500m 2 Channel Audio wireless solution

[mackerr]

Not for 500 quid...

 

Also not 500 quid, and possibly not legal in the UK, but Lectrosonics has a 4ch digital link in the 902MHz-928MHz ISM band.

 

It can transmit at 200mw, and with directional receive antennas like the Shure X Band paddle should have plenty of range.

 

Specs

 

Mac

[pete10uk]

Thanks for all the responses, however I think this is going slightly off my requirement and the scope of the job.

 

point to point laser links

 

http://www.elannetworks.co.uk/laser-links.php

 

Or contact BT / Openreach about hire of dry copper link between the two sides, especially if both sides have telephone lines which share a connection point somewhere before the exchange.

 

We are talking field to field environment.

 

I'd be looking to do it in the IP world. A 5GHz band c wireless link (licensed), and a hardware encoder/decoder could give you a stereo link with a range of several miles line-of-sight and (if it's set up right) latency of about 30 ms. Cost around 700 quid if you shop around, with 50 annual license.

 

I use a very similar setup as a studio-transmitter link for a radio station.

 

Interesting concept, would it be possible to list some equipment used and work flow? Probably not for this job but interesting never the less.

 

The power output of the usual is pretty low but replacing the paddles with proper directional aerials makes the path doable with plenty of signal to spare. As it's in the tv band receive aerials are easily available with plenty of gain and you just need to source the transmit aerial, or build your own. Aerials up high both ends and you are off. However it's a bit wrecked by your need for stereo/2ch. As there isn't a 2 channel stereo receiver with an external aerial.

 

Thanks Paulears, another sensible suggestion bringing it back to my topic, I could do without the stereo, not sure why I put it down as a requirement as we didn’t have it last year.

 

Like the idea of using the RF link just to cross the road and preferably at 20ft to miss most of the traffic.

 

I once heard that 2.4GHz was misused by pirate radio for sending audio from a hidden studio to a high (and sacrificial) transmitter, SO using 2.4GHz CCTV senders without a video was supposedly illegal. You could try 2.4G across just the road IF you can either send a vid with it or chance or check the regs.

 

Great suggestion, I had thought of this but we're in the middle of 2 fields and I'm trying to simplify the setup, were already running cabling all over the place and could do without extra work and the power requirements.

 

I would second the Neutrik Xirium system. They are bringing out a newer version of the transmitter and recievers alowing you to buy in at a lower cost. The biggest difference will that the Xirium is transmitting full 20-20khz spectrum wareas IEM's will have a bass roll of and high bump. If using the Xirium NXA-60/40 you can get upto 400m on the new version. If you use dish antenna you could be looking at upto 1km. Neutrik also do a power supply so you can use them without mains power.

 

Looks a nice system and I like the brand but I think it's out of our price for this, also looks as though there could be a learning curve.

 

Can you use cabling to reduce the distance between RX and TX, leaving the wireless a smaller gap to cross? Peli style boxes can be handy for waterproofing this sort of setup.

 

Thanks, as above I would like to cut down on setup, I already have a number of waterproof battery powered Peli boxes to cope with. I know the "Peli Style" cases your probably referring to and I'd love to hear if you have a supplier of them now CPC seem to have stopped stocking them. I need a hand full to match existing ones Duratool code D01921

 

 

The cost of equipment has reduced to such a low level compared to what it was a few years ago and is so reliable that too many people think that anything can be done for a fiver. That is not correct. Radio mics are designed to transmit to the side of the stage and anything extra is a bonus. You would like to spend less than £500 on something that costs £120 per day to hire and will do the job properly. I would like a brand new Ferrari - I'm looking to spend less than £500. What you want to do is about as realistic as my Ferrari dream. Hire the kit that will do the job once, then you know what you need to use and can take a business decision to pay what it costs to either buy or continue hiring. You can't give your client a price for the job until you know what it will cost you to do it properly - if you have done that or allowed yourself to be talked into it then you are in a mess of your own making. If you have agreed to do the job for a price without costing it before doing so that is very unwise. I would advise your client to hire the extra kit directly so they see what it costs to get the job done properly then after a successful gig you can renegotiate with your client and either buy or continue to hire. You could of course not do the job but what you can't do is give your client a bad job.

