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The Strange David and Goliath Saga of Radio Frequencies

posted by martyb on Monday August 13 2018, @12:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the project-your-voice dept.

Fnord666 writes:

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/

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  • (Score: 2) by Alfred on Monday August 13 2018, @11:36PM

    by Alfred (4006) on Monday August 13 2018, @11:36PM (#721171) Journal
    There is kit to make wired mics wireless which you could try and compete with.

    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.
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