directional antennas at the receiving end to increase your gain and null out noise sources and you may be able to use directional antennas at the transmitter depending on how many places you're transmitting to and the EIRP permitted by the UHF licence. David. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbsy Posted November 13, 2007 Share Posted November 13, 2007 Doing anything that raises the EIRP of the transmitter (i.e. a directional antenna at that end) will land you in trouble with the licensing authorities. However, adding a high gain UHF antenna of the right frequency group at the receive end should buy you lots of extra signal--70 metres doesn't sound like much if you use something like you'd normally put on the roof of a house, pointed right at the TX point. As always, try it out first though! Bob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeilW Posted November 13, 2007 Share Posted November 13, 2007 It might be worth having a chat to Handheld Audio, in particular about their Link System, http://www.handheldaudio.co.uk/pages/hire_link.asp which according to their website was used for a similar purpose in Edinburgh for delay towers at Hogmany. I'm sure they would also be able to assist with licensing and other related issues. Neil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david.elsbury Posted November 13, 2007 Share Posted November 13, 2007 I know you said wireless, but cat 5 cable will happily transmit balanced audio line level signals around, and it is very cheap... maybe another option, and chuck the cable when done? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted November 13, 2007 Share Posted November 13, 2007 I've spent a fruitless hour seeing what specs I could actually dig up, ended up being redirected away from the old specs on the ofcom site to the ETSI site and getting plenty of either contractictory or unhelpful info - JFMG have some sample info on-line but with some detail missing - and I can't face ging through real paperwork to find the paper licence! erp seems to be the sticking block for using beams on transmit - but as has been said, decent yagis on the receivers would suggest that reliable long distance links are not really a problem. I did something similar quite a few years ago in a stately home - using vhf and uhf systems back to back instead of really long speaker cable that needed to go accross un-diggable lawns. A lav pack with 1/4wave on the top of a pole goes a log way! With modern systems having decent 'distance' between lowest and highest frequencies in the and and reasonable flitering - finding a suitable high building and using an iem transmitter, fed by a receiver would seem to offer pretty good coverage - and I can't see anything in the licence that says you can't do this. So feed programme up to the tx in the sky, and receive it on other receivers where you need them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete McCrea Posted November 13, 2007 Share Posted November 13, 2007 The company I used to work with used Sennheiser G2 IEM and Belt packs to do around 100m for a fireworks show along the river Tyne. They used the standard configuration packs with the additional aerials on their licensed frequencies. I believe it worked a treat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbuckley Posted November 13, 2007 Share Posted November 13, 2007 Options... Cheapest in equipment but most hassle (and a big expense) with licencing is to get a temporary licence (RSL) to broadcast in the FM radio bands. Or... get a wideband, high power (25W), audio point to point licence from JFMG and then rent (but I've no idea where) the appropriate equipment to make use of it. Or... if it's just music playback then do a Disney, have an autonomous system at each location and syncronise them with timecode sent over a standard walkie talkie channel. Or... run lots of wire ;) Interesting job. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
broadcast_techie Posted November 13, 2007 Share Posted November 13, 2007 Not sure you'd get an RSL to use as a radio link. I believe it's £200 for the application, plus how ever many days you want.... Hire of kit and JFMG licence is probably the most reliable solution. I have successfully used http://www.canford.co.uk/commerce/item_28-878_2009305.aspx (Tuned Yagi) to pick up radio mics over 200m away. (I think my temp set up is still in place) So this would be the cheapest. --- Have just realised that you haven't clarified the actual distance yet, you mention hundreds of metres of cable, but then quote 70m. Do you mean 700m? Kris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Appleby Posted November 14, 2007 Author Share Posted November 14, 2007 Hi Guys, Thanks for all your replies, some very useful info there! I'm going to explore some options over the next week or so, I'll let you know what we decide to go with. This of course all depends on whether the client is willing to fork out the extra wonga for the additional kit, allthough what we save on crew and cabling costs, it will probably work out cheaper anyway! Thanks again,Dan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djmatthill Posted November 19, 2007 Share Posted November 19, 2007 Hi Dan , Just mooching through ebay & saw this http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Trantec-S4000IEM-Tra...1QQcmdZViewItem any use to you . Trantec Transmitter and Receiver package ?? Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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