Signal To Noise Podcast
The Signal to Noise podcast features conversations with people from all corners of the live sound industry, from FOH and monitor engineers, tour managers, Broadway sound designers, broadcast mixers, system engineers, and more.
Signal To Noise Podcast
282. Focus On Monitoring
In Episode 282, Sean and Andy pick up where they left off last time, answering some follow-up questions they’ve received on gain staging for monitor mixes, other tips and tricks for clean and clear in-ear monitors, as well as how to make the most “bang for your buck” improvements to wireless microphones and monitors. This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.
If you’re going to the NAMM, be sure to find Sean and Andy and say hi! More events will be announced on the Discord and Facebook groups as it gets closer, but if you’re there on Saturday, January 25, they’ll be doing a meet-and-greet and helping give away a CQ mixer at Allen & Heath’s booth at 11 am Pacific!
Episode Links:
Discord Conversation On In-Ear Mixes
Drew Brashler “Monitor Mixing — Making IEM Mixes Better: What is Occlusion?”
Eddie Caipo “Finding the Sweet Spot: Getting the Desired Vocal Sound in IEM Mixes”
Tim Wendelboe Coffee
Episode 282 Transcript
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The Signal To Noise Podcast on ProSoundWeb is co-hosted by pro audio veterans Andy Leviss and Sean Walker.
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Episode 282 - Tips for Happier In-Ears and Wireless
Note: This is an automatically generated transcript, so there might be mistakes--if you have any notes or feedback on it, please send them to us at signal2noise@prosoundweb.com so we can improve the transcripts for those who use them!
Voiceover: You’re listening to Signal to Noise, part of the ProSoundWeb podcast network, proudly brought to you this week by the following sponsors:
Allen & Heath, whose new dLive RackUltra FX upgrade levels up your console with 8 next-generation FX racks – putting powerful tools like vocal tuning, harmonizing, and amp simulation right at your fingertips. Learn more at allen-heath.com
RCF and TT+ AUDIO.... Delivering premium audio solutions designed for tour sound and music professionals for over 75 years. Hear TT+ AUDIO's GTX 10 and GTX 12 line passive line array and the GTS 29 dual 19" passive subwoofer.... all powered by RCF's XPS 16k amplifier, live in the arena at Winter NAMM 2025. Many other RCF products will be demo'd in Hall A in room #17108. Visit RCF at RCF-USA.com for the latest news and product information.
Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green
Andy Leviss: Hey, welcome to another episode of Signal to Noise. I'm your host, Andy Leviss, and with me, the Calvin to my Hobbes, Mr. Sean Walker. What's up, Sean?
Sean Walker: What's up, buddy? How are you? How's your week going?
Andy Leviss: It's going, you know, it's um, winding down the, the like couple months of coverage I was doing at the TV thing, and you know, still in there a little bit, but starting to get into a home dad, you know, duty for a little while.
Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. How sweet.
Andy Leviss: yeah, little dude is, little dude is growing bigger every day.
Sean Walker: That is awesome, dude. Dad life is the best life or parent life. You know, you know, you know what's up. It's
Andy Leviss: and just watching baby grows is like, it's mind blowing. Like, it's like this, it's just growing on its own. It's wild.
Sean Walker: If we were able to keep that kind of intensity of like learning new stuff every day throughout our whole lives, we'd be unstoppable. The amount of like watching the curiosity and then like how they're taking it in every day, like a fire hose. They're just like, yes, give me all this cool experiences I've never had before.
You know, you're like, holy moly. Wish I wasn't, you know. Didn't get older and start going, Nah, I'm cool on learning that new thing.
Andy Leviss: Although I am glad our heads got more proportional to our bodies.
Sean Walker: Yeah, totally.
Andy Leviss: don't think about it until you're holding a baby in your hand and you're like, that head is gigantic compared to the rest of it. Yikes.
Sean Walker: Stewie or Boss Baby where you're like, Yo dawg, what's up with the giant football and the little itty bitty stick finger legs?
Andy Leviss: And then you look at a real baby and you're like, Oh no, this is actually what
Sean Walker: that, that's how it
Andy Leviss: Yeah. It's pretty accurate. Weird.
Sean Walker: totally did.
Andy Leviss: All right. What are you up to?
Sean Walker: Uh, I got a new espresso maker at home. And so I'm, you know, learning to make espresso and trying to make it passable, which is easier said than done, but, uh,
Andy Leviss: an endless rabbit hole, my friend.
Sean Walker: Oh my God, totally, totally.
But I would, you know, eyeball on espresso makers because you and he who shall not be named so we don't have to drink have been going down the rabbit hole. I'm like, well, obviously I need one of those. Like, gee, totally. And you start looking at the prices. You're like, oh man, I'm not, I'm not there in my journey yet.
Andy Leviss: Oh, he and I had some Facebook messages back and forth about expensive filter baskets.
Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, nah, I can't, I'm, I'm not gonna start off there. The wife won't, she won't approve that. You know what I
Andy Leviss: Yeah, there's a low spousal approval factor on that one.
Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, totally. But, but she digs coffee as much as I do. So it's, you know, I got the okay to get one just not to blow that kind of dough.
Andy Leviss: There you go.
Sean Walker: she got a recommendation from a girlfriend of hers and so it just showed up one day and I was like, that's perfect.
Andy Leviss: That's the best way. So what is it for folks out listening and looking for something entry level?
Sean Walker: It's a DeLonghi something or other and I have no idea what the model is, but it was like, I don't know, 350 bucks or something, you know, kind of does it all itself and there's a manual mode or an auto mode and you can kind of just do the, do the darn thing and it works great. It, it turned out great. And it's like, You know, I would say better than average, but not absolutely stunning.
You know, when you go to a place and you go, this coffee is stunning. It's, it doesn't put that yet. Or maybe that's just on me trying to figure out how to do it better, but it turns out just fine where you're like, yeah, man, this is totally good every day. I'm, I'm happy.
Andy Leviss: I mean, if you said your bar is like better than Duncan's, that's not a solid bar. You know, that's not a bad bar to aim for.
Sean Walker: right. Totally, dude. Totally.
Andy Leviss: can do better than Duncan's and half the price.
Sean Walker: It, it is. It's good enough that I don't feel the need to hit the coffee stand before work. You know what I
Andy Leviss: you go.
Sean Walker: So I'm, I'm good there. And then obviously you guys are going to bring me down the rabbit hole of like, well, that's cool, man. But here's the new mod you need, or here's the grinder you need or the whatever.
I'm
Andy Leviss: Look, I'm not saying we both get our coffee shipped in from Oslo, but I'm not not saying we both get coffee shipped in once a month from Oslo.
Sean Walker: Mine doesn't come from Oslo. Mine comes from Kashmir, Washington. Little company called J5 that I totally dig their coffee. But I will totally check out your Oslo's. Put that in the show notes or in
Andy Leviss: Yeah, the Tim Wendelboe. Yeah.
Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, where, what, what do I, what do I need dawg? Put it in the show notes so I can find it and then, or everybody can find it, cause I want to try it, and uh, see, see what's up.
We got a I mean, I'm in Seattle, so I got some good options here, too, that I can run around town and pick apart, but, you know, if you're shipping it from another country, I'd totes want to, I want in on that, dawg, I don't want to be, don't leave me out, I got that FOMO, bro, you know what I mean?
Andy Leviss: Oh, it's like it's this company, Tim Wendelboe. Their whole thing is like, they're on like the super, super, super light roasting end of the spectrum. So you're getting like, you're getting lots of like florals and like, and like fruity stuff instead of like lots of caramels and that kind of thing.
Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Andy Leviss: to the point that like, cause a lot of roasters now are like, yeah, our roasts are like in the right ballpark, that like, we don't have an espresso roast, our coffee tastes great on like, espresso, or is like, pour over a drip, and, this, this place is like, yeah, no, we roast light enough that you should not use our regular coffee for espresso.
It will take your face off with acid.
Sean Walker: Okay, sweet.
Andy Leviss: So, they do an espresso, but like their espresso roast is like anybody else's light roast. It's still like crazy light.
Sean Walker: Okay. All right. That's cool. I'm totally down to check it out. Yeah. Make sure to put that in the show notes so everybody can jump on that flap.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, like they were one of the first places to like get really big into AeroPress for like single cup brewers and that kind of thing.
Sean Walker: Alright,
Andy Leviss: It's tight. But, um, that, I mean, much as I, I'm happy if folks want to sit here and listen to us blather on about coffee for an hour, I feel like that's not what most people come here for.
Sean Walker: Totes, dude.
Andy Leviss: So, despite the fact that I'm the ADHD one and I'm usually bouncing all over the place, I'm going to try and focus us back on.
Sean Walker: Oh,
Andy Leviss: So, no, but the, the last couple episodes we were kind of diving into like some tips and tricks for dialing in a mix quick and you were saying you were chatting with some folks after that and got some like follow up questions and more thoughts you wanted to expand on?
Sean Walker: Sure, man. Yeah, I got, I got a few Like open questions in the discord server, then a few direct messages basically asking for just a little more clarity on kind of the game structure was the main part of it. And so, uh, what I ended up telling them and I'll, I'll relay here is that what has worked best for me and I can just, I'll experience share rather than give advice on how it's going to be, how it has to work for you.
Right. But what has worked best for me is when I'm game staging, you know, let's say IEMs, for example. We go back to our minus 18, 1k sine tone with all faders up, right? So your, whatever bus it's going to be at is at unity, whatever output, you know, all the, all the things are at unity so that we're, we're not like, you know, faders in weird positions or whatever.
All of our processing is taken out. So we're not using our EQ or our compressors or any of that kind of stuff on the way out. So we're literally just sending an. An 8, minus 18 dB sine, 1k sine tone out of our console into our ears. And then we're going to adjust the input gain of our ears so that it matches and comes up as minus 18 on our ears.
So now that we know we have a linear kind of a gain structure. So whatever I'm looking at on my console meters. Should match to what's happening on my IEM or Amplifier or DSP or whatever the next thing in line is kind of meters. Some things don't specifically have a numerical value and mine is 18.
Those things oftentimes I have found is where like green has the color break to orange or yellow or whatever that is, is right about that same ish level heavy on the ish. Cause you know, it's so dependent on our industry. It's too bad nobody has solidified what this measurement should be of minus 18 equals zero DBVU equals the fucking color break on every meter ever.
Like what the hell people, but it's not. And so we're still kind of, sometimes you're kind of guessing, even though you're like, this is a science, this is exactly how this is going to go. Here's my measurements. Sometimes you're like, yeah, but that's at minus 20 on somebodies and minus 18 on somebodies and minus 16 on somebodies, but you're at least within a couple db.
So now you're plus or minus 2 db rather than plus or minus 50 or 20 or whatever. You know what I mean? You're way closer and and sonically you will now outperform everybody else's work. 100 to 1. You know what I mean? Because like what I used to find happened to me was. I would be minus 10 on my output faders to my ears or amps or whatever, or minus 20 or minus who fucking knows what.
And it's still too loud or blowing up the input of the next device or whatever and getting this all sorted out. And then there was a bunch of hiss, right? There's like a bunch of going on that didn't need to be there. So as I started to like rebalance those out and get this seesaw or teeter totter back into balance, not so heavy on one way or the other, dumped the noise floor a bunch.
And the, the sonic clarity went up drastically. It's akin to like driving down the freeway in your car with the gas and the brakes on, like, what is wrong with you? Don't do it. You know what I mean? Pick one or the other, but not both. And so if you get your game structure right now, you're, you know, you're now, you know, intentionally when you're putting on the gas and putting on the brakes and what's happening, you're not just full ding dong down the road, gas brakes floored, you know what I mean?
Andy Leviss: Yeah. And it's like, I mean, you can get into the weeds, there's like, it's not always going to be exactly Neg 18 is the unity point of every console, but honestly, if you're in that ballpark, you're close enough in just about every console to be fine. Like if you want to like nerd it out and look up what your console is and figure it out, you can.
If you don't know how to do that, hit us up on the Discord. We can, you know, pull up a spec sheet and walk you through the math. Um, it's, it's, it's fairly basic math. It's just knowing what specs to look for. But yeah, like Neg 18 is a safe. Solid spot to aim for across the board.
Sean Walker: Mm hmm. And.
Andy Leviss: and like on,
Sean Walker: sorry, go ahead.
Andy Leviss: no, no, you go,
Sean Walker: I was going to say, if you're on a Allen and Heath console, that is zero because their metering is in a VU kind of a metering, even though it's a peak meter. And so, you know, it'll go. Yeah. Right. But it'll be at zero, right? If you're on a Yamaha console, it will be minus 18.
Andy Leviss: Unless it's a DM 2000.
Sean Walker: Nobody talks about those, Andy. You sweep that shit under the rug and you don't bring it up again. I know it hurts you. I know that's from your past. Stop beating it like an ex girlfriend. Nobody uses those anymore.
Andy Leviss: You'd be surprised.
Sean Walker: Totally.
Andy Leviss: Yeah. They were like, and it's weird because it's only certain models, even of the same era, but that one in particular was neg 14. And it was like, what the
Sean Walker: Gross. Why? What's wrong with you? Yamaha, why would you do that?
Andy Leviss: Yeah. But then there was like an internal switch or something that could also shift it around. It was extra obnoxious.
Sean Walker: totally. And those are like Like, what a pain in the ass, dude. Like, didn't we settle on minus 18 is 0 dB, VU is 1 point, what is that, 2, 3 volts, or whatever it is, like, wasn't that old thing figured out, like, 100, 000 years ago? Like, why are
Andy Leviss: know what the best part about standards is?
Sean Walker: Ah, shit.
Andy Leviss: There's so many to choose
Sean Walker: Yeah, right? Totally.
Andy Leviss: Yeah. And then, and like on that subject. Well, we were talking before and this came up because we're going to dig a little more into like IEM stuff in a bit because that was a question that came up in the Discord as well recently. But specifically on that subject of game through IEMs that you were talking about, different brands are, you know, have different like input structures and game structures within the transmitter too.
And where this bites a lot of people, at least one of your hosts included, not going to sell him out. Might've been me.
Sean Walker: meep, meep. Are you bus driving right now, dude? Meep, meep, meep.
Andy Leviss: You know, but, um, Shure, Shure, Like, PSM transmitters, I believe all of them, definitely the 900 and 1000. When they say they're set to 0dB input gain, it's not actually 0dB. I don't know why.
Sean Walker: What the hell, dawg? What
Andy Leviss: Yeah, it is, if you put it on 0dB, you will have what Sean was talking about before, lots of hissy noise floor, things will get really crunchy fast, you'll find you're barely cracking the belt pack open. In fact, I had, uh, somebody DM me on the Discord later, because they know I'm like You know, relatively smartish about RF stuff.
