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The email blast from the head of my son and daughter's theater group relayed a frantic plea: "We need to raise $16,000 before the upcoming spring performances," Anya Wallach, the executive director of Random Farms Kids' Theater, in Westchester, New York, wrote in late May. If the money didn't materialize in time, she warned, there could be a serious problem with the shows: nobody would hear the actors.
Random Farms, and tens of thousands of other theater companies, schools, churches, broadcasters, and myriad other interests across the country, need to buy new wireless microphones. The majority of professional wireless audio gear in America is about to become obsolete, and illegal to operate. The story of how we got to this strange point involves politics, business, science, and, of course, money.
Story: https://www.wired.com/story/wireless-mics-radio-frequencies-fcc-saga/
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ledow on Monday August 13 2018, @03:59PM (3 children)
Question - how much money could you make right now by selling a Bluetooth adaptor for the old mics?
Unlicenced frequency so, sure, maybe not suitable for huge professional places, but pretty much you could encrypt the data stream, send any data you like, still use the same mics, and they wouldn't be able to touch you would they?
The guys making the bluetooth side wouldn't be making mics, and the guys using the mics wouldn't be using them illegally or have to pay for new mics.
For sure, if I was operating such a business, I'd do everything I could to legally screw up such ventures.
"What's that? I'm using wireless mics so they must be illlegal? Well, yes. I am. But on 2.4GHz. Would you like to explain what the problem is with that? Take your extortion racket elsewhere".
I suspect, of course, that someone would blather on about how Bluetooth and digital coding would somehow "ruin" the audio signal, but I could happily operate several dozen high-quality audio streams over Bluetooth quite easily. A suitably-aimed antenna (right above the stage?) and even the range issue would be moot.
For sure I'd pay twice as much to a guy selling me a convertor for my old mic than the guy saying I "must" buy new mics.
(Score: 3, Informative) by pipedwho on Monday August 13 2018, @11:35PM
Bluetooth has too high a latency for live micing. Either way, you'd be replacing the transmitter packs and receivers anyway. The only thing you save is not having to replace the lav mic / headset - which is normal anyway if you upgrade your gear to something with compatible connectors.
There are many new relatively 'low cost' digital solutions today that are designed for low latency and operate in the ISM bands (allocated specifically for general use and therefore contain Bluetooth and Wifi), but they are inherently limited in the number of channels as these bands are quite narrow and operate at frequencies that are much more directional and problematic for body worn low power transmission. The really expensive systems are both digital and tunable across large diverse frequency bands - this lets them get lots of channels, and avoid the interference issues that arise when someone has a Wifi router/laptop anywhere near the receivers. There are exceptions in the lower frequency bands for short range / low power mic use, and these systems take advantage of that.
Unfortunately, some of the cheaper (and even some expensive systems), were unlucky and sold gear in bands that have been 'sold off' to mobile communications providers. What used to be relatively safe because of broadcast TV is now a money grab for governments to 'sell' to the highest bidder.
So basically, Bluetooth and other ISM bands aren't always the best choice for wireless audio systems.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Monday August 13 2018, @11:36PM
To do the conversion you speak of on an already wireless mic you are talking about a solder job that no one wants to do. These mics are tightly integrated packages.
There are already mics in the 2.4GHz range.
As far as ruining the sound, digital is digital but moving the data is another story. Bluetooth would be horrible for live sound, latency and dropouts and distortion oh my. This is based on my experience with BT audio which has been horrible. I would not trust it for something important or that I wanted to sound nice. I have bluetooth in my car and it is hilarious when a packet drops, it time stretches the audio to cover for the time needed to re-transmit and it is noticeable. you could calculate the theoretical max data transmission when using the entire bluetooth space but remember when you perform there will be several orders of magnitude more Bluetooth transmitters in the room. This can be partly solved by the onstage antenna/reciever, which is also already available, but not entirely.
It can all be improved on in time but i am firmly in the not-holding-my-breath camp.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday August 14 2018, @06:40PM
1) You're still buying new wireless hardware. You think soldering some homebrew Bluetooth transmitters and receivers into the audio path of the existing mics is going to be cheaper than just buying new mics? I highly doubt it.
2) Bluetooth audio SUCKS. Sure, maybe you can get twenty audio streams over it, mine certainly streams one just fine...as long as I don't move, never rotate my body, and stand no more than five feet away from the receiver...otherwise it starts dropping out. Although for this use case, even those probably won't be much of a problem compared to the latency issues...either way, wifi would certainly be a better choice than Bluetooth, but neither one is going to give the low and consistent latency of dedicated hardware. Better to just buy dedicated mics that already use those frequencies, those have been available for decades already anyway...