Wireless microphone troubleshooting

Anybody who’s used wireless mics for any length of time will readily agree—nothing beats a wire. The only reason at all to go wireless is for convenience, such as freedom of movement. Having said that, we all have to use them, and thankfully they’ve gotten much better over the years. But here are a few common things you’ll run into.

Dropouts

You’ll lose audio momentarily at what seems at first to be fairly random. Watch closer and you might notice a pattern of where the person is each time. Often this is tied to a dead space in its relation to the receiving antenna. You can ask the person to avoid that spot (not recommended), or you can adjust the antennas on the receiver. Just move them a bit and it might fix the problem. Other issues can be interference from metal ductwork or similar structural materials. Also make sure the person doesn’t have the transmitter box stuffed inside their pants behind their back; this results in a lack of communication with the receiving antenna.

Various loss-of-signal or noise bursts

This could be from low batteries, poor reception, or even outside interference. Always use fresh batteries and test before using. Ensure that the receiver antennas are high enough so as to provide line-of-sight communication with the stage. Just sitting on the console at the back isn’t good enough if people are standing in the way (people are large blobs of water, after all, which doesn’t do well for transmitting signals). Get the antennas above everybody, such as on the back wall. Some digital models allow you to mount the antenna up on the wall and connect down to the receiver via a CAT5 cable. That’s what I run at my church and it works great (AT System 10 Pro Digital). Digital wireless systems are immune from regular RF interference (such as CB radios). The cheaper analog systems are not as good at this.

Conflicting wireless channels

This has gotten trickier with the government reallocating bandwidth for purposes other than audio. If you still have those old 600MHz band systems, get rid of them. They’re illegal and could run into interference. Newer mic systems are really nice for automatically searching for available channels, so follow their stated procedures. More complex wireless systems can be monitored and controlled through software provided by the manufacturers.

Quality of sound

Yes, you get what you pay for. Most of these can work fine, though you might run into performance issues with cheaper models. Our youth program has fairly inexpensive Samson mics that work fine for them; but they don’t hold a candle to the Sennheisers we have in the main sanctuary. Of course these cost nearly $1k each, so go as high as you reasonable can.

Any other thoughts or experiences with wireless?