And it was like, oh, we're having RF issues with like some of our mics and our in ears, and it's really hissy. It was like, pause. What in ears are you using? And he said, PSM 900s. I said, are your belt packs? Barely cracked open and still getting really loud. And he's like, yeah, I'm like, I don't think you have an RF issue.
What is the front panel gain set to on? And he's like, zero. I was like, try dialing that down to negative 18. And here's where I'm going to put the pin in, it is negative 18. But that is for no reason that I know related to that we're talking about negative neg 18. As a reference level, it just happens.
That's roughly how much you have to back the gate off on a Shure receiver. It's just coincidence as far as I know.
Sean Walker: You happen to have to pat it down 18 DB to make it unity gain.
Andy Leviss: Roughly, yeah. So, pretty, and in fact, if you default the unit, it will default to that, but people often Who don't know that will default it, like boot up a rack that has been defaulted, see like, oh, why is that turned down solo? And just turn it up to zero, because why would I want to? And it ends up biting you, and yeah, that's when those PSMs start sounding really hissy, they start clipping really easy and getting crunchy, like you'll see your input meter when you're sending like neg 18 sine wave is like lighting up like a Christmas tree, which like, look, Christmas trees are cool, not on my RF rack.
Sean Walker: Or if I am intentionally doing that, okay, but I don't want it happening downstream without me knowing about it. Right. The other cool part about what we're talking about or what we have been on for the last 97, 000 episodes is that now the metering system on your desk meters, your whole rig basically.
Right. And for those super nerds out there that are already screaming, I've turned off this episode because I said that. Like look, let's take a, take a step back and go like, now at least we can visually look at it one place on a simple, simple scale. Obviously there are meters other places and maybe that's not always the case depending on plus or minus what, but let's, you know, for argument's sake, let's say now I can look at my whole show on my desk meters and know by and large I'm not blowing up the outside world if I'm not blowing up my PA.
I'm not at like negative 30 on my master fader and clipping my PA. You know what I mean? Or ears or whatever we want to talk about. Most common offender. Anything black magic video already cranked up. Like if you're sending to an ATM of some kind. It has to come down like 12 16 or whatever. I don't remember what the number is, but like that input has to come down a ton to get it to be unity.
And then you need to pan those left and right. Cause they don't come default pinned left and right. And then your stream sounds night and day better. And all of a sudden you're like, wow, this thing sounds incredible with six button pushes. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's free lunch, bro. Like that's some free lunch right there.
They keep saying there's no such thing as a free lunch. That shit's free lunch, bro. Take my lunch money, dog. Go.
Andy Leviss: for the simple cost of reading your meters and reading your manuals.
Sean Walker: Right. Totally. Totally. Um, so that, that's where I, that's where I was most asked. I would say the other thing was like a couple of processing tips that have been brought up and you can, you know, research in the discord server, but like high and low pass filtering and what are we doing in the outputs and, and, uh, some other people smarter than me chimed in and.
And had some exacts, but kind of like that, like 30 to 40 high pass and like a 15 to, I don't know, 18, 20k low pass just to kind of get the edges off of it sometimes has been helpful. I know that the IEM transceivers, you know, they have a frequency band they work in. And I'm sure it depends on which manufacturer and which model or whatever, what that fric is meant is, but it is not 20 to 20 or zero to 20 or whatever.
Um, I have personally witnessed some incredible sounding ears mixes with zero processing on the output bus, no EQ, no high pass, no nothing. And I was like, wow, man, this is stunning. And I've also witnessed some that had hella processing on the output bus and still sounded stunning. So there's not only one way to skin this cat as it were, there are multiple ways, but, uh, A couple easy wins would be a high and low pass filter to, to kind of clean up the edges a little bit if you were, you know, looking for some of that.
One of the mistakes I made super early in my career that I fight myself on today even, is trying to make my ears mix too bombastic. I tried to make it sound like a record because, you know, records. And, uh, then with the You know, whatever blowback is coming from the PA or the stage volume or whatever's happening around me, I was having trouble with the clarity.
And when I started, for lack of better terms, just thinning out my ears mix on the inputs and not making them all so big and bombastic, it got a whole lot clearer and still sounded full because what I am hearing in monitor world or, you know, sometimes you're at front of house or some awkward position, right, is not what they're hearing on stage.
And, uh, so. Maybe not quite as full and bombastic in some cases can be helpful to blend with the stage wash and let that help fill in the, some of the lower end. And that's, you know, that's the artsy fartsy part. There's no technical, this is how to do it. Here's the, it's not one step one, two, three for that.
But that's one of the things that helped clear up ears mixes. For me a lot, but I'm not, I would not claim to be a monitor engineer. I don't, you know, there are, there are people listening to this out there in our server. And then also that I know personally that literally speak monitor, they're like, no man, this is my life.
This is my world. This is what the fuck I do every day. And that's not me. I'm, I'm like. You know, this is the 101 class. I'm not qualified to teach the 301 class. You know what I'm saying?
Andy Leviss: we'll, we'll bring somebody else on and do the
Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.
Andy Leviss: But, um, yeah, I mean, a couple of, like, with what you were saying about the, like, the wash and thinning out the mix, like, friend of the pod, past guest, David Williams, had a great suggestion in the Discord, which is that even if he's only mixing ears, he likes to have a cue wedge and build a fairly full mix in the cue wedge, so when he's got the, his ears in to listen, he's got that wedge kind of mimicking both PA bleed and stage bleed.
So you're building on top of that.
Sean Walker: Totally. That's an excellent suggestion.
Andy Leviss: the other trick I've heard from lots of folks, particularly for when you're EQing somebody's vocals into their own mix is. Sing along or hum along to yourself as you're doing it, like not, not even into a mic, just so you're getting that little bit of bone conduction, like you're not necessarily gonna be great on pitch, whatever, like, you know, like I'm not a great singer, there's a reason I hide on my side of the console.
Sean Walker: Copy that. Copy that.
Andy Leviss: But like, if you give yourself a little bit of that, like, hum there, so that you feel that like low end that you get through your bone conduction in the ear, that gives you a better idea of what they're hearing. Along with it so that you're not, so that you're making sure it's clear against that and you're not overcompensating for not having that.
Um, which again is also an argument for like if you've, if you're on a dedicated monitor mixer splitting your vocals, you know, to two channels each so you have one to send back to themself and one to send to everybody else.
Sean Walker: Totally, dude. And that, that, uh, I just got hipped to what that was called. Occlusion. I, you know, getting learned every day, bro. Uh, I didn't realize that cause you know, again, I don't speak monitor like I probably should, you know what I mean? Uh, but at this point I'm blessed to be able to hire people that speak monitor so they can, you know, do better than me, but, uh, that made a huge difference.
I, I. You know, read that and then went and tried it with one of the artists I work for and, uh, they were like, well, see, that's way better. And I was like, where was that for the last decade? I've been trying to figure this out. You know what I mean? Which is why I am, you know, why we decided we're going to yap about this for a few episodes is like, I certainly can't be the first one that's been like, Oh shit, lightbulb.
You know what I mean? So the, uh, you can maybe post a link. Cause I don't know if you guys know this, Andy's the smart one. He's the tech guy that like sorts it all out behind the scenes here. I just go, Oh, that's a good idea. And he's like, let me just sort out your idea, bud. But
Andy Leviss: I think falling into that role makes you the smart one.
Sean Walker: shit, stop it. Tell me about low expectations, buddy.
