dreamist
Member
Hey gang..
I had decided that this was the year I was going to start building an inventory of wireless mic equipment so I could stop borrowing/renting. I've got a small musical coming up in a few months, so I started the process of buying some gear.. only to find that whereas I thought my mind was made up, now I'm hitting pause.
In our area, which has several community theatres and friendly high school theatre programs, the Audio Technica 3000 series has been king. I've worked with it a bunch, and I've always found it to be a very high value -- as in, for the price, hard to beat what you get. With my experience with the units, and the built in inventory via the other theatres in town to borrow as needed, it seemed like a no brainer to go with AT 3000's.
Low and behold, as I start to dig into the current state of pricing etc, I see that the Gen4 AT3000's are due out any minute. That'd probably be enough to make me hit pause -- but the real kicker is that the connector is different.. looks like they flipped from the Hirose (which i've always thought was... okay..) to some funky locking connector that I doubt anyone knows much about yet. Other than my misgivings about a new and possibly proprietary connector, it also basically completely eliminates the advantage of purchasing the same units that are in most the rest of the theatres in town.
I realize I can still buy the Gen3 stuff, but that doesn't seem like a wise way to start my inventory.
So... that led me to start looking at other manufacturer's gear. I know Sennheiser is a favorite.. I've touched some of their really high end touring stuff, but I've not personally dealt with the Evolution stuff (which is where my price point is). Looking at the Evolution line, looks like they just came out with their Gen4 as well. Which brings me to my questions:
1) does anyone have any more info on the new connector that AT is moving to, in terms of whether it's completely proprietary or is it already out in the field on something else?
2) In the Sennheiser G4 line, it looks like I have either the 100 or the 500. Looks like the 500 has some Ethernet management ability, and some more frequencies (32 vs 20 simultaneous possible). Given that I doubt my inventory will grow past 14 mics -- are there significant reasons that would push me to the 500, given that it seems to be around $300 per channel more expensive?
3) Are there any other lines I ought to look at? I've never been a Shure wireless mic fan, but then again I've not looked at their gear in quite a while..
Appreciate any thoughts you may have.. While I've never been a HUGE fan of the Hirose connector on the AT packs, I have to think that changing it out without also changing the series numbers is going to cause a world of pain for AT and their end users... :-/
Thanks!
I had decided that this was the year I was going to start building an inventory of wireless mic equipment so I could stop borrowing/renting. I've got a small musical coming up in a few months, so I started the process of buying some gear.. only to find that whereas I thought my mind was made up, now I'm hitting pause.
In our area, which has several community theatres and friendly high school theatre programs, the Audio Technica 3000 series has been king. I've worked with it a bunch, and I've always found it to be a very high value -- as in, for the price, hard to beat what you get. With my experience with the units, and the built in inventory via the other theatres in town to borrow as needed, it seemed like a no brainer to go with AT 3000's.
Low and behold, as I start to dig into the current state of pricing etc, I see that the Gen4 AT3000's are due out any minute. That'd probably be enough to make me hit pause -- but the real kicker is that the connector is different.. looks like they flipped from the Hirose (which i've always thought was... okay..) to some funky locking connector that I doubt anyone knows much about yet. Other than my misgivings about a new and possibly proprietary connector, it also basically completely eliminates the advantage of purchasing the same units that are in most the rest of the theatres in town.
I realize I can still buy the Gen3 stuff, but that doesn't seem like a wise way to start my inventory.
So... that led me to start looking at other manufacturer's gear. I know Sennheiser is a favorite.. I've touched some of their really high end touring stuff, but I've not personally dealt with the Evolution stuff (which is where my price point is). Looking at the Evolution line, looks like they just came out with their Gen4 as well. Which brings me to my questions:
1) does anyone have any more info on the new connector that AT is moving to, in terms of whether it's completely proprietary or is it already out in the field on something else?
2) In the Sennheiser G4 line, it looks like I have either the 100 or the 500. Looks like the 500 has some Ethernet management ability, and some more frequencies (32 vs 20 simultaneous possible). Given that I doubt my inventory will grow past 14 mics -- are there significant reasons that would push me to the 500, given that it seems to be around $300 per channel more expensive?
3) Are there any other lines I ought to look at? I've never been a Shure wireless mic fan, but then again I've not looked at their gear in quite a while..
Appreciate any thoughts you may have.. While I've never been a HUGE fan of the Hirose connector on the AT packs, I have to think that changing it out without also changing the series numbers is going to cause a world of pain for AT and their end users... :-/
Thanks!