Wireless Sennheiser G3 Mics

[bsamuels]

So i am the sound designer for many of the amateur productions in our small city. On top of designing the shows i also rent equipment to the theatre societies and schools as they cant afford to pay local rental company prices.

I am looking at wireless gear and the Sennheiser G3 range is the one i am considering. Particularly the ew100 range of wireless gear. I have read all the supporting documentation and the ew100, ew300 and ew500 all have a 42mhz transmission band. Yet they say in the documentation that the ew100 can only run 12 frequencies inter modulation free whereas the 300 can do 24 and so on.

Why is this if they all have the same transmission band?

Am i gonna benefit greatly by buying the ew300 over the 100 and how?

Would you be able to run 16 recievers on a single band of frequencies with the ew100 series? Sorry if this is obvious but i need to clarify before i invest.

 

[ccm1495]

The School i do shows at we have 10 Sennheiser G2 100 Series, and 4 G1 100 Series packs that work they are getting old but still hang on great. We love the performance of all of them and they seem to be pretty rugged, and being in school theater they get a lot of abuse.

 

[lakota651]

The 100 series comes with an x-number of banks, each containing 12 channels (frequencies) that will play nice together, and you can store 12 in the user bank. As you had mentioned, that number increases as you go up the line.

The units though can be tuned to any frequency though, within the 42Mhz band (well not quite, it tunes in .25Mhz steps, for a total of 1680 possible options. The trick is knowing which ones to choose. Thats where the SIFM software, and other programs come into play. SIFM is free.

Sennheiser SIFM Program

Depending on other transmissions in your area, it is possible that you could get double your required number channels to work 100 series equipment. If you are going to move the system around a lot though, I suggest getting the 300 series if you can. The networking feature will allow you to scan for free channels (and see what is in use), and assign all of your receivers at once, plus other benefits.

 

[bsamuels]

So technically speaking i can refer to the documentation showing which frequencies are intermodulation free on the ew500 and it should apply to the ew100?

 

[mbenonis]

The best way to choose frequencies for wireless mic use is to use SIFM (free) or IAS (not so free, but has a free demo). Give it your location and tell it what kind of mics you have, and let it chug away.

Yes, they have the same tuning range, and in theory they can have the same number of intermod-free channels (which is a strong function of location). I have not played with the G3 series myself, but it may be that the 100's only tune in 250 kHz steps (though 25 kHz seems more likely to me without looking it up). If it were 250 kHz, that would be a limitation, but not the end of the world.

Do a search on wireless mics and read what I and others have posted on the subject...it'll save me some typing here.

 

[bishopthomas]

Every day I find something that makes me love the G3 series more than previous generations. The most recent was the fact that they have switching power supplies. So if you're planning on taking them out of the country just take the necessary plug adapter. No need in lugging around transformers. I have a band as a regular client that is on tour in Europe right now. They emailed me the other day needing a replacement IEM unit because something happened to the one they had. Rather than buying from me and shipping it (express delivery) across the Atlantic they can walk into any music store and buy one off the shelf. And it will work in the States when they get back, just need the right connector which is swappable on the wall wart.

I would say if you can afford the 300 series rather than the 100 then go for it. I am building a rack of wireless handhelds and right now have a 300 series and a 500 series. I'll probably stick with the 300 series, but definitely not go down to the 100's. The networking capability alone is worth the extra money. My partner had takena rack of Shure ULX series wireless mics on a gig in NYC a couple of months ago and could literally not find a single open channel. He ended up having to rent the UHF-R's (top of the line series) just to get four mics to work. Two weeks later we were back with the Sennheiser 300 and 500 stuff and it worked flawlessly. We connected it to my laptop running the WSM software, scanned for frequencies, and it showed us a graphical display of exactly what frequencies were being used and what was available in the area. It was great having that readout, so I will be sticking with the 300 series RF mics.

 

[lakota651]

Mike, you are correct in that these systems tune in 25kHz (.025MHz) steps, as opposed to 250 kHz as I had mistakenly typed earlier.

 

[Chris15]

Yep the 100s, 300s and 500s have the same bandwidth and the same tuning resolution. What they don't have is the same RF front ends and that's what affects the buffers needed around each carrier to keep everything behaving. As a case in point, the 2000 Series also have 25 kHz tuning steps...

With respect to [MENTION=8966]bishopthomas[/MENTION] it's NYC you are talking about. One of, if not THE most congested RF environments on Earth. In that situation, relying on any inbuilt scanner is asking for trouble. It needs a full RF spectrum sweep and then IM coordination based on that. The only difference really is that the G3s are newer than the ULXs and so they've got ethernet on them to access the scanner via computer. I still don't like WSM since I can't do anything with it offline... There is a reason Stoffo and friends earn a living from doing RF coordination work...

 

[mbenonis]

Every day I find something that makes me love the G3 series more than previous generations. The most recent was the fact that they have switching power supplies. So if you're planning on taking them out of the country just take the necessary plug adapter. No need in lugging around transformers. I have a band as a regular client that is on tour in Europe right now. They emailed me the other day needing a replacement IEM unit because something happened to the one they had. Rather than buying from me and shipping it (express delivery) across the Atlantic they can walk into any music store and buy one off the shelf. And it will work in the States when they get back, just need the right connector which is swappable on the wall wart.

Just make sure you are using frequencies you are legally allowed to use in every country you visit! It's not like Wi-Fi; you can't just turn it on and go. Many countries REQUIRE a license to operate (the US does not anymore)...

 

[mbenonis]

Yep the 100s, 300s and 500s have the same bandwidth and the same tuning resolution. What they don't have is the same RF front ends and that's what affects the buffers needed around each carrier to keep everything behaving. As a case in point, the 2000 Series also have 25 kHz tuning steps...

Chris is absolutely right here; while the lower end gear will work fine in less congested areas (suburbs, rural areas) you may need 500 series or 2k series to make the cut in NYC or LA...

 

[Chris15]

Just make sure you are using frequencies you are legally allowed to use in every country you visit! It's not like Wi-Fi; you can't just turn it on and go. Many countries REQUIRE a license to operate (the US does not anymore)...

And the Europeans take enforcement seriously... like drilling straight through the transmitter to stop it being used illegally...

 

[mixmaster]

Just make sure you are using frequencies you are legally allowed to use in every country you visit! It's not like Wi-Fi; you can't just turn it on and go. Many countries REQUIRE a license to operate (the US does not anymore)...

Technically, anybody transmitting anything in the US is required to have a license, except for low power Citizen Band radios (think truckers) and a few blocks of channels for the cheap two-way family radios. Common misconception aside, most wireless mic operators have been transmitting illegally for years, and no-one cared as long as you didn't step on the transmissions of someone who was using the channel legally. Hopefully the fallout from the recent 700mhz issue will get something going but that's a whole different thread.

 

[mbenonis]

Not anymore; as of earlier this year wireless microphones were granted temporary permission to operate under Part 15 of the Rules if they used 50 mW or less and were within 174-216 MHz and 470-698 MHz (less 608-614 MHz). It remains to be seen what the final rules will be but we expect them to come out in a few months.

 

[TimmyP1955]

According to Sennheiser's FM, in the US, if there were no other transmitters on the planet, one could run 21 A-band 100G3 units without intermod problems. I've run 13 with no troubles. I asked Sennheiser about using all A when we go to 16 (we own 9 at the moment), and they recommended splitting them into two bands just in case.