Sheriton

Perfect - I was just about to ask if you had a picture of the layout! Several issues to tackle here... Dropouts can be caused either by lack of the wanted signal or excess of an unwanted signal. I suspect you may be facing both here along with a couple of other points. Five red bars is worrying and will definitely be a problem. I routinely see three which I've found to be acceptable. Occasionally four which would make me worry a bit but never five. Antennae location There's an RF phenomenon called "near far" whereby a nearby RF signal (i.e. a very close transmitter pack) can swamp the receiver's input stage and prevent it from picking up a source that's further away. If in your current layout you get singers very close to both antennae, it's possible that those centre stage may suffer. To use a backwards sound analogy, if your speakers are at head height right in front of the front row, they'll get blasted whilst those at the back won't hear as much. You solve that by getting the speakers up higher so that the difference in distance (and hence volume) between speaker & front row and speaker & back row is minimised. Same with the antennae. If they have to be "floor mounted", a standard boom mic stand at full extension will get them just above head height which is usually OK. I use K&M's rather useful 240/5 clamp if there's a lighting boom or an edge of something I can clamp on to at a good height. Those paddles' polar pattern is a bit like a cardioid mic so you can use the null behind them to point towards an unavoidable RF source if necessary. The proximity of those laptops may also be problematic if the antennae aren't currently very high up. I'd aim to keep them at least 5' away from anything that transmits. Keep an eye out for wifi access points too - steer well clear of them! Antennae cable It would be worth checking exactly what type of cable you're using. If it's something like RG58, that won't work well, especially at those lengths. There's more to speccing the right cable than just the impedance. The recommended cable is LMR195 - it's not particularly cheap but it does work. However I'd say your cables are far too long. You're dropping around 25dB of signal over that length which really won't be helping. I've also been wondering whether using two very different lengths of cable may be problematic. I've not come to any conclusions on that front though. Suggestions As per normal troubleshooting procedures, this is a case of divide & conquer. Let's tackle the interference first. If your antennae aren't already high up, get them mounted as high as you can, away from the laptops and any other sources of interference. If you're not then seeing fewer red bars, try... ...testing with the stubby antennae that come bundled with the receivers plugged straight in to the front of the AD8. That will hopefully show much lower levels of interference from sources like the laptops. It also eliminates the long cable runs from the equation. Try this with any nearby equipment switched off though - you mentioned other radio mic receivers which shouldn't really be a problem but let's play it safe for the purposes of testing. If you see fewer red bars, that's progress. Switch everything else back on. If you're now seeing more interference (red bars), I'd actually be tempted to relocate your antennae to the rear of the stage near the rack and use much shorter (<20') LMR195 cables. You're on such a small stage, distance really shouldn't be a problem. Hopefully by this point, you're seeing fewer red bars. Let's have a look at the transmitters. Switch to RF1. Triple check that they're all on RF1 - just one transmitter left on RF2 will cause trouble. Shorter cables as mentioned above will help with wanted signal strength & quality. Without actually being there to see the full set up, I can't think of much else to suggest. In summary, your broad approach is twofold: Keep unwanted signals out of the receiver - locate antennae away from sources of interference and maximise cable quality Get as much wanted signal as possible - minimise cable length, minimise differences in transmission path length Let me know how you get on!

Did these problems start when you upgraded the firmware or was the upgrade an attempt to solve them? In a busy RF environment, you really should be using RF1. It may slow down nearby wifi a little but (in my opinion), that's preferable to mics dropping out. With all the transmitters off, how many red RF LEDs are lit up on each receiver? What's the distance between the receiver antennae and the transmitters? How long are your antennae cables, what type of cable are they and what's the gain on the paddles set to? From what I've seen of other peoples' problems on here over the years, more often than not, the cause is related to physical locations of things e.g. leaving a spare transmitter switched on right next to the receivers or having an IEM transmitter antennae near to the mic receivers' antennae. Make sure that your receiver paddles are up high with clear line of sight and well away from anything else that transmits on any frequency.

