In article , Phil Allison
scribeth thus

"tony sayer"
Phil Allison


"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.



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


** I looked there today - and could not see ANY low cost, multi-channele
UHF systems that were of true DIVERSITY type.

Post your example .


...... Phil





Might do for a start or better still phone their tech support who are
very good at that sort of thing..

Tho for outside use I'd opt for VHF over UHF not that there are than
many making them ...

http://www.canford.co.uk/Browse/22862.aspx
--
Tony Sayer

"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
In article , Serge Auckland
scribeth thus

"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.


If your looking at that sort of range in the open air and that you'd be
best of with something a bit more powerful that prolly isn't going to be
a licence exempt one. And of course a decent aerial up a bit off the
ground makes -all- the difference

BTW if your sending them out into the crowd why not just equip them with
a decent recorder and bring it back on that unless your really intending
to do live OB's .. which are bloody hard work for a small station..


S.

www.radiowestsuffolk.co.uk


--
Tony Sayer


All our OBs are really live. It's part of our profile of getting out into
our Community. In effects what we do is to try and run as close as we can to
our normal programming schedule, but do it from a playing field, or as in
last weekend, from Rougham airfield which was a WWII US Army Airforce bomber
base just outside the town. There was the two-day Wings Wheels and Steam
Fair, with vintage aircraft flying, vintage cars and military vehicles and
steam traction engines. Yes, it's bloody hard work but good fun.

I hadn't tried raising the antenna, I'll try that this weekend, - we've got
two more OBs, and see what difference it makes.

S.
--
http://audiopages.googlepages.com

All our OBs are really live. It's part of our profile of getting out into
our Community. In effects what we do is to try and run as close as we can to
our normal programming schedule, but do it from a playing field, or as in
last weekend, from Rougham airfield which was a WWII US Army Airforce bomber
base just outside the town. There was the two-day Wings Wheels and Steam
Fair, with vintage aircraft flying, vintage cars and military vehicles and
steam traction engines. Yes, it's bloody hard work but good fun.

I hadn't tried raising the antenna, I'll try that this weekend, - we've got
two more OBs, and see what difference it makes.


What are you using for backhaul?..
S.

--
Tony Sayer

In article ,
David Looser wrote:
They may not have that sort of "clout", but theatre is an important
industry. I would have expected the big London theatres to put up more
of a fight with Ofcom. ISTM that this case is a good example of how the
current fashion for treating spectrum allocation as a matter of market
forces is failing society generally.

Theatres generally hire - so the problem isn't theirs.

--
*Even a blind pig stumbles across an acorn now and again *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Serge Auckland" wrote in message
...


I hadn't tried raising the antenna, I'll try that this weekend, - we've
got two more OBs, and see what difference it makes.


I use an external dipole aerial on a pole about 8 ft off the ground with a
VHF radio mic. That gives excellent reception from anywhere in a field of
about 4 acres.

David.

In article ,
Serge Auckland wrote:
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.

You'll need a well sited receiver to get reliable reception at 100 yards.
And probably decent aerials - but keep them close to the receiver. Far
better to run the audio some distance than have long aerial cables.

--
*No sentence fragments *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article 4a52d642.1485793703@localhost,
Don Pearce wrote:
If you need range, go for a mic with a separate RF pack, not one built
in.

Only it it's not body worn. The body packs are allowed a higher ERP than
hand held ones - because the body soaks up RF. Some more than others.

--
*Money isn't everything, but it sure keeps the kids in touch.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
Phil Allison wrote:
Obviously you can do anything you want if you are happy to do it
illegally.

** Pedantic TRIPE.

No complaint is possible that could initaite any action.

So it AIN'T illegal - ****wit.

You're an expert on UK law?


That is hardly a cogent comment.


** Pedantic TRIPE is all you ever post.

****wit !!!



In the vast majority of situations, DTV etc will have no effect on the
use of analogue (ie FM) radio mics on the UHF band.

Cos the mics are used INDOORS !!!!!


Spoken like a true outback dweller. London's theatreland is crammed
with venues just yards apart, all demanding radio mics for their
performers.


** Massive RED HERRING !!


It doesn't matter that they are indoors when that close to
each other. Interference is still a problem, and Joseph breaking into
a chorus of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is probably only funny once.


** Masssive STRAW MAN and a masive FALSEHOOD !!!

**** off right to HELL

- you asinine pommy **** !!!!

If you'd ever used radio mics in a country as densely populated as the UK
you'd know this can be a real problem. Hire companies co-operate with one
another via a central site to avoid such problems.

--
*I speak fluent patriarchy but it's not my mother tongue

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
All our OBs are really live. It's part of our profile of getting out into
our Community. In effects what we do is to try and run as close as we can
to
our normal programming schedule, but do it from a playing field, or as in
last weekend, from Rougham airfield which was a WWII US Army Airforce
bomber
base just outside the town. There was the two-day Wings Wheels and Steam
Fair, with vintage aircraft flying, vintage cars and military vehicles and
steam traction engines. Yes, it's bloody hard work but good fun.

I hadn't tried raising the antenna, I'll try that this weekend, - we've
got
two more OBs, and see what difference it makes.


What are you using for backhaul?..
S.

--
Tony Sayer


We use a pair of Tielines, http://www.tieline.com.au/ which are either POTS
codecs where we have a telephone line, or as in this past weekend, we used
their 3G option which gave us a very solid link back to another codec in the
studio. The link was up for 9 hours with no breakup. With POTS, we have
linked 8,9,10 hours with zero problems. They have developed their own
proprietary algorithm which gives 15kHz mono of broadcast quality over a
POTS line, or 20kHz stereo over 3G /IP. Exceptionally good units.

S.


--
http://audiopages.googlepages.com

In article , Serge Auckland
scribeth thus

"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
All our OBs are really live. It's part of our profile of getting out into
our Community. In effects what we do is to try and run as close as we can
to
our normal programming schedule, but do it from a playing field, or as in
last weekend, from Rougham airfield which was a WWII US Army Airforce
bomber
base just outside the town. There was the two-day Wings Wheels and Steam
Fair, with vintage aircraft flying, vintage cars and military vehicles and
steam traction engines. Yes, it's bloody hard work but good fun.

I hadn't tried raising the antenna, I'll try that this weekend, - we've
got
two more OBs, and see what difference it makes.


What are you using for backhaul?..
S.

--
Tony Sayer


We use a pair of Tielines, http://www.tieline.com.au/ which are either POTS
codecs where we have a telephone line, or as in this past weekend, we used
their 3G option which gave us a very solid link back to another codec in the
studio. The link was up for 9 hours with no breakup. With POTS,

Lucky so may lines around where U want them Do they still have
problems with ADSL equipped lines?..


we have
linked 8,9,10 hours with zero problems. They have developed their own
proprietary algorithm which gives 15kHz mono of broadcast quality over a
POTS line, or 20kHz stereo over 3G /IP.

Bet that doesn't work too well once your away from the built up bit of
your neck of the woods. Every time I try to use the Voodofone dongle
thats it!.. back to GPRS..

Exceptionally good units.

S.



--
Tony Sayer