Wireless XLRs

[Dankology]

As the prospect looms of knitting back together the practice room post-gig, someone has queried whether we could be using wireless XLR connectors (for our non-phantom powered stuff, of course).

 

I can't seem to find much in the way of a general overview online so wondered if the ever-relable Basschat panel had any experience here.

 

Our rehearsal set up uses a Behringer XR18 which allows us to multitrack every rehearsal; we also use the same set up for proper recordings. Thoughts that immediately spring to mind are:

 

1) is there any latency involved? And if so will it be an acceptable-for-rehearsal level but not for serious recording?

2) is the battery life reasonable?

3) how many radio channels can you choose between? With potentially 8+ audio channels going through are we going to max out the available options?

4) how cheap can we go? There are some fairly diverse price points online

 

Any thoughts or experience you can share would be much appreciated.

[Dood]

The point of balanced line transmission, or DI (XLR is the connector type) is to overcome both limitations of long cable runs and noise being picked up. Wireless would negate the point of DI in that case.

 

Rather than use wireless, which I feel, to get the quality you’d want would be costly and hard to implement (due to environmental factors such as interference), I’d look at running inputs and outputs over Ultranet - for example, using an ultranet stage box - one cable to the XR18. But then, you may find that you still have to run all your instruments to that anyway and you’d not gain much by it.

[tauzero]

I can't see why wireless would be any worse for XLR than for guitars or bass. Wireless XLR means you can plug a dongle into a mic and another into the receiver and eliminate the wire, and the reason for it being XLR is that that's what mics use.

 

Lekato do the MW-1 https://lekatodeal.com/en-uk/products/wireless-5-8ghz-microphone-system-plug-on-xlr-transmitter-receiver?_pos=1&_sid=08dc515d5&_ss=r - available for about £70 from AliExpress.

[ossyrocks]

1 hour ago, tauzero said:

I can't see why wireless would be any worse for XLR than for guitars or bass. Wireless XLR means you can plug a dongle into a mic and another into the receiver and eliminate the wire, and the reason for it being XLR is that that's what mics use.

 

Lekato do the MW-1 https://lekatodeal.com/en-uk/products/wireless-5-8ghz-microphone-system-plug-on-xlr-transmitter-receiver?_pos=1&_sid=08dc515d5&_ss=r - available for about £70 from AliExpress.

Our harmonica player has this and it seems to work well, with no conflicts with my wireless either. 

[Dood]

2 hours ago, tauzero said:

I can't see why wireless would be any worse for XLR than for guitars or bass. Wireless XLR means you can plug a dongle into a mic and another into the receiver and eliminate the wire, and the reason for it being XLR is that that's what mics use.

 

Lekato do the MW-1 https://lekatodeal.com/en-uk/products/wireless-5-8ghz-microphone-system-plug-on-xlr-transmitter-receiver?_pos=1&_sid=08dc515d5&_ss=r - available for about £70 from AliExpress.

Absolutely. XLR is just the connector and, there’s plenty of mic wireless sets on the market. My comment was really that you be looking at 8 units (or more if any instruments are stereo). If budget isn’t a worry then 8 Sennheisser / Sony systems could work, but I’m not sure I’d trust recording with budget wireless systems, even if 8 x £70 is a budget someone is willing to swallow. Jamming and rehearsal, maybe. Seems like a lot of extra kit to pack up just to achieve freedom from a cable. 
 

Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of being cable free and I can totally see a market for extra low latency wireless connections, but for jamming and recording, if we had to cut down on cables, I’d put the 8x£70 money towards running a DAW set up and just plug straight in to the XR running as an interface. Eliminate all the amps, XLR and excess cables altogether

[Dankology]

Rather than separate proper wireless transmitters and receivers for each channel we had been looking at the small combined XLR/dongle connectors (the cheapest of which are significantly cheaper than the Sony/Senn systems mentioned above).

 

The more I think about it, the expense and increased number of points of potential failure vs the relatively small gains means it's probably a non-starter.

 

Thanks for your thoughts, everyone. 

Edited July 8 by Dankology

[TimR]

If you want to reduce cable mess to the mixer buy a snake/stagebox. Not too expensive vs the same number of XLR cables. And can use at a gig as its not installed as fixed wiring in your studio. 

