Wireless Wireless Microphone FAQ (READ ME FIRST!)

[jkowtko]

Fyi, I just got off the phone with Samson tech support. (I have six-pack of their Airline 77 wireless with the micro AL1 transmitter with internal condensor mic that we use for kids' shows and ensemble ... they're really convenient).

Anyway, they have the same response as AKG at this point -- no perceived threat to their operation in the UHF bands, despite all of the publicity. The Samson mics operate in UHF 69, which is listed as one of the public safety bands. The support rep did say that their dev dept is monitoring the FCC activities, and if this became a "real" issue for their products they would post something on their web site and would likely provide accomodations to users of their products that will have the FCC conflict.

But, like the AKG rep, they did not seem overly concerned about the issue as of this point. Maybe they're just keeping quiet until they have a solution, or maybe their legal dept already knows how to deal with gov't actions like this?

There is also the thought that if the gov't is going to "condemn" frequency bands from open use and there are industries that have grown around them, that the gov't would provide accomodations. It works this way with land (i.e. condeming for right of way to build a highway, for example, the land owners who are forced to sell are paid fair market value for their property).

So I'm curious to see what comes out of all this.

 

[SHARYNF]

The problem at a minimum is that you are very likely to get all sorts of interference with these mics from your local police and fire department.

In addition, Samsung is great for trying to present the series as being capable of running all 6 frequencies at the same time in the same location, which also tends not to be problem free, as there is not sufficient space between the frequencies to run all 6

Sharyn

 

[Eboy87]

New Whitespace Proposal From Shure

I just saw this article at ProSoundWeb. The FCC is close to voting on new rules for wireless mics. Shure sent in a new proposal.

Here's the article.

Here's Shure's proposal. I haven't had time to read through it thoroughly; I have to leave for class in a few minutes.

Just wanted to keep people updated.

 

[mbenonis]

I've updated the FAQ to reflect the Nov 4 vote on white space devices.

 

[mbenonis]

I've updated the FAQ to reflect the DTV delay until June 12, 2009.

 

[museav]

In other interesting news, I found out who PISC are. Their board is made of CEOs of people like Google, AT&T, and so on, the New Owners of 700-megs. "Public Interest", my ass.

All that says to me that Google, AT&T, GTE, Microsoft, and whoever-the-hell-else owns 700 megs now have the FCC by the short hairs, and so we'll be lucky if we get anything out of the deal. Yippee-hurrah.

Meant to reply to this months ago and forgot. Most of the companies mentioned are not the ones who bid on or procured 700MHz spectrum. In fact almost the opposite, some of these companies such as Google drove up the 700MHz spectrum auction prices by very publicly stating that they were going to spend millions and then let their competitors actually spend the money. After that, they formed groups like PISC and lobbied to get free spectrum access on the basis of needing to provide the same services, such as rural broadband services, that their competition just spent millions to try to offer. And they apparently were somewhat successful, a success perhaps continuing as part of the DTV transition delay (oh, you won't have the clear spectrum you paid for until after we have a better chance to develop our competing products and services, so sorry).

I think that once this all plays out it may make some really great case studies for business schools.

 

[mbenonis]

I've updated the URL for the FAQ, and also made a few minor content modifications.

 

[mbenonis]

I've updated the FAQ with the new FCC rules regarding wireless mics.

 

[Max Warasila]

Hi,

I do apologize for commenting on such an older thread, but I was reading your (very good, by the way) FAQ and something bothered me. As a regular user of WWB6, I can coordinate frequencies across all of my devices, Shure or otherwise. I can only control Shure devices over a network with it, granted, but it will do the intermod calculations and so on for any other system as well that is in the database. So far, I've been getting very workable results, even without a scan.

 

[Chris15]

When the FAQ was first written, WWB6 wasn't around.
Coordinating non shure Systems in WWB5 was totally possible, but was an "advanced user" feature and beyond the scope of an introductory primer...

But yeah, with WWB6, the most common manufacturers are there...

 

[Jay Ashworth]

Unless I've very much misunderstood the marketing, there are now prosumer wireless mics that *use* Wifi, so the relevant graf of the FAQ might need to be adjusted...

 

[Chris15]

Can you reference a particular product?

 

[Jay Ashworth]

Appears I had very much misunderstood. I couldn't imagine that, with the density of 802.11g traffic these days, anyone would be stupid enough to put mics there that *weren't* wifi, but I see that I'm wrong. Sorry for the noise.

 

[Chris15]

The last set of numbers I heard out of my university was that something like 90+ % of the WiFi trafrfice these days was being carried on 5GHz, a significant shift from a few years ago, wo WiFi in the 2.4 GHz band arguably is becoming less of an issue than it has been.

The challenge with running audio over WiFi is that the protocol stack was never really designed to handle time sensitive traffic - by eliminating it and using frequency hopping etc you can get the latency down to where it's acceptable...
Similar protocols areused by Wireless DMX and such too...

 

[FMEng]

The mics aren't necessarily using wi-fi, just the same band as wi-fi. FCC Part 15 allows all sorts of RF to play with 2.4 GHz.