Thanks for this! So my question would be, if I have the 1/2 wave antennas for a wireless mic, and a passive omni-directional antenna for my in ears, would the same thing apply? Also, should I look into getting a directional antenna for my in ears? Or even possibly going back to a 1/2 wave for in ears as well? My drummer currently uses wireless since him and another band mate switch off between drums and bass. So its easier for them to both be wireless instead of switching during the set.
Hey Jeremy, Great question! To answer the first part, kind of, the main thing is to isolate the receiver’s antennas as much as possible from “high power” signals especially if they are in band. In the example in the video, the uni-directional transmitting antenna’s directivity essentially attenuates the power into the receive antennas due to the receive antennas being placed in the transmitting antennas null. In addition to attenuation from directionality, the physical space between the two antennas introduces more attenuation due to freespace path loss and achieves the isolation needed to keep the receive antenna clear of high power from the transmit antenna. Since all antennas in your case are omni-directional, and you cannot use directivity of the antennas to help isolate the high power signals, you are going to be banking on physical space for attenuation via free space pathloss to isolate the receive antennas from the transmit antenna. And there is nothing wrong with this. In this case, where the antennas are in reference to each other, such as in front of or behind one another, becomes irrelevant since the antennas are omin-directional. You would just need more space between the antennas to get more free space path loss, which gives you more attenuation to help isolate the antennas. How much space depends on the gear and the frequency ranges. Good quality gear with the receiver’s frequency bands different from the transmitter’s frequency bands will have good isolation due to filtering, and in this case you can probably get the units relatively close together even with all units using ½ wave antennas. However, lesser quality gear in the same frequency band can be challenging and you would need a good bit of separation to keep the receiver happy. You could also apply your own filtering, change the TX antenna to a directional antenna or apply in line attenuation. The latter option being the lesser solution due to the inline attenuation also attenuating the signals you want to receive. Now for the second part of your question, do you need a directional antenna? Well, are you having any RF issues? If so, maybe. If you aren’t having any RF issues and are thinking about a directional antenna just because of the video I would say don’t do it. Teaching best practice sometimes leads to examples that live in a “perfect world” type scenario. In the real world not everyone has the budget or need for the antennas depicted in the video and many people may not be operating these types of antennas such as yourself. So If you have RF issues, what are your issues? Let’s figure it out and see if you do need a directional antenna for transmit! Take care!
@@stephenpavlik811 Thanks for the response! I haven't had any issues with interference, just trying to be cautious! My in ears are Sennheiser G4, and my wireless mics are 1 Sennheiser G3 and 1 G4. Never had an issue but wanted to be safe!
Hey Jeremy, sorry for the late reply. That's great that you aren't having issues. And since you are not, I wouldn't change a thing. In the event something does come up, just remember that with all omni-directional antennas, physical space between antennas will be your friend!@@JeremyLeech
I use the Sennheiser ewG4 IEM system with the Sennheiser A1031-U, passive, Omni directional antenna on my transmitter. (518.2MHz). Can you please tell me the proper way to mount this antenna? I can't find any documentation from Sennheiser other than you simply 'mount this vertically on a microphone stand but I see all the other shark fin antennas (Shure/Lectrsonics) are mounted so they point at the target receiver (?) Thanks for your help.
hi! we operate in a church campus, so we setup and strike down weekly. I didnt quite understand how to keep the Receivers stacked, without getting signal drops. You mentioned antenna about antenna splitters. how does that work? thank you
The easy solution is to unstack them and move them away from each other. Otherwise, yes, you can buy an antenna splitter. It will accept your two antennas as input, then it will duplicate that antenna signal with four or five outputs that you can connect to each of your receivers.
As always very good topic and thanks for this video.My question maybe not related too much this topic so question is I have sennheise ew 100g3 and the rear of reaciver has a data connection what is the data connection?