There is indeed a button push sequence. I knew I'd accidentally done it before but it's taken a while to remember it! Hold down Select and Mute whilst switching the pack on. Don't release those two buttons until the text starts scrolling; the last bit of data it shows is the firmware version.

That Shure product doesn't cover the frequency range that the Line6 mics use so it wouldn't be much use. If you could find one that was the right range and handled the right signal levels and performed satisfactorily then I don't see why it wouldn't work. However, and bearing in mind that Line6 is now part of Yamaha, I would expect just about any supplier worth their salt to be able to source an AD8 for you. They may well not list such products anywhere but my experience of suppliers is that they can almost always get what you want, albeit sometimes only at a higher price than ideal. I know my regular education suppliers will happily source anything, even if it means them buying it from another retailer and selling it on.

I've recently switched to Eneloop 1900mAH NiMH. I tried a few others but many don't even fit in the battery compartments in the the beltpacks. Bench tests had them running for over eight hours; they've been 100% reliable in show use so far. The battery metering is inevitably less accurate due to the different discharge curve but I'm confident enough in them lasting that that's not a major issue.

There's a loop on the back of the receivers that I guess is intended for cable restraint. It's fine for the single PSUs as you can push a loop of the cable through it & stick the plug through that loop but less use for the daisy cables. I ended up cable tying that cable to each loop - no accidental disconnection issues since I did that.

That's a bit worrying! What voltage did you measure on the cable? Was it steady DC or any AC present? (I do think those single daisy chain power cables are a bad idea as they're not as secure as they really should be and if the (non-locking) connection to the AD8 becomes loose, you could lose a whole set of receivers. Likewise if one receiver goes rogue, it could affect the others on that same chain.) It'll be a couple of days before I can get to mine to meter it out but I'll post up the results here as a comparison. I imagine the power distro in the XD8 is probably totally separate from the antennae distro so if one goes down, the other doesn't automatically suffer too.

Apologies - I'd never seen that product before so I didn't realise it was a thing. It looks like it'll do exactly what you want although looking at the included cables, I can't see how you're supposed to wire them up. They're really expensive too - if you need more than one, it's much better value to get the AD8!

How on earth would the polar pattern of a mic have any effect on RF problems?

Each V75 receiver can feed up to four more receivers in a chain using the antennae outputs. This means that with the AD8, you can (in theory) connect 40 receivers - eight directly and four connected to each of those. With only 14 available channels, there's obviously not much point to that though! The V55 receivers don't have antennae outputs so you can't daisychain them on in the same way. You can use two AD8s to feed 14 receivers - just connect one pair of outputs from the first AD8 to the input of the second AD8 and feed seven receivers from each of them.

There's no relationship between wifi channel numbers and L6 channel numbers. Each RF1 L6 channel uses four different frequencies spread throughout the 2.4G band so if there's a wifi signal present on any of those four, it'll show up. There's clearly something very wrong with your setup, which I suspect may be difficult to remotely diagnose. I believe these systems are still very viable - I finished a run of panto a few weeks ago using ten of them. There were two high powered wifi access points mounted on either side of the prosc plus 300 odd mobile phones in the audience. My receiver rack was out front with me, around 20m from the stage and I had zero RF problems across the whole week. I'm struggling to think of anything beyond a serious fault in the equipment that would cause dropouts at only six feet. Do you have access to another receiver or transmitter that you can try substituting? What is the RF signal strength meter showing when the dropouts occur? Does the system work OK at home, away from a gig environment? What other RF transmitters (on any frequency) are on stage with you?

For anyone reading this and wondering about the solution, Hal & I exchanged a few emails and resolved it. The main culprit was a spare pack placed very close to the receiver antennae that was swamping their inputs and causing the dropouts. "De-sense" is the name of the phenomenon - a nearby strong signal prevents the effective reception of more distant, weaker signals. Moving that pack and putting the antennae on stands up in the air fixed the issues. It's worth noting that this kind of issue affects all wireless systems, analogue and digital. There's a good, detailed primer on radio mics and their possible problems here.

Please let us know how you get on - it's always useful to know if suggestions here have solved the problem.