Uh, post that link or whatever that was, Andy. That was, I don't remember. It was an article or a, I think it was an article, right? That was talking about the occlusion thing that, yeah. Was there, like,
Andy Leviss: that's ringing a bell. Let me scribble a note so I can look it up when we get
Sean Walker: yeah, word, but that was super helpful for me and, uh, I even sent it to a few clients that were like, you know, the bands that got their own ears rack and they're like, oh, we do it ourselves.
I'm like, that's cool, man. Here's a good idea. You know what I mean? And they were like, oh my god, that helps so much. So
Andy Leviss: We'll link that on there and I'll, I'll link to this discussion in the, it's in the suggestion box channel about in ears. It kind of recapped some of what we just talked about. And there's like some other thoughts and you'll see like a bunch of people weigh in, but the overall is. For both reasons of you get it from the stagewash and the transmitters can't really transmit it, like you said, high pass somewhere, 25, 30, 40 to taste.
Um, yeah, low pass and here's where folks get really opinionated. Some people are, you know, like 18, 19, some people are as low as 15, like Francisco Serrano said that like a lot of transmitter receivers basically only go from 25 or 35 to 15k. So you're kind of wasting energy above that on top of, you know, it, it, we'll say there's some uh, subjective rather than objective statements in this thread.
So there's some anecdotal that armatures break up past a certain frequency, um, like there's not any, any data necessary backing that up on the thread, but it, it kind of makes sense if you think about how in ear drivers work.
Sean Walker: I would say this is the art part instead of the science part. We're like, yeah. I hear, I hear a difference. Can I measure that? Can I quantify that? Can I, you know, put my flag on the ground there and say, this is how this do or just like, I don't know, man, it just kind of sounds better if I do
Andy Leviss: yeah. And then there's this, I'd heard about it before, but there's like this 19k notch trick, which Francisco said it's apparently the idea is that that's where the pilot tone for a lot of the in ears that use pilot tone lives, I guess. So like a lot of folks will do a really as narrow as you can, as deep as you can notch at 19 to make sure you're not putting anything else there so that you're not adding on top of the pilot tone and causing limit within the, like, the modulation limits of the channel.
Sean Walker: I've never tried that, but I probably should. I'll go, I'll go try it and see if it helps at all.
Andy Leviss: yeah, so, so the theory is like it increases the amount of useful signal you can send to the transmitter before overloading. Whether that's the case or not, I can't say for sure, but it's definitely not the first time I've heard of that,
Sean Walker: Sure. Totally.
Andy Leviss: so.
Sean Walker: Well, I, I, I would be interested to try that out and see if, you know, like I, I'm open to trying things and I, it sounds like it makes sense, but I don't want to like just keep passing on old wives tales that do or do not work. So I, you know, let's not, you know, Call that gospel, but I want to, that sounds, sounds reasonable, you know, so I'll, I'll try it out and see, see what happens.
Andy Leviss: testing, maybe see if we can ask some, some folks who are actual engineers.
Sean Walker: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
Andy Leviss: I mean,
Sean Walker: Easy, easy.
Andy Leviss: but I know
Sean Walker: I got, I got a friend
Andy Leviss: see what I can find out.
Sean Walker: six degrees of separation for Kevin Bacon.
Andy Leviss: Yeah.
Sean Walker: Yeah, sweet. Um, but that was the majority of like, you know, it was just like, Hey, can you expand a little more on, on, uh, what's, what's happened? You know what I mean?
Andy Leviss: Yeah.
Sean Walker: Uh, and that was, that was the big question.
Did you get any other comments or thoughts or questions from people?
Andy Leviss: specific on that one, just like the more like, Topics we'd love to hear. And I think one of the big ones, and I think you and I have talked about is like a little more RF in general.
Sean Walker: Yeah.
Andy Leviss: So I mean, I don't, I, if we want, we can go into that
Sean Walker: Let's go, dude. Hit me.
Andy Leviss: So, I mean, this isn't going to be like, again, same idea. This is going to be crash course in like how to coordinate a large rig or something like that.
But I think maybe if we hit on like some of the low hanging fruit of these are the common mistakes people make and how you can make biggest impact for your dollar or time on improving your life with RF.
Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. Let's do it. You're you, you, you lead that charge, bro.
Andy Leviss: okay. Uh, PO 0.1, antenna, distro. Do it.
Sean Walker: Okay, sweet. Why?
Andy Leviss: So, so, uh, if, if I said
Sean Walker: we do it, but just, you know, so to make you explain it, why?
Andy Leviss: well if I, if I said antenna farm, do you know what an, an antenna farm is?
Sean Walker: Unfortunately, I do. I have been to hotel ballroom shows that we're not putting on before.
Andy Leviss: So I was gonna say, do you wanna explain to folks or should I
Sean Walker: Yeah, no, you, you go
Andy Leviss: you explain what it is and I'll explain why it's bad. How
Sean Walker: All right, sweet. So the antenna farm is when you hire, um, I'm maybe I won't go there. What do you, the antenna, it's when, it's when you got a bunch of like single or dual channel receivers that all have their like quarter wave or half wave antennas, and they're all smacking into each other and looking all stupid and just everybody's in there doing the same thing.
I think basically it's like. You know, then you're dropping a bunch of pebbles into this frickin water and it's rings everywhere. Everything's crashing into each other and rather than just one bigger rock, is that kind of a good
Andy Leviss: Kind of, yeah, that's, that's not a bad, it's the, and again, I'm gonna butcher it too 'cause
Sean Walker: Do it! Get
Andy Leviss: I am an RF coordinator, not. Not a radio engineer, so I'm going to dumb it down and somebody's going to yell at me about all the stuff I'm getting wrong, and I'm going to try not to go into too much detail, but basically stick antennas or any antenna is it, as we know, because we put signal into them in both directions, They carry signal in both directions and they're basically like a big resonator.
So if I've got signal going into one antenna and that's next to another antenna, that other antenna is like, each one of them is kind of causing the other one to vibrate a little bit too. I'm wiggling my fingers together that nobody but Sean can
Sean Walker: Yeah, good wiggle,
Andy Leviss: getting weirdly turned on.
Sean Walker: Good wiggle.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, um, but yeah, so like one antenna next to each other can kind of, it'll interfere with the other ones, and that creates more like intermodulation interference, it can, it can cause a loss of sensitivity because there's so much just extra crap going on basically.
So when you, so that antenna, antenna farm is the like colloquial term for, yeah, a bunch of antennas all stacked together. So whether it's loose receivers on a, you know, on a hotel, you know, breakout room stacked on the table. or a rack with just a bunch of whip antennas sticking out the front of the back.
Sean Walker: Short answer. Don't. Do it.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, yeah, the, the biggest Biggest bang for your buck you can do if you're building a rack with more than, you know, one receiver's worth of antennas is some sort of antenna distro. Like, a lot of them, if you're only doing a couple receivers, have the daisy chain cable to do it built in. Great. Once you get past a point, there's a little too much loss and you don't want to keep Leapfrogging through every antenna, so then start investing in a distro whether from Shure, Sennheiser, from, uh, PWS, from RFNU, there's pros and cons of any of them.
Sean Walker: can you do me a favor? Can you help First Rodeo Sean years ago? Where is that, like, how many jumps between, you know, because if you've got something like a ULXD or an Axiant Or, you know, that's got pass throughs. How many of those can I just daisy chain together before I start going like, alright, you know what I mean, just distro time.