 

GR1 Your preaching to the converted.

 

However £500 is not a Fiver, I appreciate it also isn't £3.5K for the pro kit but that wasn't what I asked for. I wish you all the best in your endevour to purchased a Farrari however please bare in mind sometimes a Toyota MR2 with body kit will make the owner happy.

 

Please don't presume to know my business, I have not given a price to the client without prior thought nor would I ever do a bad job, on this occasion I'm trying to make my like easier, provide a better service to the customer at no cost them and purchase a new toy for myself to play with.

If there isn't a solution in my price bracket which won't provide me with the reliability I feel my customer deserves and expects, then I will provide the solution we supplied last year. This is the reason I'm on here asking the people of BR for there experiences and advice.

My customer is well managed and is fully aware that we are making do with good quality equipment outside its normal operating environment, they do not feel the extra budget required to do the job "properly" is worth it in a non critical role.

[bruce]

I'd be looking to do it in the IP world. A 5GHz band c wireless link (licensed), and a hardware encoder/decoder could give you a stereo link with a range of several miles line-of-sight and (if it's set up right) latency of about 30 ms. Cost around 700 quid if you shop around, with 50 annual license.

 

I use a very similar setup as a studio-transmitter link for a radio station.

 

Interesting concept, would it be possible to list some equipment used and work flow? Probably not for this job but interesting never the less.

 

Certainly. For decoder/encoder, I'd use a Barix Exstreamer100/Intreamer100 pair. Retail price £124 and £266 respectively. Give them static IP addresses, put the STL firmware (Studio-transmitter link) on them, put them into uncompressed mode to keep quality up and latency down,, tell one of them the address of the other, and you'll get an audio link with pretty low latency - by tweaking some of the buffer settings you can get it down to about 20ms.

 

Only slight downside is that the in/extreamer100 units only have unbalanced inputs (although they also have spdif on coax and optical) - if you want balanced inputs, you need to go further up the range.

 

To join them together, get a pair of 5.8GHz IP bridges. I've been using the Engenius ENH500 units, which have a built in 13dB panel antenna. £86 each. Again, put static IP addresses on them, set up one end as a standard access point and one as a bridge, put the same encryption key on each one, and they should talk to each other. The supplier says they'll work up to 10km - I'm using them at the lowest power setting, with one end behind a double glazed window, and it's rock solid over 500m. They are reasonably directional, but only need aligned roughly by eye - there's about 10 degree spread on the antenna.

 

If you're in a city centre location, best to run it in band C - less congestion - license is 50 pounds a year for multiple links. If you're not in a congested area, band B should be fine, and license-free.

 

http://www.solwise.co.uk/wireless-outdoor-bridging-el-enh500.html

 

Or you can get a full kit - the 2 Barix units, and a pair of Ubiquiti bridges - from Broadcast Warehouse for £662 or £998, depending on which bridge model you go for.

http://www.broadcastwarehouse.com/ubiquiti-nanobeam-stl-with-barix/47/package

http://www.broadcastwarehouse.com/ubiquiti-rocketdish-with-barix/49/package

 

This, of course, is budget kit, running on unlicensed, or lightly-licensed frequencies. But it works pretty well. At work, I've got another system that does a similar job, but using pro-grade kit on licensed frequencies and giving a little more bandwidth. But that link cost a 5 figure sum to install. And in practice, the systems have been equally reliable!

[pete10uk]

I'd be looking to do it in the IP world. A 5GHz band c wireless link (licensed), and a hardware encoder/decoder could give you a stereo link with a range of several miles line-of-sight and (if it's set up right) latency of about 30 ms. Cost around 700 quid if you shop around, with 50 annual license.

 

I use a very similar setup as a studio-transmitter link for a radio station.

 

Interesting concept, would it be possible to list some equipment used and work flow? Probably not for this job but interesting never the less.

 

Certainly. For decoder/encoder, I'd use a Barix Exstreamer100/Intreamer100 pair. Retail price £124 and £266 respectively. Give them static IP addresses, put the STL firmware (Studio-transmitter link) on them, put them into uncompressed mode, tell one of them the address of the other, and you'll get a low(ish) latency audio link. Only slight downside is that the in/extreamer100 units only have unbalanced inputs (although they also have spdif on coax and optical) - if you want balanced inputs, you need to go further up the range.

