I'm sure now that we are more digital there is something out there that works better. Only issue I remember with the Masque
unit is there was only one pre-amp so you had to deal with that.
The big broadway rental shops aren't using too many wireless that have direct Dante compatibility so it's not an issue that comes up. The first time I used Dante enabled wireless, I took the digital outs into the
console and the analog outs hit a Listening Station. The last time I have used digital wireless it was
Sennheiser 9000 Series and you can now do direct Dante monitoring in WSM. Check out
Wavetool -- it seems like a nifty little application. Next time I get Dante enabled wireless on a show I'm going to try it out.
An analog solution is probably your best bet -- take Dante into the
console and analog into a listening station. The Masque listening stations have 24/36/48 buttons, and a single headphone output and volume knob. You punch in the
channel you want to listen to and it pops out the
headphones. The fancier models have remotes you can run around a room. However, most models don't have any loop
thru -- though in your application it probably wouldn't matter. Traditionally you take the outputs of the receivers and they go to
XLR into the front of a rack mount mult panel that has two splits. One split goes to
FOH and the other split goes to the Listening Station. This way, you can keep your spare lines high up in the listening station and when you do a
re-patch, you swap patch at the mult panel from where the spare lives into where the actor who's mic you are swapping wants to live so that patch stays consistent for the
mixer.
In a pinch I have used the
Toa MP-1216. Some shops rent them when trying to furnish Broadway type RF rigs, but they are NOT fun to
wire up or use. Also check out the section on monitoring on
Audinate's Website -- there are also ways to turn several other devices on their main "Dante device"
page into listening stations.