Andy Leviss: See, the thing is, it's, it's very much an it depends, because like, every one of those hot, and I mean, you gotta look up for what the receiver, what the loss through that is, whether it's 3 dBs, like, there's a certain degree of loss in any, Splitter or pass through, but then the question is how much loss is too much and that depends on your environment.
Like, are you outdoors in a major city? Are you like, you know, three sub basements down next to the sign that says beware of leopard, you know, like? You know, so, so it's, it's hard to give a solid answer. I'm personally, like, I try and not, like, chain more than two together unless I have to. That's not saying I won't.
I mean, it's just good practice, but you're having an active splitter that's going to distribute it. Basically, you're putting a little bit of loss into every channel at that point, depending, or your loss and makeup gain and amplifier, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So like, there's a, there's a trade off there, but generally the trade off is more consistent Not quite as, you know, turning the dial up on the loss
Sean Walker: But if we're gonna, if we're gonna distill that down and simplify it, one or two is typically speaking not a show wrecker or something to like freak out about. But if you've got four, five, six, eight, ten daisy chained, like the last ones in the line are getting a fraction of the signal of the first one in distro bro.
Andy Leviss: But that said, if you've got like four receivers stacked together and your choice is either putting whips on everyone or chaining them through, chaining them through is going to be the lesser evil by far.
Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, totally.
Andy Leviss: Um, and then the other, the other big thing that's probably not, like, once you're at the point of paddle antennas, like shark fin antennas, the biggest mistake I see folks make Is turning the amplifier on or turning the amplifier up in, in the ones that aren't passive?
You know, the ones that have the little green LED and the switch either inside or on the side? I really wish they didn't make those.
Sean Walker: Okay, so like on our, on our standard LPDA, L D P A L P
Andy Leviss: LP, LP Log, Periodic, uh, LPDA. I hate that I know what it stands
Sean Walker: There you go. I don't, I don't know what it stands for. But there is the little switch on the, you know, the same one we're always using in our thing. Off is your preferred, off or minus six or zero,
Andy Leviss: or my, yeah, I will, bare minimum I want it off and not like passive, but often I will default to starting with it, if it, if there's a pad setting on it, padding it down, and then only padding it up if I need. Cause basically, it's again, it's the same as when we're doing game structure with analog, we're trying to manage noise floor versus the signal we want.
Sean Walker: and the RF mic is coming in frickin hot, the noise floor is coming in less, so if we're close and we don't need the gain Right? Is
Andy Leviss: exactly, you know, like if you're getting lost in the noise for everybody's like, well, I got to like crank my receive up high to get my, but you're turning the noise floor up with it. So you're getting the RF equivalent of all that hiss we were just trying to get rid of in the ears.
Sean Walker: Totally, dude.
Andy Leviss: So same idea, if you knock it down, that knocks the noise floor down.
And even if, even though that's knocking your desired signal from your mic down a little bit, It's still the noise floor is now so low that that signal is still clean. It's lower, but it's clean and clear, so the receiver can decode it nicely.
Sean Walker: Eh, alright.
Andy Leviss: So yeah, so people cause themselves far more problems by over amplifying RF, just, it's like, you're not, you're not getting into clipping like you do with, you know, an analog or digital audio signal, but like, same idea, how you crunch, put it too much and you're causing yourself issues.
It's just primarily on the noise side, not on the distortion side, because if you, transmitters are limited far below the point at which they would distort, or, you know, you'd be causing all sorts of problems for all sorts of things.
Sean Walker: Totally. I got you. That makes sense.
Andy Leviss: yeah, so, yeah, passive antennas, um, paddles and then, yeah, like, antenna placement is a big thing, just for, like, uh, Basically looking at what you want to pick up, what you don't want to pick up.
You know, if you're just doing mics, you don't have in ears, your life gets a little bit easier. You know, like you can play a little bit, like if you've got like TV interference, like it may be that one direction is like where the TV transmit is coming from. So if you can You know, move the mic so that it's more off, or the antenna rather, so it's off axis from wherever that TV antenna, you know, is, you know, downtown or whatever, up on, you know, whatever the hell is in town that the TV broadcasts from.
And more towards your mic, that'll, that'll help you out.
Sean Walker: Would it be safe to say that some of those directional antennas are like a cardioid microphone where like where you point it is what it picks up at and what you point it away from is what it Rejects.
Andy Leviss: And, and look up, look up whatever antenna you have, they'll give you the coverage angle, just like they do for a microphone. And like, keep that in mind because some of them are wider than you think, and a lot of them are a lot narrower than people think. Like, Some of, some directional antennas are like a 30 degree path, like those dome helical antennas from Sennheiser.
You look at that, you're like, whoa, 180 degrees, it's a big half circle. It's like, I think, I forget whether it's a 30 or 40 degree, it's, it's really narrow, which can be a good thing, but can be a bad thing.
Sean Walker: Copy that. Okay. You said something that I want to dive into. Uh, if you've got and ears, wireless mics and wireless ears on the same show, let's take your fricking standard rock band and monitor world, right? And I've got a pair of the. L, P, D, A?
Andy Leviss: Shark fins.
Sean Walker: Shark fins! There we go. Yep, they're now shark fins.
Good talk. They don't have to remember which one's which. If I got a pair of shark fins for that, for the mics, and I got a helical, if I was smart, I'd bring the collapsible helical that they got now that's just so much easier. I don't know if it's good or not, it's so much easier to put in a drawer.
Andy Leviss: love them, love them. I, I actually have a pair, I, I was gonna, I was gonna do the coolest thing next to me and pull that up, but it's up in the attic.
Sean Walker: where, where do I put them? How do I point them? Where do I, how do I keep them away from each other? How do I, uh, how do I very easily, in a 101 category, Maximize my separation and noise floor and RF in these, you know, basic rock band scenarios, or, you know, it doesn't have to be rock, but you know what I'm saying.
Andy Leviss: So, so the thing to remember is that one is transmitting and one is receiving, so you're looking at those patterns. And trying to keep, like, it's like Ghostbusters. You're trying not to cross the beatings.
Sean Walker: Does the same thing happen if you cross the streams? As in Ghostbusters?
Andy Leviss: Exercise for the reader. Uh, but, but, but it's not just about, like, not crossing the, because obviously, we don't want to cross the streams, but the performers are in the same spot. I need those antennas to hit the same spot.
Sean Walker: Wearing the same thing and wiggling around the stage like it's going out of
Andy Leviss: So, basically, the, and you've got a lot more power coming out of that in ear antenna than you do out of the microphone transmitter by the time it hits the antenna.
So the idea is minimizing. How much of that in ear antenna gets into the RF, into the receive antenna. So generally, as a rule of thumb, what works best is to have the in ear antenna in front of the RF antenna pointing away from it. So that way the RF antenna is in that null. Because again, just like a cardioid microphone, there's a null either in back or slightly off to the side.
And you can look up these coverage patterns just like you can with the in ear. You know, with a microphone and you just want to get your receive antenna in the null of the transmit antenna. So that's not going to make it not pick up any of the in ear transmit, but that'll have it in the pickup of the lowest.
So it might be directly behind it. It might be slightly off to the side behind it. But somewhere in there.
Sean Walker: basically ears in front, mic behind. Kind of a vibe.
Andy Leviss: Uh huh.
Sean Walker: And, and scooch as needed.
Andy Leviss: yeah, and cause if I, if I do it the other way around, I'm just, even if I'm in the null of the RF, the receive antenna with the transmit antenna, I'm still blasting all my sound forward right into it. And it's going to hit that antenna. If I do it the other way, The bulk of what's coming out of that transmit antenna is going away from my receiving end.