Thanks for this, very good information for a beginner. I have a question currently. I need to get some short aerials for a sennheiser receiver. Am I right in getting longer 1/2 wave aerials, as opposed to the stock 1/4 wave aerials? Thanks, Andrew- Sydney
@@nathanlively thank you, I really appreciate the response. I was under the impression that with regards to aerials, bigger is better. I’ve heard of people using shure 1/2 wave aerials on the sennheiser g3 receivers, as long as they were ‘tuned’ (insert correct word here) to the correct frequency range. 🤷♂️
@@andrewp1513 Hey Andrew, So bigger isn't necessarily better. The antenna size does relate directly the the wavelength of the frequency range of interest. This is what Nathan is referring to with sticking to a specific length. But antennas are brand agnostic, So you can definitely use a shure 1/2 wave antenna with a sennheiser receiver as long as the frequency range is correct. And yes, you could say as long as they were tuned to the correct frequency range. The big advantage of a 1/2 wave whip antenna over a 1/4 wave one is that you do not need a counterpoise. Which means that you could put the 1/2 wave whip anywhere. You could mount it up high on a wall or on a mic stand etc. With the 1/4 wave whip antenna you have to have a ground plane (the chassis of the receiver or some other decent size conductive surface). Both the 1/2 wave and 1/4 wave whip antennas will act similarly when mounted directly to the back of a receiver. The dipole (1/2 wave whip) might be a little more efficient but it's most likely not going to be noticeable. Hope this helps!
@@stephenpavlik811 thanks so much Stephen. That helps greatly. The way I’ll be using the aerials is primarily on the back of the receiver to service the presenter/crowd mic. It’s great to know that the 1/2 wave and 1/4 wave behave more or less the same way in that situation. I’ll stick with the stock 1/4 wave. Cheaper and easier to store. I’ll have a wired mic as backup if I need. Thanks so much for your help. Actually, while I’ve got you here, my main concern is with my primary receiver for the main presenter, who will have a g3 300 beltpack tx on her back. I’ll be stationed in front of her, but I’m wondering about the position of her aerials- I have two sennheiser 1031 Omni fins into a g3 500 series Rx. I was thinking of placing them next to the audio speakers, which would be slightly in front of her and to either side. Would it be preferable to get them behind her, or would I likely be ok with them in front her in my station, in small to medium spaces. I imagine that last option would be asking for trouble due to bad fundamentals, right? It’s all theoretical to me right now, I’m new to live sound, but I really don’t want to learn the hard way if I can help it. I’m a nurse but my fiancée is starting a career as an author and keynote speaker, and I’d like to be ready for anything. No rush, but I appreciate any advice you have. Thanks a lot Stephen. Cheers, Andrew- Sydney
@@andrewp1513 Hey Andrew, congrats to you and your wife on two new journeys! So in a perfect world we would always have an unobstructed line of sight path from the beltpack antenna to the receivers antenna. And that would be good fundamentals, but with environmental constrictions and moving targets this often doesn't happen. In short, I think you'll be fine with what you have described. With the 1031 next to the speaker, the antenna will receive reflections and an attenuated direct signal due to body loss depending on the orientation of the pack in relation to both antennas. Two things I will say: 1. Make sure the 1031 is not too close to the speaker (or any other object) or the antenna will interact with the speaker and change the tuning and pattern. You would be safe with 6" to 1' This again is good fundamentals, If you can't achieve this spacing its more of subtraction of points on a score rather than a catastrophic failure. 2. A Large part of the RF game is managing loss. The only reason I bring this up is because of cable loss between the antenna and receiver as well as the previously mentioned body loss. Placing your two antennas on either side of the speaker is a great idea, as long as the accumulative loss is not enough to cause problems. Which in your situation I still don't think it will be a problem as long as your cable's are not a substantially long length and or poor quality. But either way the best thing you can do is set the system up and test it! once your receivers and antenna are in place take the body pack to where the speaker will be and make sure you have signal. Grab the antenna on the body pack and fully enclose it into your hand or cover it between your body and your hand. Try to create the absolute worse case scenario where the beltpack antenna is fully blocked and cannot see the receivers antennas, and if you still have signal, then you will be fine with whatever the speaker can do to the body pack (as far as loss is concerned).
