Cool new product

BillESC

Well-Known Member
Phonic America has released a new universal wireless system designed for speakers.

The WMSYS-3 is a mono system

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And the WMSYS-4 is a stereo system

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The receivers are slightly larger than a pack of playing cards and both transmitters and receivers come with power supplies. No batteries required.

We've used the systems several times and not experienced any problems even when transmitting through walls.

Each system features 16 selectable UHF frequencies.
 
sounds cool. If you've used it and would like to write a longer review of what your impressions are thus far, I'd be happy to publish it on our front content page. Just PM it a review to me if you want to do that.

-David
 
Or, you could get some wireless guitar systems, from, say, shure or sennheiser, plug the transmitter into your mix out, with an AC adapter for power, and put the receiver by the speaker- sorted! :)

you have to run power anyway, so you could make some nice thick mults with power and sound in them!- you only need 6 cores, and 7 core is readily available these days...
 
Music Sciences http://musicsciences.com/ has a similar device that operates in the 5.8 GHz band with uncompressed digital audio. Looks like it costs about $500, so it is a good bit more expensive than the Phonic unit. Interestingly, they are also set to release a wireless digital snake with up to 64 channels in June. It will operate above 10Ghz.
 
I'm not sure I would trust a wireless snake, regardless of where it operates. You have to run power out front anyway, might as well run the snake as well. Ethernet makes it easier than lugging along 64 channels of copper.
 
I wouldn't trust any wireless product going for $500. Plus, their "feature list" seems a bit sketchy - it claims to be a digital product yet have "zero latency" - these are mutually exclusive terms. Plus, the 5.8 GHz band is going to be much more spotty and have more interference than the UHF broadcast bands.
 
I would love to see a wireless snake. I have had so many of the old style destroyed in clubs and outdoor concerts that the money would be worth it. The digital are just as bad....when the one cat 5 cable gets ruined, the whole show goes down. I have tried yellowjackets, etc... but I think people actually try to destroy the snakes.

I have used the sennheiser wireless monitor system/wireless mic system combination in reverse to send the signals to speakers. It was mostly an experiment, but it worked pretty well. It was a wedding that wanted speakers in every room of a 1800's hotel/inn. We put 9 JBL eon's, spread out throughout the inn, all on the same channel with a transmitter at the board. We had an AC transmitter (from the monitor system) at the board and a receiver (from 9 wireless mic's) at each eon. It was so much easier than running xlr all over the inn, as we were not allowed to put tape on the floors.

The quality was pretty good, but it cost the customer a pretty penny. I don't think that they really cared. I am glad that it worked as there really was no plan "B".
 
What stops you from using a digital snake with a wireless router and print server?
 
Regular digital (Ethernet) snakes don't work well with wireless Ethernet technologies because they require more bandwidth and less latency than most wireless Ethernet can provide. If you wanted to lay out some real money you could use a point-to-point laser (as opposed to RF) wireless Ethernet system and probably get it to work (as long as there wasn't too much haze in the air) though this probably costs more than people would like.

As far as protecting snakes from damage... It's a lot easier to protect a CAT5 cable then a regualr snake cable, plus they're inexpensive enough to be replaced on a regular basis. If I were doing an outside show I would probably just cut a narrow slit in the ground and bury the CAT5 to protect it. If one cable can bring your show down you have a problem, most digital snakes offer redundancy through a second cable, plus if it's Ethernet you can use switches at both ends for even more redundancy.
 
The problem is, people put their camp chars, umbrellas, etc... in the ground and destroy the cable. Even if you bury a cat5, it can still damaged. I am not running amphitheater (shed) sized shows here. It is simply 1000 or so people partying in a field with a few bands on the stage. They usually last anywhere from a night to 2-3 days (for the festivals) and I have to find a way to run the snake to the stage.

I have found that the worst is the music festivals on roads/parking lots/asphalt. I always use yellow jackets (cable ramps) for the run, which usually works well. The problem is, someone will inevitably drive over the ramp and destroy the cable. I have even had a union stagehand drive over the snake with a fork lift.

Although this type of stuff doesn't happen all that often (once or twice a year), I would love to see an affordable wireless snake and give it a try. I think that it would really simplify my life, as I know it would for many people in the industry (but only if it works!!!!!).
 
It's interesting that the yellow jackets are failing when they (at least the heavy duty ones) are designed to be driven over. In any event if it's a big enough problem you might look to doing a CobraNet snake with free space optics between the stage and FOH. Whirlwind makes some less expensive free space optical tranceivers called the ebeam but I would go for the auto-aligning type because you're going to want to avoid dropouts. These are expensive systems but if it's a big enough problem... Otherwise you could do what a production company around here used to do for these multi-day field shows, dig a trench about a foot deep and a foot wide between stage and FOH, run your cables through and cover it with steel plates, as far as I know they never had a problem.
 
I would love to see a wireless snake. I have had so many of the old style destroyed in clubs and outdoor concerts that the money would be worth it.

As an experienced wireless mic tech for multiple national tours and more one-off events than I can count, tasked with keeping a rig of (for just one example) 28 wireless mics, 8 drops (10 frequencies) of wireless intercom, and 10-12 two-way radios running and happy in different venues every week/day, I can say that unless one finds a reliable way to do a digital wireless snake (so that you could multiplex a whole mult's worth of signal into one or two wireless channels), you're in for a hard night of work each time you use a large number of channels wireless if you're a good RF coordinator, and a nightmare of a headache if you're not :-1

So, until digital wireless becomes much more complex, affordable, and practical, this is probably a pipe dream. And you'll still want some sort of wired backup in most cases (although more and more, large scale musicals are flying without a wired net for the actors--that's where a great deck RF guy or two come in, but one actor is a whole lot easier to get a spare to then an entire snake system!).

FWIW,
Andy
 

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