Jump to content

Two Way Radios & Additional Input


alexadamson

Recommended Posts

I hope you can help.

 

I want to know if there's a way to add an audio feed to a two-way radio channel.

 

I am about to embark on a new tour and it would be incredibly helpful to have a feed of whats on stage in my ear. This gives me the freedom to walk around always knowing whats happening on stage.

 

I will be honest, I know very little about two-way radios, whether they should be licensed or unlicensed, if this request is even possible, but I'm assuming I require some sort of base station or repeater. I have been to a few venues where house crew have had the comms feed in their radios, but couldn't tell you how that worked, but this may also be a helpful feature. My plan is to have 2 or 3 channels as standard, open free for use by all departments, and then have a separate channel that has the show feed on it

 

I did think about the possibility of wireless in-ear monitors but I'm worried about range, as I want to be able to move freely around the venue, including backstage and FOH, and some on the venues on the tour are fairly expansive. I also considered the possibility of wireless comms, again there may be the issue of range, and also I was hoping that I didn't have to walk around with a headset I could just use a covert earpiece.

 

I also think the functions of it being a radio would also be helpful, and when I tour with crew and we add more radios into the system, that I'm not carrying around multiple radios and comm packs.

 

I look forward to you responses and thanks in advance.

 

Alex

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Both systems can be made to work. I personally use an IEM transmitter to send the comms circuit to an earpiece - it works pretty well, but the receivers are designed to require a pretty strong signal, and you do get a few dead spots. Swapping the proper IEM receiver to a communications scanner on wideband FM squeezes a little more range, at the expense of quality.

 

Using two-way radio works fine, subject to a couple of caveats. Bandwidth on comms kit is limited to concentrate performance on speech frequencies, so bass content is filtered off a bit, as is the top end - but it's still quite usable. The big snag that only has an expensive solution is the transmitter. Duty cycle of battery operated kit and even mobile equipment is not expected to be anywhere near 100% - and that's what you need, continuous transmission. If you try to bodge it - which can be done quite simply with an old handheld run off a power supply, you'll find that even on low power, they get extremely hot, and the potential for failure is high. The solution is a proper base station, which is designed for continuous operation. Commonly used in OB trucks for exactly this purpose, they are happy working permanently on. The disadvantages are that they are expensive - even second hand ones, and most are not user programmable directly - they need programming on a PC and the software is obtainable, but quite difficult to find. You'll need a license, but that's not a major issue, and not even too expensive.

 

Having tried all these methods over the years, I'm sticking with the IEMs. Getting the transmitter up higher works well to extend the coverage. Most need line level inputs, so you'll have to devise a way to get this, and not mic level into them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi

 

Another way of doing this is to go down the wireless coms route and assigning the auxiliary on the base station to an audio feed from your show relay or other source, this way you will have the show relay in your cans as well as the technical intercom. This could be done over channel two of a two circuit coms set, this way people can choose if they want the show relay or not in their coms.

 

Stage Electrics stock the Altair wireless coms system that can easily handle this, the Altair is available in both our sales and hire stock. PM me if you would like more info or would like to arrange a demo.

 

Link below to the sales section of our web site showing these

 

Wireless Coms

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.