I had a problem where one of my IEM Transmitter had the same frequencies as my SLXD receiver and they would both cancel out each.. It took me weeks to fix the problem 😅😅😅
hey guys question... should i have receivers and transmitters close together? also i bought a glxd+ and its causing me a lot of trouble finding a stable frequency or channel. any suggestions. That glxd+ is close to other receivers...and one tx.
Hey Gabriel, I'll ask Stephen to comment here, but one thing I learned in his course is that the biggest challenge in the signal chain is the area in between the transmitter and the receiver. I used to set up my receivers are FOH and had plenty of problems and dropouts. Now I always set them up near the stage and many of those problems went away.
Hey Gabriel, good question. For the receivers and transmitters spacing, do you mean different receivers and transmitters that are racked together? If so, are they connected through distribution/combiners or do they have whip antennas connected directly to each receiver? For the GLXD, that's tricky physically separating it from the TX will definitely help. GLXD is a more "cost friendly" line and doesn't have the same filtering as higher end wireless devices, so physical separation can definitely help. the other issue is that it utilizes the 2.4 GHz range which can be heavily congested. There are also different propagation characteristics at 2.4 GHz rather than UHF. A directional antenna such as a 2.4 GHz LPDA could help.
@@stephenpavlik811 yes i had to desperate the GLX from other receivers and the transmitter (wireless monitors) and that helped it. I also had to manually change the group and channel for the receiver to find a clean signal. Thank you.
If I was using paddles for IEM transmitters instead of helical domes and paddles for mic receivers would the placement diagram of the microphone tx shooting into the IEM rx still apply?
Great question! So the main thing the diagram is trying to show is that generally we don't want high power IEM transmit signals being sent directly to an antenna connected to a receiver that is looking for extremely low level signals. However there is an exception but it really depends on the "net gain". For this we need to know the forward gain and front to back ratio F/B (or rear rejection) of both antennas. For instance, excluding free space path loss and cable loss. If we have a professional wireless systems 8089 which has about 10 dBi of forward gain and a F/B of 12dB firing directly into a sennheiser a2003 which has 4 dBi of forward gain and greater than or equal to 14 dB F/B with an IEM transmitter operating at 10 mW or 10 dBm we would get something like this. 10+10-14 = 6 dBm of the IEM transmitters signal into the receive antenna. That's a lot! the receiver is looking for signals as low as -90 dBm! Now lets look at this the other way If the 8089 was in front of the a2003 we would subtract the rear rejection from the transmitter gain then add the a2003's forward gain which would look something like this. 10 - 12 + 4 = 2 dBm at the receive antenna. That's still a lot of the IEM transmit signal into the receiver antenna but it is the lesser of two evils. Again this didn't take into account free space path loss which will decrease the amount of IEM signal into the receive antenna with further separation (in either configuration). So if you have two identical antennas, you could pull this off but you might need to separate the two paddles farther to get more isolation. And so that is what I mean when I say firing antennas into each other (if unavoidable) really depends on the net gain. And all antennas are different. for instance the professional wireless systems LPDA (paddle) has a F/B of 35 dB which can become very helpful when firing antennas into each other. I hope this helps!
Thanks for this! So my question would be, if I have the 1/2 wave antennas for a wireless mic, and a passive omni-directional antenna for my in ears, would the same thing apply? Also, should I look into getting a directional antenna for my in ears? Or even possibly going back to a 1/2 wave for in ears as well? My drummer currently uses wireless since him and another band mate switch off between drums and bass. So its easier for them to both be wireless instead of switching during the set.
