Sennheiser Infrared Systems

[redkingroo]

Good morning one and all, I wonder if anyone could give me any feedback or personal experience/knowledge on a small query I have?

 

Recently our front of house team 'upgraded' the infra-red stethesets we offer front of house for the hearing impaired. They have replaced all the old Sennheiser RI150 headsets with Sennheiser HDI830's. The new sets while being much more user friendly and a damn sight quicker to charge unfortunately seem to suffer from a horrid amount of signal drop-out compared to the old units. With the RI150's you could follow the action from one side of the stage to the other whereas with the HDI830's you have to keep your upper body frozen solid and rely upon your peripheral vision as the slightest turning of the head or neck will cause a breakup or loss of signal.

 

The question I propose to yourselves then is; Has any had the same experiences with these headsets in their venues or can anyone comment as to why the newer shinier headsets seem to be so much worse than the old?

 

Cheers.

 

Ruari

[Dave m]

all I can suggest (Never used them) is that maybe the new ones need the transmitter moved, or have a different angle of acceptance with the pick-ups?

 

I had a set of Sony IR headphones at home years ago and they were brilliant at my home, with white walls, and would work even in my through -lounge due to reflections.

A mate with dark walls borrowed them and they were terrible.

[sandall]

Our local theatre swapped their stethosets a couple of years ago & there don't seem to have been any problems. It's a horseshoe-shaped auditorium, so we have 2 radiators, angled so that they both cover all the seats. Maybe the new receivers have a narrower acceptance angle, which might mean more careful aiming of the radiators (assuming you aren't relying on only one).

 

An easy check of coverage is to walk the auditorium with a camera-phone pointed at each radiator in turn - the radiator shows up as a bright dot.

[redkingroo]

Yes my thought is that the angle of acceptance on the new stethosets is much narrower than the old. Coverage from our six 5W radiators had never been a problem before aside from a couple of known areas, it just seems a shame that a shiny new product that was supposed to avail the issues of the old system (battery life, comfort, user friendliness) has created a whole new set of issues that can only be solved by throwing more money at more radiators. Quite disappointed as Sennheiser products had never done me wrong in the past.

[sandall]

How big is your venue? - 6 radiators sounds a lot to me. It might be worth giving Sennheiser a call, in case there are any known issues.

[cedd]

Really really daft question, but are they on the correct channel for your radiators? The older ones only had 2.3MHz, whereas your newer ones are switchable between 2.3MHz and 2.8MHz.

 

One radiator is specified to cover 400 square meters, so I doubt really strongly if it'll be a coverage problem with 6 of the things!!!

 

Yesterday I knew nothing about these things! I've had a day of researching and talking to people about them (see my audio description thread) so I'm by no means an expert!

 

 

 

[sandall]

Good thinking that man!

[Simon Lewis]

My slightly limited experience of IR is that the older receivers would pick up reasonably well but were susceptible to gradual drop out accompanied by lots of white noise.

The new receivers stayed cleaner but gated off when they lost the signal. I used two of the smeller transmitters in one bible college chapel, and got fairly wide coverage, so I'd be surprised if the acceptance angle was significantly changed. What you might want check is the transmitters themselves - the LEDs can stop working over time!