 

https://www.gear4music.com/PA-DJ-and-Lighting/Omnitronic-MUS-810-8-Channel-Stagebox/3ODK

 

 

 

 

Edited July 8 by TimR

[Happy Jack]

21 hours ago, tauzero said:

I can't see why wireless would be any worse for XLR than for guitars or bass. Wireless XLR means you can plug a dongle into a mic and another into the receiver and eliminate the wire, and the reason for it being XLR is that that's what mics use.

 

Lekato do the MW-1 https://lekatodeal.com/en-uk/products/wireless-5-8ghz-microphone-system-plug-on-xlr-transmitter-receiver?_pos=1&_sid=08dc515d5&_ss=r - available for about £70 from AliExpress.

 

I saw a well-known & busy covers band on Saturday night, playing 40/50 pub gigs a year. Noticed that the singer was using the same Lekato system that I've just bought to experiment with so I asked her about it.

 

She had nothing but good to say about it and it sounded absolutely fine to me BUT I did notice that the receiver unit was plugged into a mini-mixer of some sort on her music stand so the transmission distance was really very short. Now that's actually quite similar to how I'd plan to use mine (for when I'm playing keys, not bass) so I'm happy with that, but how the unit performs with a 30/50/70-foot transmission distance I can't tell you. It works fine over those distances in my back garden, but that ain't a busy pub/club with routers & extenders and dozens of mobile phones in use.

[Dankology]

4 hours ago, TimR said:

If you want to reduce cable mess to the mixer buy a snake/stagebox. Not too expensive vs the same number of XLR cables. And can use at a gig as its not installed as fixed wiring in your studio. 

 

https://www.gear4music.com/PA-DJ-and-Lighting/Omnitronic-MUS-810-8-Channel-Stagebox/3ODK

 

 

 

 

You might be overestimating the size of our rehearsal room there...

 

We do have an 8 channel mini snake thing that we used to use for the drums but the mess of cables around the kit obviously remained much the same.

 

I guess between the mini snake plus cheapo wireless dongles for the 2x vox and the bass/guitar amps we could get things a fair bit tidier...

[TimR]

If you just want to tidy up loads of cables then get a couple of rolls of velcro tape. 

 

https://www.screwfix.com/p/velcro-brand-black-self-gripping-ties-5m-x-30mm/74887

 

[StingRayBoy42]

I use a Lekato MW-1 for my IEMs and it works a treat.
No latency, no drop outs (yet, touch wood) and it sounds good.

[mike257]

Cheap wireless is a compromise on sound quality, and if you start running high numbers of channels you'll get in to issues managing coordination of frequencies between each unit.

 

If wireless was the right solution for tidy stages and quick setups, professional touring shows would be using it for all of the connections - and they absolutely don't. If the cables around your drum kit are messy, whoever is cabling it up might just need to take more care, or you might just need some different length cables to have less mess. 

 

As far as keeping it tidy goes, it's always best to start your cable runs from the stagebox end, run a neat route that's not under people's feet, and coil any slack at the bottom of the mic stand, so if you do need to move the mic, it's easy to do so, and you don't get a tangled nest of excess cable back at the stagebox or mixer where everything meets. 

 

If the drum kit is setup in the same layout every day, I'll drop the stagebox for drums to the downstage left edge of the drum kit (snare side, near the front corner of the drum rug). I'll use short (2 or 3 metre) XLR for everything close enough, and 5 metre for the couple of things that are a bit further to reach (floor toms, the far overhead). If you get appropriately lengthed cables, run them neatly, then label both ends of each cable with what it's for, you can put them tidily in place so they all run together, then use wraps of PVC tape every six inches or so to make a loom up and they'll all stay attached together as one piece like that for the duration of the tour, and be coiled away as one at the end of each night. I'll do the same for anywhere else on stage where there are multiple cables always running to the same place. 

 

This way, you just have one big coil of cable to pull out for the kit, and you just unfurl it neatly from the stage box across the kit and everything is more or less in place.  Goes in and out quicker, and you don't spend ages searching for individual cables or wondering what's plugged in where. 

Edited July 10 by mike257