Advice on replacing wireless mic setup in secondary school

[Andrew C]

If the receivers are in the cage, you are going to seriously attenuate the signal. You can use the distribution amp to get them outside, and yes you could use two each running three receivers or whatever. However, you still won't get six in band 70!

[Alec]

I've been looking at a UA-900 Antenna Distributor, however I'm aware they can only run 4 receivers each, would running 2 distributors be viable? Using these would alleviate another minor issue of lack of power sockets in the general area of the cage the sound gear is housed in. Also, if I was to use the antenna distributor with a set of 2 directional antennas, should I be looking at active or passive? To put it into perspective, the sound gear is located in a locked 12x12ft steel cage in the rear wing of the school hall stage. There is a 3ft stone wall between the current JTS receivers and the hall itself. I could run the antennas to pretty much anywhere around the stage itself though (hidden preferably).

Ah, the cage & the wall could be part of your current reception problems! Running with the antenna distributor(s) would allow you to resolve that one more easily, as you say, by moving the antennae outside the cage. Yes, the UA-900 runs only 4 receivers each, so you'd need 2 for 6 receivers. If the design spec supports it, you could feed one UA900 from the output of the other, thus keeping to a single antenna pair - check with someone like HandHeld Audio to make sure this is OK (unless others can chip in). And I would expect that these units would still function with any future system change - again, check with the dealer on the frequency range of the UA-900. Based on my experience, you may need to do no more than run a couple of meters of antenna cable to the antennae that come with the UA-900, as reception really is good - I can run mine with no antennae connected and 20 rows of punters between the talent and the receivers, and still get good signal with no dropout.

 

In regards to replacing the microphones themselves, unfortunately soldering is not an option as the head has stated categorically that he doesn't want any 'home made gear'. I know a lot of you would be offended by that statement but I'm 100% sure any soldered mics, visible or not would bring down a world of hurt on me, especially if I need to do it for all replacements. In order to avoid soldering, should I just be looking for mics which come with a 4 pin mini XLR connections out of the box, if such things exist?

 

If soldering is not an option, that will impact you not just now, but every time that a mic cable goes. The idea of not wanting "home made" gear is not at all offensive. But there's a big difference between home made and routine maintenance. I've said before that it's a real shame those £5 CPC mics don't come with a 4 pin XLR, otherwise they'd be a perfect plug & play solution whenever I need to replace a mic on my JTS packs. That said, though, resoldering is only a routine 5 min job. And, in fact, most lapel mics can be fixed by just removing the few inches from the plug end and reterminating, as others have said, as that's where they go.

 

If you must eliminate soldering, then you're starting at £35+ for the cheapest 4 pin XLR terminated mics, and there's little choice. And you'll be replacing these every time that they get broken - which can be pretty quickly.

 

Again, a little gentle education of the head could work wonders. Assuming you, or another appropriate member of staff can solder, you could probably fix all your current mics by reterminating them - cost = £0, and they only observable difference would be that the cable is shorter by a few inches - nothing "home made" about that.

[KidRay]

But there's a big difference between home made and routine maintenance.

 

Agreed. I'm sure the head would have something to say if you suggested replacing an entire PC if a hard drive failed.

[Stan Hope-Streeter]

I have recently been employed as the IT/AV Technician at a high school, leaving me responsible for the hall sound and mic system.

In regards to replacing the microphones themselves, unfortunately soldering is not an option as the head has stated categorically that he doesn't want any 'home made gear'. I know a lot of you would be offended by that statement but I'm 100% sure any soldered mics, visible or not would bring down a world of hurt on me, especially if I need to do it for all replacements. In order to avoid soldering, should I just be looking for mics which come with a 4 pin mini XLR connections out of the box, if such things exist?

 

How on earth did these people end up in control of public finances?

 

They have hired you as the technician, but do not allow you to do the everyday routine maintainance that goes with your job.

 

Obviously then, they will need to hire a service engineer to do it for you.

A freelancer can be had for around £250 per day. Or you can send them away to be done, typical bench rates are around £50 per hour.

[paulears]

Not wishing to offend, but that's actually an insult by your boss to the hundreds of extremely skilled technicians who spend their time fixing things to stretch budgets just a little more.

 

Rather like him telling the teachers not to design their own lessons, and why not just buy them in and get the classroom assistant to hand them out!

 

If all you do is buy things, then buy more, and more when simple faults are not allowed to be fixed, then it devalues your job, as it could be done by somebody in the office or one of the kids!

 

If you are happy with this, it's rather sad. The STSG group might be a good thing to join!

