Buying wireless mics

[KBToys82]

Hey everyone! I'm looking into buying wireless mics rather than renting out mics for our musical. The local shop gives us Audio Technica 3000 units with various ear mics (mix of Samson and Audio Technica I believe) and I've been pretty happy overall with the quality of the units. We rent out 12 mics at a time and each group of 4 comes with it's own rack and an antenna distribution system. All of them are on the D Band units. I am thinking about just buying the same type of setup, with eventually paddles to feed all the receivers. Eventually, over the next several years would be purchasing 16 mics, receivers and transmitters, and paddles. I have a couple of questions tho.

What is the difference between the ATW-DA49 and AEWDA550-D or C?. One obviously is a full rack unit while the other is a half rack unit, and with the DA49, I'm not sure how 1 pair of paddles would be able to feed all of the distribution systems if I were to go the DA49 route.

Also, at least according to Sweetwater, the AEWDA550-D band unit is a special order, as compared to the C band and I know after reading this site and around that frequencies are up for auction in the D band. At one point I was considering to have half my units on C band and half on D band, but I don't think I would be able to connect multiple band units together. I have checked the available frequencies in my area and have more frequencies in the D band than the C band.

 

[JD]

Well, as of now, 700Mhz banned, 600Mhz ok, but there is some question about for how long, 500Mhz ok and nothing on the horizon. FCC seams to be chewing down from the top.

 

[themuzicman]

Well, as of now, 700Mhz banned, 600Mhz ok, but there is some question about for how long, 500Mhz ok and nothing on the horizon. FCC seams to be chewing down from the top.

They have announced that round 4 of the auction will be the final one. 614mHz is the clearance target so anything south of that is safe, except for whatever TV stations and emergency services in your area use.

 

[FMEng]

The DA49 is broadband, which makes it more vulnerable to overload and intermod in challenging RF environments. It only has outputs for 4 receivers.

The DA550 has a tuned front end. It also has a pair of cascade outputs, which can either be used for a 5th receiver or for daisy chaining to another DA.

If you go with DA49s to feed twelve receivers with two antennas, you'll need one DA49 to feed three more DA49s. It'll only take three DA550s to do the same job.

 

[KBToys82]

Thanks for the heads up. Although the cost factor is significant, I do like the idea that a 5th receiver can be daisy chained to the other 4 units.