Jump to content

AKG WMS400 Wireless


Recommended Posts

  • Members

This is the wireless I'm looking to get. What i'm looking for is a wireless that...

 

-Has extremely little to NO dropouts at all.

-A good amount of range.

-Good for bass and guitar

 

And the biggest thing I need....

 

No tone change, at all!

 

So is the AKG WMS400 Wireless a good choice? If not, what do you feel gives a better chance at filling those requisites. Price isn't THAT important, but resonable is good.

 

Thanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Range and lack of dropouts are related, and are mostly a factor of:

 

1) Finding a clear frequency (nothing else competing with your transmitter)

 

2) Transmitter RF power (some units are as low as 10mW and some are up to 250mW. The difference between 50mW and 100mW for instance is 40% greater range.

 

3) Receiver design, i.e. how carefully filtered it is, and low distortion in the RF amp.

 

4) Diversity scheme. Non-diversity receivers will not provide the performance of diversity systems. And there are differences between diversity systems as well.

 

In terms of "Good for bass and guitar", here are some thoughts:

 

1) The system should cover the frequency range of these instruments, where low E on the Bass is around 44 Hz, low B is around 32 Hz (for a 5-string bass). The upper frequency response is not as important, but you still want the midrange and first few harmonics to be flat. I good fequency response IMO for guitar/bass systems is 40Hz to 16kHz within 1 dB.

 

2) Companding. This is the scheme used to get a decent signal to noise ratio out of your system. It's kinda like Dolby noise reduction for analog tape if you remember that stuff. Basically with analog wireless systems, the signal is compressed before transmission and expanded after transmission to re-create the dynamics of the original, without picking up too much noise. Trouble is, it's not easy to design or build a really good compander, and as it turns out, guitar and bass are difficult signals for this process. So it's worth trying some systems to determine how they will affect your tone.

 

Also, look for systems handling the audio as digital information so that there is no companding at all. There are a couple of systems out there operating in this way.

 

-Karl

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I forgot something...

 

The input impedance for the transmitter (i.e. the interface between the guitar or bass and the transmitter) should be as high as possible to avoid "loading" the instrument pickups. This is just like a good DI or a good instrument preamp, where the tone of the instrument is carefully preserved before processing.

 

Some manufacturers do this in the transmitter itself, and some do it with a special instrument cable. Both methods are viable, it's just worth it to check it out before assuming that you can connect a guitar to a beltpack transmitter.

 

-Karl

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...