[timtheenchanteruk]

ooh dear, most of my music dept equipment must be "home made" then.

 

with regard to the S4.16 and ch38, they do go to channel 38, I have it from trantec themselves, the info on the website is outdated.

the only bit of their kit (as you corrected) that doesnt is the 4.4, which is de-reg only.

 

paulears, please dont tempt fate with the "lesson plan" thing, it seems more and more likely every day!!

[Remiel]

I can assure you I'm not happy with the situation. The last time I repaired a lapel mic and clip, the clip didn't match the mic cable and that resulted in me being told "this is crap, utter crap" in front of a hall full of students. Seriously. I did get an apology a month later but to be honest it was because of the fact it had been in front of students, not because of the attitude towards the gear. From what I've been told by various members of staff the current kit was bought with no thought given to setup, frequency issues etc. with no one taking responsibility for it.

 

All in all it's been very stressful, however I've come to the conclusion it's not my or my dept's money I'm spending and if I don't use it it'll only go on some frivolous gear elsewhere in the school. With the help of APAudio I will hopefully be able to replace the JTS receivers with a channel 38 compatible racked and ready system. The guy's there have been very helpful indeed. The current head is retiring at the end of the academic year too, so as long as he's kept happy until summer I don't need to worry about soldered mics and repairs in the future.

 

I can't thank you all enough for your help. I know what a lot of you are thinking - waste of money. I agree, but I've banged my head against the brick wall that is SMT long enough that I don't want to jeopardise my position by pressing the issue. I've also got the opportunity to spend some money on future proofing the system which is a little bit of a silver lining I suppose.

[Alec]

With the help of APAudio I will hopefully be able to replace the JTS receivers with a channel 38 compatible racked and ready system. The guy's there have been very helpful indeed. The current head is retiring at the end of the academic year too, so as long as he's kept happy until summer I don't need to worry about soldered mics and repairs in the future.

Remember, you *will* need to repair/replace mics on a regular basis, whatever system you have - quite likely before the end of the year, assuming they get a reasonable amount of (ab)use.

 

And you're most welcome to dispose of the old "rubbish" JTS kit in my direction if it's really proved to be such a disaster with the school!

 

I've also got the opportunity to spend some money on future proofing the system which is a little bit of a silver lining I suppose.

That's certainly a benefit, and not to be sneezed at. Thank goodness that came out of the whole event...

[pattonaudio]

unless I am mistaken, there is no longer an ambiguity over 2012, we are moving down to 38. this may or may not be avaliable in your area now.

 

also, as far as I am aware (unless something has happened in the last 3 weeks), there is only trantec at the moment that have Ch 38 kit (apart form digital stuff :P £££), the new sennheiser is tunable down to after being sent back to them, but not out of the box (yet)

 

AKG have been offering the DMS700 on channel 38 for a while now too!

 

I wouldn't mind a little input too from you guys looking to add to the my hire stock, and not sure if I want to take the plunge into the new Trantec S6 range/AKG DMS700 or just take the Trantec S5.5/Senn 500 G3, need to complement my existing stock so I can run up to 24 mics at the same time.

[chelgrian]

I wouldn't mind a little input too from you guys looking to add to the my hire stock, and not sure if I want to take the plunge into the new Trantec S6 range/AKG DMS700 or just take the Trantec S5.5/Senn 500 G3, need to complement my existing stock so I can run up to 24 mics at the same time.

 

I remain unconvinced by digital systems, AKG quote the latency of the DMS700 system at 4ms, which on its own is just about bearable. However once you are also going through a digital desk which might add 2ms and a loud speaker management system which might add another 1ms...

 

I've had quite a few conversations with various hire companies on the economics of buying channel 69 Sennheiser kit now, most of them think it's just about economically viable to buy right now and they will make enough profit between now and 2012 to justify buying now and having Sennheiser modify the kit for use in channel 38 after 2012. However it is unknown what Sennheiser are going to charge for the modification, the companies I spoke to were working on them charging about 50% of the cost of new channel 38 versions of the G3 range when it becomes available.

[paulears]

4ms? Just about bearable. I get this delay in my studio by pushing back my wheelie chair. 4ms, what's that? About 4ft or so? Bearing in mind that we can cope with speakers a fair bit further away than that doesn't worry me too much.

 

Depending on which drivers I'm using on my studio system, I'd be quite happy with anything less than 10ms or so as system delay. Above this a real and a midi snare hit start to split if initiated at the same point in time. 4ms is a gnats whisker. With radio mics - the actors on stage, who we do hear naturally from time to time have far more of a delay than the radio system at these kind of latencies, as they walk upstage.