Sean Walker: Got it. Helical in front, shark fins in the back.
Andy Leviss: Yep.
Sean Walker: Word.
Andy Leviss: am stuck in the middle with you.
Sean Walker: Totally. Is it more important, would you say, if, as people are like, You know, as people are upgrading their rigs, not, not everybody is, is blessed to just have distros and shark fins and, you know, helicals running around and maybe they've got a new ears rig for their house of worship or for their band. You know, maybe they're touring at ears rig for their band.
Would you say if they were going to start one place, it would be more important to get a distro and, And directional antenna for the ears rig or the mic rig?
Andy Leviss: That's like asking me to pick my favorite child.
Sean Walker: Yeah, I know. Do
Andy Leviss: I mean, I only have one
Sean Walker: Do it. What's his name?
Andy Leviss: Andy, yeah,
Sean Walker: Totally.
Andy Leviss: yeah, I have my own favorite. Um,
Sean Walker: Oh, that's a whole other episode. We'll go down that rabbit hole another day. Who is
Andy Leviss: today I'm therapy with Sean and
Sean Walker: Yeah, nobody wants that. Abort, abort. Nobody wants that shit.
Andy Leviss: Um, Yeah, I don't know. That's a that's a hard question because I mean really the answer is like you want to do both.
Sean Walker: But, but maybe the ears, because it's so much more powerful.
Andy Leviss: I think so. I think I'm leaning on that side, and I'm sure somebody's gonna write in and tell me exactly why that's the wrong answer,
Sean Walker: That's okay,
Andy Leviss: we'll report back in the next episode.
Sean Walker: Yeah, that's, that's okay, man. Let him, let him,
Andy Leviss: but yeah, I think if I had, if I, if you put a gun to my head and I had to pick, I would probably, but again, it depends on how many in ears I have.
Like, if I have enough that I could space out the antennas for them, that might change the game a little
Sean Walker: Or if you got two channels of ears and 16 channels of microphones, like, don't be an idiot. Of course you want the microphones. But if it's, if it's like four or eight channels of each, let's say, like, it's pretty evenly balanced. You're like, you know, oh,
Andy Leviss: Yeah. Like until,
Sean Walker: would also, Go
Andy Leviss: yeah, until we're getting into like fancy new technology, like the new Shure accent stuff or like the Sennheiser Specter, where it's all, it all works itself out together and it's bi directional in the same unit and magic.
Sean Walker: might also depend on like which one has pass throughs. So if you had like ELXD or Axiant and then some PSM 900s or something, maybe you've got 900s and you're going, you're going daisy chain or pass throughs and a couple of racks of mics to kind of accomplish the same thing if you had to.
Okay.
Andy Leviss: and combining in ears also just gets more, because you can only combine so many before you've got too much power getting combined into one transmit path. So there's limits there, and that's kind of, read, you gotta read the specs of your transmitters and the specs of whatever combiner you're using, because it's gonna vary, and like, you know, the Shure's make it really easy, like they have that like passive, you know, You know, combiner on the front where it's, it's weird how it's laid out with the like, you gotta jump from the front to the back and the thing and chain them together, but it's there and it works.
Like some of it, like if you get like the RFNU stuff, you're into the world of like just buying a little two by one passive, you know, combiner splitter outside to combine them. But it's basically, that's the same thing that's built into the Shure. So it, it gets it. Yeah, that's what I said, Shure. Um, yeah, but it's, so it gets a little more expensive because it's, it just drew.
Density isn't as high with combiners simply because split like amplifying the signal to split it doesn't create a lot of heater power but like when you're combining a bunch of transmit antennas there's Actually, there's like heatsink and amplification and lots of filtering to make sure that the signals aren't creating intermod within the antenna.
Sean Walker: Sure. Totally.
Andy Leviss: It's a more expensive thing in both base cost per unit and how many units you may end up needing, so.
Sean Walker: I gotcha. And so that as you get to many more units and the shows get complicated, more complicated, it is probably. likely that the more expensive units will perform better in those scenarios
Andy Leviss: Mm hmm.
Sean Walker: by by and large like i know that's a blanket statement but like If you've got 8 channels of ears, you're probably cool with any 8 channel combiner.
If you've got 40 channels of ears, it probably makes sense that the 5, 000 combiners are probably going to perform better than the 2, 000
Andy Leviss: at that point, like, don't have an illusion that you're going to get it down to one antenna for 40 channels
Sean Walker: No, not a chance. Not a
Andy Leviss: Yeah, stop trying to make fetch happen right now.
Sean Walker: Don't do it. Nope. Nope. Brakes, back up, rewind. Yeah, yeah, totally. 100%.
Andy Leviss: Um, yeah, what else? Uh, Other RF stuff, I think
Sean Walker: Oh, hey, there's a couple of Speaking of other RF stuff, I'm sorry to just jump
Andy Leviss: no, no, go for it. I do it to you all the time.
Sean Walker: There are a couple of like shark fin options from different manufacturers than from different third party manufacturers As long are there benefits like I've seen one that looks like it's a single shark fin with two whips out the side
Andy Leviss: diversity
Sean Walker: yeah, I've seen that guy.
I've seen I've seen the you know, the standard Shure shark fins or the or the Sennheiser shark fins, whatever. Are there, uh, strengths and weaknesses to each one? Or what, what, what makes somebody pick one over the other? Or, meh.
Andy Leviss: Generally speaking, coming back to that diversity paddle separately, we're going to put that on the side for a minute. Generally speaking, any of the normal single antenna ones, pretty comparable, you know, whether or not they have that amplifier pad or they're just a straight passive paddle. is going to vary.
It'll be cheaper as a passive paddle and that'll be fine. At that point, if you want to, you want to get the little nerdy plus thing, carry a couple of like 6dB inline BNC attenuators in your kit and you can drop them in if you need them.
Sean Walker: Those are sweet. Or the band, or the band passes that are a venue. Other people probably make two where you can, yeah, that's pretty sweet. Okay, what's up with this, what's up with this fin thing that you just put to the side? Let's go back to the front. What
Andy Leviss: So that, well, so the one other, before we get to that, the one other thing I was going to say on like standard paddles is if you're outdoors, Lectrosonics and a couple other brands make ones that like have cutouts in them, they look like kind of like. Skeletons of antennas? Exactly the same antenna.
Basically what they're doing is just, the cheap way to make it is cut a big plate the size of the pattern of all the little traces you need for the antenna, put the traces on it, you've got an antenna. That's a big sale when you're out on a windy day. So what Lectrosonics and a couple other folks do is basically any of the parts that aren't actually part of the pattern of the antenna, they cut out.
Costs a little more to manufacture because there's more machining to do to it. But it makes it so that more wind can blow through it. So it's a little more stable when you're outdoor on a windy gig.
Sean Walker: Without affecting the RF performance?
Andy Leviss: Correct. Cause it's cutting apart. It's cutting away the parts that aren't actually part of the antenna.
Sean Walker: So extra, extra material that's not part of your performance is getting Alright, so there's no reason not to.
Andy Leviss: Yeah. It's again. Yeah. Other than potentially cost, but those are also almost always passive antennas. So they're on the less expensive side as paddles go.
Sean Walker: Word.
Andy Leviss: yeah. So the. The diversity fin, or, I forget what, if that's the actual name of
Sean Walker: It is.
