This post has been two weeks in the making. To begin, I returned the Rode Wireless Micros because they simply are not made for what most of us on this forum do, rock concert taping. I didn't just conclude this, it was painfully clear after trying them out mounted to the ends of my regular mic stereo bar when I recorded moe at the Jefferson Theater in Charlottesville, VA on March 5th.
It's just like ALC, reacting immediately and extremely to transient peaks, as well as quiet interludes, up and down. What a shame...
So for the last 2 weeks I have been doing a deep dive in the world of video content creators and that entire branch of the market that seems to have exploded in the past few years. Not wanting to make the same mistake again, I researched extensively the current crop of wireless lav microphones designed to feed cameras, and/or smartphones and here is what I learned.
1. There are two classes of wireless lav microphone capsules, traditional small electret condensers, and MEMS, a newer technology with mics so small they can be mounted directly on a device's main circuit board. Micro condensers typically top out at 120db max SPL, but MEMS mics are able to take 130db or more before distortion, and with full 20hz to 20khz frequency response, and an SNR at or exceeding 70db.
2. There are three types of wireless transmission, old school UHF, 2.4ghz wifi, and Bluetooth 5 and higher. True lossless transmission of high resolution pcm is not possible by Bluetooth, 16/48 already maxes the bandwidth and bitrate. So called "lossless compression" methods like Aptx are used to send HD audio to headsets/earbuds and bluetooth speakers, but that's not true lossless. That leaves the option of 2.4ghz wifi frequency. As with UHF, 2.4ghz wifi requires a receiver between the mic/transmitters, and the recording device. These are used for sending analog audio to a camera or recorder and fairly recent developments with USB audio now allow these types of mics to be plugged into an ios or Android device to record on whatever app is installed for audio/video capture.
3. There are two types of recording methods. Capturing the audio from the receiver on a phone/camera, and onboard recording in the transmitters themselves, some 24bit and some 32bit float.
Ok, with all that in mind, here is the outcome of my deep dive investigating several systems.
I first looked at the Rode Wireless Pro since I was moving from their micro, reading reviews, watching video reviews, and studying the user manual. I did this same process with each mic I looked into.
The Rode Wireless Pro can take 123.5 db of pressure which is decent, but they are too big and the internal recordings in the mics are auto-split at 1 hour and these splits are not bit perfect. To capture full length files on your phone, the receiver will bring in the audio at 24/48 and send it to the phone to be recorded there. Rode is not a contender, bottom line.
Next I investgated the top line Sennheiser, Hollyland, DJI, Shure, and Sarmonic wireless systems and found they all fell short for concert taping in some way. Ignoring the issues raised by reviewers for this model's bad plugs, or that brand's counter-intuitive work flow, etc, I first eliminated all the ones with a max SPL below 130db, which left the Shure MoveMic 2 and the Saramonic Ultra Pro. The Shure uses Bluetooth direct to phone, so the only way to record to a phone is to go to the full kit with receiver unit, and there is no onboard recording in the trasmitters. The Sarmonic was the only one left. The deal breaker here, same issue as the Shure requiring receiver attached to phone to record uncompressed 24bit. They have onboard recording, even 32bit float, but make an imperfect file split every 30 min. Booooooo
So, what did I get? Stay tuned, I will follow up with that story later, it's a tale worth telling all by itself.......
Topic: Retitled -Rode & Hollyland wireless mics for stealthy binaural recording (Read 15564 times)