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wireless lav system buying advice… again
i know this has probably been beaten to death, so i apologyze in advance. my company will be doing some very basic video shoots in hotel conference rooms, some that are very close to airports. last year when we started doing these, our client would supply their own wireless lav systems, Lectrosonics, i’m not sure the model # though. everytime we would do our setup with these mics, we would get a lot of intermittent sounds coming through, the best way i can describe it is “staticky”, maybe about a second in length, and would happen about every couple of minutes. this was not isolated by just one system either, this seemed to happen with about 4 different Lectrosonic systems. by reading other posts and checking prices on B&H, Lectrosonics is supposed to be one of the best? to sove this issue, instead of using the customer supplied Letrosonics, we would rent a wireless lav system from the hotel’s A/V department. we seemed to get much better results with whatever the hotel supplied, i think they were supplying us either Shure or Sennheiser systems. so now we are thinking of buying our own and are looking in the range of $500 to $1000, from what i’ve read so far, many people like the Sennheisser evolution 100 G2, how about you? also, i would prefer to buy a “dual channel” system, because occasionally we will have two people interacting. any feedback much appreciated, thanks.
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5 Replies
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Without knowing more, it’s impossible to comment. Your Lectros may have been assigned frequencies on which there were already other mics or other things.
Lectro has a very strong rep. Sennheiser also makes better systems than their G2 series.
Regards,
Ty Ford
Ty Ford’s “Audio Bootcamp Field Guide” was written for video people who want better audio. Find out more at https://home.comcast.net/~tyreeford/AudioBootcamp.html
or https://www.tyford.com
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As Ty said, without more info it’s difficult to troubleshoot what was happening with the Lectros. You can get Lectrosonics in different frequency blocks. It’s possible the block the clients systems were in were just jammed up by competing frequencies, especially if you’re in a hotel near an airport. Also, the transmitters may have been set too low. With the Lectro analog systems (not sure about the digital hybrid), the higher the audio level being sent from the transmitter, the stronger the signal and vice versa. If it’s too low, you could be hearing noise up, which sounds like a quick “phhhtt” and would happen occasionally.
Hire an audio tech who knows what they’re doing and will provide the equipment. That’ll help more than anything. BTW I’m available in the SW Florida area… hint, hint 🙂
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Questions regarding the Lectrosonics.
Was the antenna on the receiver 8-12″ long or 4″ long?
Lectrosonics has been around for a long time and at first they had a VHF package that had a 12″ long antenna on the receiver. That unit was NOT frequency agile and the VHF band is extremely busy. It would be very easy to pick up another VHF signal.Lectrosonics then came out with a UHF system. Easiest way to tell if it was UHF was to look at the antenna on the receiver. It was 1/3 the length of the orginal VHF systems.
Last question on the Lectrosonics is were there one or two antennas on each receiver? One antenna meant that the receiver wasn’t a diversity receiver and “drop outs” were common.
Never the less, if it was an older VHF, non-diversity, non frequency agile Lectrosonic, luck had to be on your side to make it work near a large airport.
Lectrosonic makes a great product, but years ago, you needed to be lucky or very good at audio and sometimes both.
Ray Palmer, Engineer
Salt River Project
Phoenix, AZ
602-236-8224 office
There are three types of people in this world, those that can count and those that can’t. -
thanks for all the responses…
to answer Ray’s questions, the antenna on the receiver is about 8-12″, thus an older VHF model. and also, only one antenna on the receiver. guess that’s two strikes!
we ended up purchasing a Sennheiser system, the ew100 G2. i used this for an audio only recording at a two day conference in a hotel conference room of aprox. 700 sq feet (total of 12 people in attendance, basically a pretty small room). the first day went terrific, i used my new sennheiser system on the “primary” presenter, and the customer supplied Lectrosonics on the “secondary” presenter. no problems at all! the second day, about 4 hours into the session, i started to get a lot of “staticky hits” from the Sennheiser system, so i changed the batteries on the transmitter and still had the problem. i had the two presenters switch systems and everything went okay after that, except then i had to “ride” the fader on the mixer for the channel that the sennnheiser was on. what do you guys think caused this? did something on or near the same frequency get turned on nearby? should i have tried changing channels on the Sennheiser? also, what exactly does the “pilot” function on the Sennheiser’s do? i had it “on” on both transmitter and receiver during the recording and could see on the display of the receiver that it was switching back and forth between pilot I and II. Any help much appreciated, thanks!
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[greg_vid] “what exactly does the “pilot” function on the Sennheiser’s do?”
The way it was explained to me was the the pilot is a frequency that rides along with the RF from the wireless mic. It was designed to make the receiver look for the pilot and when it sees the pilot open the receiver and allow it to pass audio.
A better explaination, if the pilot is NOT there, the receiver might see the RF signal but will not open the squelch. This was designed to keep stray RF signals from getting into the receiver.[greg_vid] “should i have tried changing channels on the Sennheiser?”
Here is a tip that I use. Turn on the receiver without a transmitter on. If the receiver sees a signal that is not yours, move to another frequency. When you find a hole in the freq spectrum, dial your transmitters to that freq and hope that no one drops in.
Ray Palmer, Engineer
Salt River Project
Phoenix, AZ
602-236-8224 office
There are three types of people in this world, those that can count and those that can’t.
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