Andy Leviss: yeah. So, basically the idea there is it's two antennas in one.
So, diversity is when we've got a receiver, we have two antennas, we space them apart. That's actually another one of those common ways to make your life a lot easier. Space them at least, like, let's say 8 feet apart, maybe 6, maybe 10, whatever, but space them far enough apart. If you've just got them on either side of a little 19 inch corporate pop up mixer rack.
You might as well not have the second antenna, because the idea is that each of those antennas is picking up, like, different, like, as the signal bounces around the room, there's cancellations and, and summations, just like when you have two speakers, and the idea with diversity antennas is if I have one antenna that ends up in a null, if I have another antenna far enough away, it's probably not on the same null at the same time, so my receiver, so my transmitter is getting to at least one of them stronger than the other at any time, and it reduces dropouts.
So you put them too close together, it's going to drop out of both of them at the same time, defeating the purpose of having that second antenna.
Sean Walker: Copy.
Andy Leviss: So
Sean Walker: redundant redundant. Word?
Andy Leviss: the idea with that diversity fin is basically, instead of having spatial diversity, two antennas of the same type spaced apart. They're using basically pickup pattern diversity. So they've got, it's basically one fin and then it's a, an omnidirectional pair of whip antennas through it, using that fin as the ground plane to make the antennas work, which is getting way into the like nerdier, if you want it, studying antennas.
But, so the idea there is that even though they're in the same physical location, because they've got a different pickup pattern, like the omni will pick up, you know, from other directions where there may still be a reflection while the directional is in that null. So it's, it's, If you can do two directional antennas spaced apart, that's always going to be better, both because spatial diversity is pretty much always going to win over that pattern diversity, and also because of the benefits we talked about of a directional antenna.
If I can get an antenna that is primarily picking up the things I want, and naturally not picking up the things I don't want, Same like placing a microphone, that's going to make my life easier. So that Omni is always going to pick up all the things.
Sean Walker: Seems like a pretty, pretty cost effective way to do that on one stand with one thing. Like, is it, have you, is it work pretty good? I mean, I don't, I
Andy Leviss: it's, yeah, like, like I said, if, if, if I can do two directional antennas, that's always going to be better. That said, if you can't, like if we're in that like corporate breakout room situation where I've got like a little 19 inch, you know,
Sean Walker: I've got one cube to fit in.
Andy Leviss: yeah, then pop one of those up on a mic stand.
It'll, it'll certainly be better than only having one antenna. Um,
Sean Walker: I've, I've used them a bunch with other people's kits and they've always worked just fine. I'm not trying to, not trying to slag on them. I'm just saying like, if we're trying to squeeze the last 10 percent of performance out of something, two pedals is your jam kind of deal. Yeah. Okay, cool.
Andy Leviss: yeah, it's like I said, directional is always going to be better. But, if you can't do two directionals, then two directional antennas right on top of each other is going to be worse than one of those. Simply because you get that benefit of the other pattern.
Sean Walker: Sure. I gotcha. Okay. Word. And then ears is almost, I mean, I helicals of some kind. Is that
Andy Leviss: yeah, I mean the big thing that so, so helical antennas, those are any of the, or you'll also see them called circular polarized, which somebody who's into geometry and physics can get into the, the specific difference between those, but generally both of them have some sort of spirally antenna bit instead of just straight pointy antenna bits.
And the idea is that like any RF wave wiggles through the air in a certain orientation. And generally It will spiral clockwise or counterclockwise if it's coming off that helical antenna. And if it's coming off a straight antenna, it'll either wiggle mostly horizontal or mostly vertical. And I'm grossly oversimplifying.
The real RF nerds are mad at me right now.
Sean Walker: that kind of like rifling in a gun barrel where it like spins so it goes straight rather than bouncing around and flops around?
Andy Leviss: Kinda, yeah. And it's,
Sean Walker: I know, that's not a good analogy for an audio podcast, but you know.
Andy Leviss: mean, you know, it's, and it's, and it's not necessarily about reach, it's about, you will get the most gain if your antenna, your transmit antenna and your receive antenna are polarized the same way. So that's why if you've got directional antennas, be them paddles or if you even omnis that are whips, rather than pointing them both straight, you know, perpendicular to the ground, one straight forward, you'll generally get better.
Better diversity, if you put them at 90 degrees to each other, and then you can argue whether one should be parallel to the ground and one perpendicular. What I'll usually do is both of them 45 degrees out, because basically the idea being that like my, particularly a handheld, that handheld's moving around.
So like as they're moving around the stage, Odds are, like, as it moves towards being oriented the same way as one antenna, it's moving away from the other, so you increase the chance that one of those antennas is getting the most gain out of it. So the idea with the helical antenna, whether it's on the receiver or the transmit side, is because it's got that spirally pattern, it's kind of all the orientations and none of the orientations at once, and again, the real nerds are going to yell at me for explaining it that way, but.
Sean Walker: No man, but this is the 101, like we're talking 101 stuff here man, we're not talking about 303, you know what I mean,
Andy Leviss: Yeah. So that's, and
Sean Walker: this is a primer.
Andy Leviss: yeah, and people dancing around the, if there is an antenna going, like some of the packs use the in ear cable as the antenna. So you have no idea which way it's going. So giving it that helical polarization means that it's, it's increasing how much the receiver can pick up of it.
And likewise, using those as the receive antennas increases, like when there's, whether a belt pack dancing around or a handheld moving around the stage. increases the odds that you're going to get the most. Like it's never going to be polarized the same since they're not both like vertical or both horizontal, but it will be less than if it were like horizontal transmitter and vertical receive.
So like having that helical polarizing antenna kind of gives you a happy medium.
Sean Walker: Sure, I got you, alright. That's sweet. And those are, those are pretty cost effective man, those like
Andy Leviss: Yeah, they've come down a lot.
Sean Walker: Yeah, those, uh, I was surprised to see those for, you know, a few, a few hundred bucks apiece. They're not like a few grand apiece to make it, to make it crazy pants ness, you know what I mean?
Andy Leviss: Yeah. And again, there's like more and more brands like rebadging. Similarly, there's like PWS was the original, like the top ones. And they make some smaller versions of them now, too. Sennheiser came out with those big dome ones, Shure has a version now, and then, like Sean mentioned earlier, RF and you has the really cool collapsible one, which are nice, because you can collapse a pair of them down and fit them in like a 2U drawer in your RF rack.
Sean Walker: Got it.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, and those are, those are, those are the jam.
Sean Walker: Word! Yeah, we've really, we really dug the collapsible helicals, for
Andy Leviss: they're also lighter, so they're easier to hang. Yeah, no, I dig them. Um, I don't know, is there any other, because we talked about antennas, we talked about angle, uh, I don't know, any other RF things you can think of that we haven't hit on? No, I mean, we, I mean, we were starting to like tiptoe into coordination, which. Is and needs to be an episode on its own,
Sean Walker: Let's do that as a whole episode next time, because we're almost to an hour and people are so tired of listening to us fucking yap right now. Uh, we can do a whole nother episode about that, but I think that gives everybody a nugget of like, here's some boulders to start with and we can start digging into the quicksand later if we want, but you know, this is a bunch of good 101 tips.
Would you say that, uh, I'll ask one more question that I have found helpful to me, but I'll ask it as a question to you. When you are setting up your Lavs, handhelds, that kind of a thing. Do you find that you, are you setting up as unity, unity gain or everything at zeros on the, on the pack, zeros on the receiver?