Hey Jeremy, Great question! To answer the first part, kind of, the main thing is to isolate the receiver’s antennas as much as possible from “high power” signals especially if they are in band. In the example in the video, the uni-directional transmitting antenna’s directivity essentially attenuates the power into the receive antennas due to the receive antennas being placed in the transmitting antennas null. In addition to attenuation from directionality, the physical space between the two antennas introduces more attenuation due to freespace path loss and achieves the isolation needed to keep the receive antenna clear of high power from the transmit antenna. Since all antennas in your case are omni-directional, and you cannot use directivity of the antennas to help isolate the high power signals, you are going to be banking on physical space for attenuation via free space pathloss to isolate the receive antennas from the transmit antenna. And there is nothing wrong with this. In this case, where the antennas are in reference to each other, such as in front of or behind one another, becomes irrelevant since the antennas are omin-directional. You would just need more space between the antennas to get more free space path loss, which gives you more attenuation to help isolate the antennas. How much space depends on the gear and the frequency ranges. Good quality gear with the receiver’s frequency bands different from the transmitter’s frequency bands will have good isolation due to filtering, and in this case you can probably get the units relatively close together even with all units using ½ wave antennas. However, lesser quality gear in the same frequency band can be challenging and you would need a good bit of separation to keep the receiver happy. You could also apply your own filtering, change the TX antenna to a directional antenna or apply in line attenuation. The latter option being the lesser solution due to the inline attenuation also attenuating the signals you want to receive. Now for the second part of your question, do you need a directional antenna? Well, are you having any RF issues? If so, maybe. If you aren’t having any RF issues and are thinking about a directional antenna just because of the video I would say don’t do it. Teaching best practice sometimes leads to examples that live in a “perfect world” type scenario. In the real world not everyone has the budget or need for the antennas depicted in the video and many people may not be operating these types of antennas such as yourself. So If you have RF issues, what are your issues? Let’s figure it out and see if you do need a directional antenna for transmit! Take care!
@@stephenpavlik811 Thanks for the response! I haven't had any issues with interference, just trying to be cautious! My in ears are Sennheiser G4, and my wireless mics are 1 Sennheiser G3 and 1 G4. Never had an issue but wanted to be safe!
Hey Jeremy, sorry for the late reply. That's great that you aren't having issues. And since you are not, I wouldn't change a thing. In the event something does come up, just remember that with all omni-directional antennas, physical space between antennas will be your friend!@@JeremyLeech
I use the Sennheiser ewG4 IEM system with the Sennheiser A1031-U, passive, Omni directional antenna on my transmitter. (518.2MHz). Can you please tell me the proper way to mount this antenna? I can't find any documentation from Sennheiser other than you simply 'mount this vertically on a microphone stand but I see all the other shark fin antennas (Shure/Lectrsonics) are mounted so they point at the target receiver (?) Thanks for your help.
hi! we operate in a church campus, so we setup and strike down weekly. I didnt quite understand how to keep the Receivers stacked, without getting signal drops. You mentioned antenna about antenna splitters. how does that work? thank you
The easy solution is to unstack them and move them away from each other. Otherwise, yes, you can buy an antenna splitter. It will accept your two antennas as input, then it will duplicate that antenna signal with four or five outputs that you can connect to each of your receivers.
As always very good topic and thanks for this video.My question maybe not related too much this topic so question is I have sennheise ew 100g3 and the rear of reaciver has a data connection what is the data connection?
That is for using the Sennheiser frequency coordination software.
thanks for sharing such information that is important in our filed of audio...
Thanks for this, very good information for a beginner. I have a question currently. I need to get some short aerials for a sennheiser receiver. Am I right in getting longer 1/2 wave aerials, as opposed to the stock 1/4 wave aerials? Thanks, Andrew- Sydney
I'll ask Stephen, but I believe you need to stick with the specific length for the frequency you want to receive.
@@nathanlively thank you, I really appreciate the response. I was under the impression that with regards to aerials, bigger is better. I’ve heard of people using shure 1/2 wave aerials on the sennheiser g3 receivers, as long as they were ‘tuned’ (insert correct word here) to the correct frequency range. 🤷♂️
@@andrewp1513 Hey Andrew, So bigger isn't necessarily better. The antenna size does relate directly the the wavelength of the frequency range of interest. This is what Nathan is referring to with sticking to a specific length. But antennas are brand agnostic, So you can definitely use a shure 1/2 wave antenna with a sennheiser receiver as long as the frequency range is correct. And yes, you could say as long as they were tuned to the correct frequency range. The big advantage of a 1/2 wave whip antenna over a 1/4 wave one is that you do not need a counterpoise. Which means that you could put the 1/2 wave whip anywhere. You could mount it up high on a wall or on a mic stand etc. With the 1/4 wave whip antenna you have to have a ground plane (the chassis of the receiver or some other decent size conductive surface). Both the 1/2 wave and 1/4 wave whip antennas will act similarly when mounted directly to the back of a receiver. The dipole (1/2 wave whip) might be a little more efficient but it's most likely not going to be noticeable. Hope this helps!
