Wireless Comm

[Ken Porter]

Our HME DX-210 (3 beltpacks, works on 2.4GHz) was acting less than reliable for our latest production. Which is to say that at irregular intervals, the SM (on wired) could be heard on the beltpacks, but the beltpacks were too quiet or distorted to the SM. Power cycling helped occasionally.

Anyhoo, I'm planning on doing some kind of shootout among various wireless possibilities this summer. So far this will include:

The DX210.

A Radiocom BTR-300 (fixed freq VHF system) with 2 beltpacks I found in a cabinet. yet untested.

A Radiocom BTR-700 (UHF) with 4 beltpacks, which I'll glean from the dusty closet of another institute for higher ed.

Possibly a Hollyland either a Mars T1000 if I can find one, or a C1 if it's rentable for reasonable rates.

GreenGo Digital, if I can get the nearest reseller to ship me some to evaluate.

(FreeSpeak II is well out of our budget, so I won't bother. I know how cool it is to work with. Makes me sad I can't get one.)

I'm interested in the RadioActive Designs UV-1G, but I'm not even sure if the company's still doing anything. Their website looks untouched, and many of their vendors don't mention the brand on their respective site(s).

And then a couple of software based systems, which would use our own devices/smartphones for portable stations.  This would probably include Unity and/or Zello and/or Lineapp's Flux. 

Lastly, some FRS radios - just for comparison's sake.

If anyone here can either help troubleshoot by DX210 issues, or suggest any more brands of wireless to add to my shootout, please let me know.  With any luck, I'll have plenty of data points not only to support a purchase, but that I'll also share here for the edification of all.

Thanks, all.

 - Ken

Sound Supervisor & Engineer, Brandeis U. 

[Joseph Foley]

Switching out the Dx210 for the DX410 will get you a more professional version of similar tech.  The 210 was designed for highschool/college football coaches, and the 410 is a redo that makes them a little more useful for technical theatre.  

I would recommend against adding more UHF energy out there, especially if you use wireless mics.

The VHF units can be used, but we found that many digital sound console Stageboxes are actually emitting VHF energy.  Is it bad enough to make a vhf system unusable, probably not.

There is one company here in town that has greengo, and most of their techs refuse to touch the stuff.

The hollyland stuff has always been a black box to me.  The last tech I heard trying ot make it work, ended up renting a whole freespeak system from me because they were struggling to get it to interface with helixnet and Camera CCU’s.  I personally havent touched it, but it screams junk to me.

Maybe I am spoiled as a Freespeak2/Helixnet/Arcadia house, but I do think there is a real “you get what you pay for” with comms.

Foley

Sent from my iPad

On Apr 11, 2025, at 18:16, Ken Porter <kens...@gmail.com> wrote:

Our HME DX-210 (3 beltpacks, works on 2.4GHz) was acting less than reliable for our latest production. Which is to say that at irregular intervals, the SM (on wired) could be heard on the beltpacks, but the beltpacks were too quiet or distorted to the SM. Power cycling helped occasionally.

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[rbing...@juno.com]

If you end up not being able to afford what I would call the proper professional wireless COM, which to me is basically FreeSpeak, then I would take a good look at the Hollyland.

 

If the rest of your system is a fairly basic analog party line intercom, it can integrate reasonably well.  It works decently, its full duplex, that’s about it.  The main issues I have had is the stupid connector they use for the headset.  So you need a bunch of adaptors which make the tail even longer if you want to use non Hollyland headsets.  And if you want to change the configuration on a belt pack you need to be near the base station when you turn it on for the changes to take effect.  Also, at first it would appear to be a 3 channel wireless COM, it’s really 2 channels.  I think Channel 3 is sort of meant to be a private channel only for the wireless users.  But the instructions kinda suck.. actually they just plain suck there is no kinda about it.  But hey an 8 beltpack system is about 1/3 the price of a  4 pack Freespeak system approx..    So beggers can’t be choosers.  It’s good solution for high schools, small college programs and other places that don’t need to use their wireless COM every day.

