On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:02:20 +0100, "Serge Auckland"
wrote:


"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
In article , Phil Allison
scribeth thus

"Serge Auckland"

I volunteer at our local Hospital Radio station, and we've just been
given
a license as a Community Station. We've had an old very cheap VHF radio
mic
which has worked sort of Ok for us in the past, but that's now become
unreliable and the audio quality was never great so I'd like to replace
it.

I've seen radio mics at £50, even Sennheisers at about £100 and others
at
around £400 for a single handheld transmitter. I can't tell from the
specs
what the differences are, and I have little experience of speccing radio
mics, as it was something that I very rarely got involved with
professionally.

Can anyone here advise me what the differences are between cheap mics
and
expensive mics, and recommend any favourites. Is it sound quality,
range,
reliability or what? I don't have a budget in mind, but even as a
Community Station, we have limited funds, so a £100 would be better than
a
£400 one if the cheaper one will do the job. Sadly being based in rural
Suffolk, there aren't any dealers round here I could go and talk to, but
anyway, what dealer would actually give me impartial advice?


** OK - the very cheapest radio mic systems operate in the VHF band,
have
only one fixed frequency and are flimsy in construction with a mediocre to
poor sound quality.

The ones to go for these days operate in the UHF band, have several
switchable frequencies, are of much sturdier in construction and have an
essential feature called " true diversity " built into the receiver.
Without
this feature, a radio mic systems suffers from severe signal "drop outs"
as
you move the mic around a room.

It is also a good idea to go for one of the major brand names, like Shure
or
Sennheiser.

Have a look at the Sennheiser " Freeport " system - has all the
features
I mentioned and is still inexpensive at around 130 UK pounds.



...... Phil




Trantrec are UK based and offer high performance at a reasonable price
find them in the Canford catalogue...
--
Tony Sayer

Thanks to all for the comments. I did look at the Sennheiser Freeport
system, as you say, Phil, they're pretty inexpensive, but as Sennheiser also
do the G2 system at betwen £400 and £500 depending on microphone, I wondered
what the differences would be. As bit of further information, our use of a
radio mic is for Outside Broadcasts at Country Fairs and the like where we
send off a Presenter into the crowd and do inpromptue interviews, so
crowding isn't a real problem for us, range is more important, I'd need
about 100 metres as that's as much as the wireless headphones give us.

I'll look up Trantec as well.

S.

www.radiowestsuffolk.co.uk

If you need range, go for a mic with a separate RF pack, not one built
in. Also make sure the receiver has antenna diversity, as this will
rescue you from a lot of fading problems. Unfortunately this probably
means you won't be looking at the very bottom of anybody's range.

d