XD-V55 and XD-V75

[soundman71]

I am interested in XD-V55 and XD-V75 wireless mics and am considering buying two lavalier units to use alongside several UHF mics.

 

Is there any difference in the RF performance of the two units?

 

I have read and heard mixed reviews regarding the reliability of the series, more particularly with regard to the chance of dropout occurring. My application will be musical theatre, and there are likely to be human bodies surrounding the transmitters on stage, blocking line of sight to the receivers. In particular, the actors will conceal the transmitters about their person, possibly in pockets (which the V75 manual says to avoid). I am very nervous about experiencing dropout during a show, which I have rarely encountered with the licensed UHF mics I regularly use.

 

Is either the XD-V55 or the XD-V75 more immune to this than the other?

 

Aside from the rack-mounting option and display screen, are there any other factors to recommend one above the other?

 

Any advice would be very much appreciated... thanks!

 

[Sheriton]

I regularly use up to ten V75 units for musical theatre without any problems so it's certainly possible.

 

Your concerns about line of sight are very valid. I would never recommend running any radio receivers with built-in antennae at table top height - human bodies are very good at blocking radio signals, particularly as the frequencies get higher. If you get your antennae high up in the air with a clear "view" of the stage, they'll be much more reliable. I use the P180 paddles up above head height which are great for this but may not fit in your budget. The antennae loop through outputs on the V75 are also useful as you can daisy chain several receivers from one pair of antennae. Having a cluster of several receiving antennae very close to each other is bad practice so best avoided.

 

RF2 mode is of no use except in very specific circumstances; as the V55 only offers 12 channels, I assume they're fixed in RF1 so that aspect should be fine.

 

[soundman71]

Thank you very much for your insight, Sheriton. My existing antennas are always above audience head height, about 100 feet from the stage, as would the V75s be. I was more concerned about the beltpacks' antennas being smothered by actors' bodies, but if you're using them for the same application as me then I assume that this should be fine?

[Sheriton]

Bear in mind that you'll have hundreds of mobile phones between stage and receivers, all transmitting wifi and bluetooth in the same band as your L6 mics. I would put the recievers side of stage if you possibly can. They'll almost certainly work fine out front in an empty house but once the audience is in, it may be a different story and there's no way of testing them in those conditions without an audience.

The lack of remote monitoring is my only significant frustration with these mics; I'm not usually working with a sound no. 2 who can keep an eye on the receivers.

 

[soundman71]

Makes good sense. You haven't mentioned that you've had any problems with low RF due to TX antennas being masked by actors' bodies, so I guess that's not been an issue?

 

Thanks again for your help.

 

Stop press

I've just ordered two units, arriving tomorrow!

[Sheriton]

18 hours ago, soundman71 said:

You haven't mentioned that you've had any problems with low RF due to TX antennas being masked by actors' bodies, so I guess that's not been an issue?

 

Getting the receiver antennae up high is part & parcel of making sure that's not an issue.

I've seen signal strength vary a bit if an actor is tightly surrounded by others but nothing show stopping. Preventing the TX antenna contacting bare skin is, I believe, a good idea although costume practicalities can get in the way of that. The L6 TX antenna is just a bare wire inside that dome so it's perhaps less of an issue than those packs that utilise an external flexible wire antenna.

[soundman71]

Thanks. They seemed to behave well from on high at the side of the stage at technical rehearsal last night. A couple of questions occurred to me though.

 

1. You said earlier that RF1 mode was the mode to use. The kit came in RF2 mode by default and worked fine (without an audience). Should I be changing it to RF1 mode?

 

As a rider to this, most unusually, one of my UHF mics occasionally dropped out. Coincidence or related?

 

2. Is it possible to adjust the beltpack gain? It was fine last night, but I can imagine that with some of the bigger voices I deal with there might be overload issues?

 

 

[Sheriton]

1. I would always recommend RF1 over RF2. It's more robust; you won't notice the difference in a quiet RF environment, but once you have an audience full of mobile phones in, the extra security it offers will be very useful. It uses four frequencies to transmit duplicated data whereas RF2 only uses two so it's a lot more resilient to interference.

 

1.5. It's unlikely that your UHF troubles are directly related. You're not leaving a L6 transmitter right next to your UHF receivers / antennae are you? Or clustering all of your receiving antennae very close to each other?

 

2. There's no gain adjustment but the headroom is enormous. I've never managed to make one clip. Some mics are more sensitive than others so it's technically possible that a real screamer eating the mic might cause a problem but I doubt it. The receiver outputs are set to roughly the same level as an equivalent wired mic output so as long as you treat the mic preamp gain the same as you would with any other mic, you should be fine.

 

[soundman71]

Great advice, thank you again.

 

I will switch to RF1 then (I wonder why RF2 is default??).

 

No, UHF/L6 receivers are separate, and transmitters are all on stage. It turns out the actress in question was wearing her beltpack under a tight corset, thus pressing the antenna into her skin (and the corset possibly containing wires?). I separated the antenna from her body by using a neoprene pouch and the problem seems to have been resolved, RF is stronger.