 

To join them together, get a pair of 5.8GHz IP bridges. I've been using the Engenius ENH500 units, which have a built in 13dB antenna. £86 each. They say they'll work up to 10km - I'm using them at the lowest power setting, with one end behind a double glazed window, and it's rock solid over 500m.

http://www.solwise.co.uk/wireless-outdoor-bridging-el-enh500.html

 

Or you can get a full kit - the 2 Barix units, and a pair of Ubiquiti bridges - from Broadcast Warehouse for £662 or £998, depending on which bridge model you go for.

http://www.broadcastwarehouse.com/ubiquiti-nanobeam-stl-with-barix/47/package

http://www.broadcastwarehouse.com/ubiquiti-rocketdish-with-barix/49/package

 

Thanks

 

They look very reasonable, I have a couple of some engenius ip units (not this model) which I tried to get working a while back but the latency was too high for the use I had. They were too slow for the refresh rate of the equipment which caused me time out issues, can't remember the in's and outs off the top of my head but think it was a user error.

 

I may well give this ago on day, 50K would just be cool to do for no particular reason, I live on the top of a hill with views for at least 50K

[bruce]

.... and I've also run one of these links across Loch Lomond....

[musht]

a supplier of them now CPC seem to have stopped stocking them. I need a hand full to match existing ones Duratool code D01921

 

Seem to be getting replaced with Max range, in black, orange and clear

 

http://cpc.farnell.com/jsp/level5/module.jsp?moduleId=cpc/689114.xml

[laolu]

Just out of curiosity: Is the road higher or lower or on the same level as the spots where your antennas would be? In the latter case, would you have cars going through your RF beam, with cell phones interfering? The laser solution would also not work if the beam is interrupted. Similar the 2.4GHz stuff, which require a clear (uninterrupted) line of sight, as far as I know.

Just a few more thoughts.

Good luck, and keep us posted, if you found your solution.

 

Norbert

 

 

 

[pete10uk]

Just out of curiosity: Is the road higher or lower or on the same level as the spots where your antennas would be? In the latter case, would you have cars going through your RF beam, with cell phones interfering? The laser solution would also not work if the beam is interrupted. Similar the 2.4GHz stuff, which require a clear (uninterrupted) line of sight, as far as I know.

Just a few more thoughts.

Good luck, and keep us posted, if you found your solution.

 

Norbert

 

The road is about central to the 2 locations (150m -200m from each), the TX site is about 2m higher than the road but the RX side is probably about 15m higher, so LOS is perfect.

[Brettmasters]

We did a lot of research into this 3 maybe 4 years ago and found nothing (at the time) that would be reliable enough to use. We ended up manufacturing our own 1w wireless links and now have 8ch's of transmitters and 16ch's of receivers. We went a little further and manufactured some of the transmitters so that they run from a battery pack rather than mains.

 

I'm not aware of anything new to the market that would be suitable now so I think you only have a couple of options.

 

1) Do as you did

2) Rent a 1w Link

 

All the best,

 

Brett

[Bobbsy]

Back on the original question and confirming what Paulears suggested, I have (a couple of times) managed to get this sort of range out of a standard VHF (Audio Ltd. in my case) radio mic through the use of high gain antennas at the receive end (nothing illegal at the transmit side). This was for the cliche "presenter on one hill being filmed from another one across the valley" type of shot. Our use was only a few minutes at a time but we got a good strong signal as indicated on the receivers.

 

I have nothing concrete to prove this, but I suspect that (if you can find it) VHF might be a bit more robust over distance than UHF.

[pete10uk]

Just a quick update for anyone who is interested.

 

I decided to do with a cctv device called videomitte, I had upgraded aerials which claimed to do 1.2 km. my distance was actually closer to 375-400 but I had not remembered a single large tree blocking the line of sight.

 

I got a response from the supplier stating that for their intended use the combo was legal in the UK, so I took this to mean you needed a cctv image as well, which actually worked out well.

 

The units worked like a dream for 2 days, not one issue and the sound was perfectly acceptable if not perfect. No issues aligning them up just pointed them in the general direction. Evan had 1000 people milling all over the place not causing issues.

 

If anyone wants furthe info on the kit please send me a message.