Hi Panos, The blue LED only comes on with quite a high signal - you'll probably see it with a headset mic but it's not likely to light up much with a lav mic. I suspect the problem here arises because of the connection you're using. That 1/4" output isn't intended to be connected to a mic input - the impedance is too high for that to work well. Are you using a 3.5mm mic input socket on your computer? They're generally very low quality and usually wired to provide a bias voltage for mics like your old electret. Connecting anything other than a mic specifically designed for that usage is unlikely to work well. I think your best option here would be to use a really basic mixer in between the mic receiver and the computer's line input, not mic input. Alternatively, a USB audio interface with a mic input would probably work even better - have a look at the Behringer Xenyx 302USB for a budget solution. I really like the Focusrite Scarlett interfaces too if you want higher quality. Sheriton

Could you explain in a bit more detail exactly what it is that you want to do? Including details of any other equipment i.e. what amp?

What did you determine from your swappings? Did every combination of mics and packs exhibit the problem? It sounds like an "analogue" problem rather than a digital one so probably not RF related. Although you're not dealing with sweaty actors, it does sound a bit like headsets that have suffered sweat damage. If even the lav is similarly afflicted, I'd perhaps start to wonder about the power that's getting sent to the capsule from the pack as an intermittent issue with that will cause such crackles (a bit like crackles caused by phantom power not consistently getting through). I can't easily imagine a fault condition that could occur on both packs that would exhibit like this though. Worth checking the pins and sockets on the connectors - I had one pack trashed by someone trying to unscrew the connector rather than pull it out! The pins are pretty fragile. I would also try to beg/borrow known working mics & packs so you can narrow down where the problem is.

The output from the receiver is designed to be pretty much the same level as you would get if you connected a similar mic directly to the mixer. You are connecting to a mic input and not a line input on the mixer aren't you?

Great to hear that your kit is working as expected under lab conditions. I think we can reasonably safely rule out a fault in the L6 equipment itself then. Minor pedantry but worth noting that UHF is just a frequency range (300MHz to 3GHz) so your L6 kit is also UHF. Do your band ever get together with all this kit for rehearsals? Any issues present there? Where abouts are your IEM transmitters in relation to your L6 receivers? Even though they're on different frequencies, if they're close together, there's still potential for problems as the presence of those signals can swamp the input stage of the receivers. You really need to keep all transmitters away from the receivers. The slight downside to digital RF systems is that you rarely know just how close to the edge you are - you might be right on the cliff edge (at which point everything is still working fine) but it would only take a passing mobile phone to push you over the edge. Another phenomenon to be aware of is near-far, which is common to all radio systems. If you have one L6 mic right next to the receivers, that can compromise their ability to pick up mics further away. One more thought - you mention you use an X32 which is essentially a computer and hence inevitably chucks out a certain amount of RF. Is that very close to the receivers? I suspect that what you're dealing with here is not a single big problem but rather a collection of little issues that on their own would be insignificant but together form a perfect storm. My best advice at this stage without being able to actually see your setup (do you have any photos of your stage setup?) is to look carefully at exactly where each bit of kit is in relation to each other. At the risk of suggesting further expenditure, it might be beneficial to consider proper external antennae like the P180s. They'll let you move that critical component out of the back of a rack and well away from other equipment. I use them with my kit - it's really useful to be able to locate them in the best place for them rather than being stuck on the back of the receivers.