You know, are you, are you setting up as line level or mic level, that kind of a thing? That would be probably helpful because I, I have come to my personal preferences, but I want to hear it from you and then I'll chime in.
Andy Leviss: yeah, receiver is the easy one which is line level cause generally speaking they're all working at line level internally and if you kick them over to mic it's just padding it down right at that output only for you to feed it back into a console and crank it back up again. So take it in as line, you know, why pad it down only to re amplify it later on down the chain.
That just seems silly.
Sean Walker: Totally dude, totally.
Andy Leviss: Yeah, and then transmitters, it depends a lot, because like the newest Shures, if we're talking handhelds, you know, there isn't really anything to set. And, you know, as long as the capsule is made to spec, whoever's making it to work with Shure, like, in theory, it can't clip out that transmitter.
Sean Walker: I'm thinking like mic offset kind of stuff in there too, you know what I mean? Yeah.
Andy Leviss: yeah, well, so, that's the thing to understand, and like, you can, I've tried to get into the weeds a little bit with some friends at Shure to understand exactly where that transmitter lives in the chain, because it's a little unclear and there's no diagram that tells you where.
But the official party line from Shure is that that should only be used for matching different mic types to each other. It is not a gain adjustment. And again, we're going to put a pin in that for a second and talk about belt packs in a second. It is, it is basically just a trim. I've got some 87 heads, some 58 heads, some KSM heads, you know, I've got an Earthworks head, and I want to be able to have all my, all my, you know, preamp gains the same, all my output gains the same, and be able to just swap my heads back, like swap my handles back and forth, so you're adjusting for there.
Or if you're doing like combo packs, where like you've got both a handheld and a belt pack tuned to the same receiver, Whichever one's hotter, you're going to turn the mic offset back to match the other one. So that way, when you, you know, turn the handheld off, turn the belt pack on, you're not having to make a dramatic adjustment at the receiver or at the console.
Sean Walker: Totally. And that's what we do. I have found that I prefer everything to be at zero and the receivers to be in line level when I have control of it, right? Like, if it's my own rig, so that my console preamp gain, because I, I drive into a Rio. I don't, I don't Dante on my wireless and I can go to that another time, but then my pre preamp gain is the same across the whole thing.
Right? So that all my handhelds have one set of gains and whatever. And then yes, we do combo packs. So our four channel kits are for handhelds and for body packs, right? To, to do that. Cause he flopped back and forth on a corporate show for those that are just starting out in this so that we use the preamp Mic offset like you just said to make sure that when it flips from handheld to lav Those are as let's say as close as can be and I can just reassign the buses rather than oh shit and grabbing a handful Again in addition to reassigning the buses Uh, okay, good.
I'm glad I'm not crazy. I will say, if you are a band, and you are coming in and out of different houses carrying wireless, set it to mic level, because they're used to seeing a wired 58, and then you show up closer to the gain structure they're used to seeing, rather than instant feedback when you unmute your freaking channel.
That would be the only caveat I would say of like, where to go to mic level, but if you've got control of your rig. Absolutely line level. Cause then it's all the, all the gains already done there. Right? Like you're already, it's already sorted out. Does that make sense? Am I talking weird yet?
Andy Leviss: Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. And that's, that's always the, yeah, choosing your battle, choosing which is the lesser evil.
Sean Walker: Totally dude.
Andy Leviss: And, and yeah, at that point, yeah, getting up quick and not like, Clipping the shit out of stuff or feeding it back is certainly going to be the lesser evil than adding the little bit of noise that you might add, patting it down and gaining it back up.
So,
Sean Walker: I would say in those scenarios, you can't hear the noise anyway. Like when you're talking about adding noise, you're talking about such a minimal amount of it. We're talking about the 1 percent here. We're not talking about 50 percent of fricking noise or, you know what I mean? So, you know, those of you in that situation, don't freak out.
Don't think this is a holy moly.
Andy Leviss: yeah. And then the, the, the short 30 second on coordination I'm going to say for this episode is fucking do it.
Sean Walker: Totally
Andy Leviss: the Aside from like if you've got like one of the like Shure, Axi, you know, like in like Spectrum manager dookies, they can do a little bit smarter of a thing for it. The other biggest bang for your buck you can do with RF is not doing the, you know, have each receiver scan and hope for the best, but doing some sort of calculation.
Like if you're starting out, if you're all on Shure wireless workbench, Great, you know, Sennheiser has, you know, WSM and Sennheiser is now invested in SoundBase. SoundBase is great because it can basically do everybody's and we're gonna get Donny and Matt on at some point and dive deeper into
Sean Walker: dude. Totally. And sitting with you for a few minutes on how those two worked differently, Let's get into an episode on that because that is super cool. And it was very hard for me to go from being a workbench user to go to sound base and be like, why no Worky? And then you explained it to me, like I was five years old and I was like, Oh shit, that's a great way to do that.
That's an awesome
Andy Leviss: they take, Yeah, they're doing the same math, but they take very different approaches to it and we'll come back to that in a day. And we've talked about on the Discord, there's, if you go to Practical Show Tech, like they've had a couple episodes on, but where like Peter's going to walk through some like convention coordinations in a bunch of, in both in Workbench and at the time in IIS, soundbases sort of replaced IIS at this point as the tool that most people use if they're not using Workbench.
Sean Walker: you talk to it in a similar manner as you would have talked to IAS, which is the opposite way you talk to
Andy Leviss: yeah,
Sean Walker: Workbench, right? It's kind of like if you go in from like a Yamaha to an Avid or DiGiCo workflow You're talking to it different, but you get to the similar results
Andy Leviss: yeah, like, just to contextualize for folks, the, the short version is Shure Workbench is based around how many channels do you need and we'll try and find that many channels for you, whereas all the others are based on where do you need channels, like what frequency, what model do you need.
And we will crunch the numbers and try and give you as many possibilities as you can, and then pick how many you want out of that. And there are ways to trick it into working in the opposite workflow, which is helpful for some people. It's, on the surface, seems like, well, that would be easier, but when you really get into trying to cram a lot of spectrum into a little space It is a more flexible way to work, it just requires you to flip that part of your brain around.
Sean Walker: Totally. Well, let's, let's plan it. Let's do that for the next episode. That'll be sweet. I would love to learn more about it because we've been, we've been super successful with just the, the workbench vibe and like getting, getting coordinated that way with a RF Explorer and a workbench. And it's been great for, let's call it 20 channels of wireless or less ish.
You know what I mean? And, but you've done a lot of shit that's way more complicated, bigger than that. So let's dive into like what it takes to get some more in depth nerd shit going in the next episode. All right, cool, man. Well, thanks for hanging out for another episode of us yapping y'all. We appreciate you.
Thank you to RCF for making ripping speakers that everybody can afford and do a great job. And Allen & Heath for some DSPs that don't make me want to blow my brains out. Awesome. We just put an AHM in some place and I was like, this is so much easier than the other ones I was using before. Uh, and thanks to y'all for hanging out and letting us yap.
That's the pod.
Andy Leviss: And hey, before we sign off, speaking of Allen & Heath and RCF, if you're going to NAMM in Anaheim in a couple weeks, look out for me and Sean, we will be there. We're still working out the specifics of a couple of like, formal things we're doing, but we'll be hanging, you know, there's some threads going on over at the Discord to try and catch coffee.
So, uh, maybe we'll see you there, and we might even have stickers!
Sean Walker: Oh snap. All right, let's do it. See y'all next week.
Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green