 

And best of all it doesn’t suck up valuable UHF RF space.

 

Richard B Ingraham

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[Jim vanBergen]

I've had several Hollyland systems come into our venue as part of a camera team- but we don't integrate it into our house coms, and I"ve never seen one tied in to another system. It seems to work without complaints as a stand-alone, but your post would indicate your HME does the same and it's about the interchange/handshake. So: 

Have you tried bench-teching the gear you are currently working with, resetting balances and then re-nulling? Might be that a couple of pots are dirty/scratchy, and it only needs some love and attention. Always good to remember that Nulling systems is not a "one and done", it requires repeated work over time. 

 

Hope this helps. Cheer- 

JvB

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Jim van Bergen
917-826-1626
vanber...@gmail.com

[H. Cohen]

Despite an old website, RAD is indeed alive and shipping. Talamas in
Waltham is still a dealer and should be able to assist with a demo.

Henry Cohen
Sr. Applications Engineer
Radio Active Designs

On 4/11/2025 6:16 PM, Ken Porter wrote:
> . . .I'm interested in the RadioActive Designs UV-1G, but I'm not even

[Nick Kourtides]

I've integrated Hollyland hubs with typical Clearcom (the two-wire port on the hub) and 4-wire interfaces. It works fine, even the auto-nulling. As much as eliminating a beltpack on the wireless transceivers seems like a great idea, in operation, it's a faff to touch the earcups to manage talk and listen controls if your crew are used to all of these controls on their waists. 

N

Nick Kourtides

Sound Design

(he/him)

+1 215 915 0159

nickko...@gmail.com

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[Ken Porter]

Thanks all. These were the types of answers I was hoping for.

To briefly answer...

I will be doing some deep testing & troubleshooting of the current gear. I plan on getting some Software-Developed Radio widgets to help analyze in that realm.  I get the importance of nulling, but the issues we're having didn't seem related to the number of wired packs or cable length, etc. But of course, I'll double check that.

Can't find any clear-com simple spreadsheet/table comparison showing the differences between the DX210 & 410. It's enough of a difference that the beltpacks aren't cross-compatible.

We use the wireless comm gear about 10 weeks a year, so it doesn't get a whole lot of rough beating.

Since we're in an academic building, I can't swing a dead cat without hitting a bunch of wifi access points. I'm a bit more concerned about crowded 2.4G & 5GHz than I am about the UHF stuff. The Hollyland gear interests me, but their junior kit (Mars T1000) has only the 4-wire interface, and my current ClearCom stuff has only 2-wire interconnects, necessitates a(nother) interface. 

Henry, thanks for mentioning RAD's status.  I'd forgotten you were there, though I heard you (mumble mumble) years ago at a Syn-Aud-Con seminar. Someone has already reached out to me. I'll get in touch when I get more plans in place.

 - K

[rbing...@juno.com]

Hollyland is in 1.9GHz not 2.4 or 5.  Also I while I haven’t used the Mars series, I probably wouldn’t bother with anything other than the Solidcom M1 package.  If memory serves there is a good sized educational discount available.

 

I typically only specify Wireless COM in 1.9GHz, just for the reasons you mentioned.

 

Just an FYI

 

Richard B Ingraham

 

From: theatre-s...@googlegroups.com <theatre-s...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Ken Porter

Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2025 10:57 PM
To: theatre-sound <theatre-s...@googlegroups.com>

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[H. Cohen]

Actually, that was my evil twin Skippy (aka James Stoffo) who presented at Syn-Aud-Con.

Henry Cohen

On 4/13/2025 10:56 PM, Ken Porter wrote:

Henry, thanks for mentioning RAD's status.  I'd forgotten you were there, though I heard you (mumble mumble) years ago at a Syn-Aud-Con seminar.

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