Something has to have changed somewhere. I suspect it may be the kind of thing that a good second pair of eyes might spot straight away - do you know any local RF gurus who could cast their eye over your setup? Failing that, the only approach is a methodical one. Switch on just one single channel of L6 kit, nothing else, and see how that works. Add another channel, try again. Once all of that is on and working, continue with other RF sources. I suspect there's something right next to your L6 receivers (doesn't matter if it's on a different band) that's saturating their inputs. That won't necessarily show up on a channel scan either. As a side note, I routinely run eight channels of L6 beltpacks for theatre shows. 20m or so from stage to the receivers, three high power installed wifi access points plus all the audience phones and rarely have any issues at all. The kit itself is capable of working well. The last time I had an issue was when a camera man set up his DSLR right underneath one of my antennae (after the dress and before the show - the worst time to be changing the RF environment) and I immediately saw an increase in activity on the RF meters. Turns out the camera had wifi which he couldn't disable. I moved him further away and all was good again. Sometimes (potential) interference comes from sources you don't immediately expect - using lots of RF devices together successfully isn't an easy task, regardless of the plug & play claims of many manufacturers. There's a certain amount of voodoo involved at times. You mention external antennae and daisy chaining - which antennae are they and what type of cable? Where are the antennae located and if directional, what are they pointing towards and away from? If those bits aren't right, that'll knock out the entire system. Do report back on a methodical troubleshooting approach - if that doesn't find the culprit, nothing will!

Shouldn't be a problem. I have a rack of mixed V70s and V75s and pay no attention at all to which mics get used with which receivers.

I'm a little baffled as to why a drummer needs a wireless mic... First thing I would do is switch everything to RF1. RF2 was created to enable a small number of L6 products to co-exist with 2.4G wifi on specific channels. If you don't need to accommodate 2.4G wifi, don't use RF2 - it's just not robust enough. Also be aware that you can't mix RF modes - everything needs to be on the same setting. Also worth noting that even on completely different bands, transmitters can still cause issues if they're close to other receivers. It's a phenomenon called receiver desense - a bit like someone talking right in your ear making it difficult to hear someone further away even though their voice is in a different register. Try out RF1 and please report back - I suspect that'll solve your issues.

For your handhelds: if the dynamic filter is engaged, try disabling that. Also try switching to a different mic model and then back to the one it was originally set to. (I know that's an odd thing to do, but it fixed this problem for another forum user)

I would always suggest going for rackmountable option - it keeps things neat & tidy and makes for a much quicker and easier setup. Personally, I would go with remote antennae and the AD8 as that's what I use - it gets good signal to all the receivers (no need to daisy chain) and lets you site the antennae where they need to be rather than them being stuck at the rack. Lots of sets of antennae next to each other is bad news - each antennae also radiates a small amount of signal that can (worst case) cause interference to adjacent systems. This is just one element of the voodoo involved in making any wireless systems work well. WiFi. Potentially a pain. The newer RF2 mode in the mics in theory allows you to leave a specific wifi channel free but at the expense of each mic using fewer frequencies and hence being less robust. RF1 mode is likely to trample all over WiFi and slow that connection right down. Might not be an issue with infrequent adjustments to a mixer. But yes, keep them well away from each other. If it's possible to run the mixer wifi system al 5GHz, that will help. I'd suggest getting someone local who really knows their way around wireless systems to help you initially get set up. There is a certain amount of black magic involved along with a good understanding of how to locate antennae, how signals propagate, what elements of a building's structure may cause issues, what other devices may cause issues and how to avoid them, etc. If the drummer dumps his mobile on top of the receiver rack, you'll have problems. You'll doubtless see some folks on here who haven't had much success with the L6 systems and blame the systems themselves for not being up to the job. I routinely use 10 of them in a venue with high powered wifi access points right next to the stage plus the inevitable room full of punters with phones in their pockets but never have any issues. I've been using wireless systems for 15+ years so have learnt how to get the best out of them - talk to people who really know their stuff. The low price point opens up the market to a much wider audience than it ever used to be which means people with less experience using the products. Wireless systems are never plug & play, no matter what the manufacturers may try to tell you. You do need a certain level of knowledge to get the best out of them. And never forget, a £5 cable is more reliable than a £5000 wireless system ;)

The label on the box is all about the physical aspect of the PSU - the right plug to fit in the local socket. It's essentially a travel adapter that you might need to enable you to plug it in.

Every rechargeable battery I've tried so far has been too big to fit in to the beltpack (or maybe not too big to go in but definitely too big to get back out again!) Less of an issue with the handheld of course. Is there any rule of thumb to identify batteries that do fit? Are some manufacturers better than others at making cells the right size? Is it only the really high capacity batteries that are too big?