@@stephenpavlik811 thanks so much Stephen. That helps greatly. The way I’ll be using the aerials is primarily on the back of the receiver to service the presenter/crowd mic. It’s great to know that the 1/2 wave and 1/4 wave behave more or less the same way in that situation. I’ll stick with the stock 1/4 wave. Cheaper and easier to store. I’ll have a wired mic as backup if I need. Thanks so much for your help. Actually, while I’ve got you here, my main concern is with my primary receiver for the main presenter, who will have a g3 300 beltpack tx on her back. I’ll be stationed in front of her, but I’m wondering about the position of her aerials- I have two sennheiser 1031 Omni fins into a g3 500 series Rx. I was thinking of placing them next to the audio speakers, which would be slightly in front of her and to either side. Would it be preferable to get them behind her, or would I likely be ok with them in front her in my station, in small to medium spaces. I imagine that last option would be asking for trouble due to bad fundamentals, right? It’s all theoretical to me right now, I’m new to live sound, but I really don’t want to learn the hard way if I can help it. I’m a nurse but my fiancée is starting a career as an author and keynote speaker, and I’d like to be ready for anything. No rush, but I appreciate any advice you have. Thanks a lot Stephen. Cheers, Andrew- Sydney
@@andrewp1513 Hey Andrew, congrats to you and your wife on two new journeys! So in a perfect world we would always have an unobstructed line of sight path from the beltpack antenna to the receivers antenna. And that would be good fundamentals, but with environmental constrictions and moving targets this often doesn't happen. In short, I think you'll be fine with what you have described. With the 1031 next to the speaker, the antenna will receive reflections and an attenuated direct signal due to body loss depending on the orientation of the pack in relation to both antennas. Two things I will say: 1. Make sure the 1031 is not too close to the speaker (or any other object) or the antenna will interact with the speaker and change the tuning and pattern. You would be safe with 6" to 1' This again is good fundamentals, If you can't achieve this spacing its more of subtraction of points on a score rather than a catastrophic failure. 2. A Large part of the RF game is managing loss. The only reason I bring this up is because of cable loss between the antenna and receiver as well as the previously mentioned body loss. Placing your two antennas on either side of the speaker is a great idea, as long as the accumulative loss is not enough to cause problems. Which in your situation I still don't think it will be a problem as long as your cable's are not a substantially long length and or poor quality. But either way the best thing you can do is set the system up and test it! once your receivers and antenna are in place take the body pack to where the speaker will be and make sure you have signal. Grab the antenna on the body pack and fully enclose it into your hand or cover it between your body and your hand. Try to create the absolute worse case scenario where the beltpack antenna is fully blocked and cannot see the receivers antennas, and if you still have signal, then you will be fine with whatever the speaker can do to the body pack (as far as loss is concerned).
I had a problem where one of my IEM Transmitter had the same frequencies as my SLXD receiver and they would both cancel out each.. It took me weeks to fix the problem 😅😅😅
hey guys question... should i have receivers and transmitters close together? also i bought a glxd+ and its causing me a lot of trouble finding a stable frequency or channel. any suggestions. That glxd+ is close to other receivers...and one tx.
Hey Gabriel, I'll ask Stephen to comment here, but one thing I learned in his course is that the biggest challenge in the signal chain is the area in between the transmitter and the receiver. I used to set up my receivers are FOH and had plenty of problems and dropouts. Now I always set them up near the stage and many of those problems went away.
Hey Gabriel, good question. For the receivers and transmitters spacing, do you mean different receivers and transmitters that are racked together? If so, are they connected through distribution/combiners or do they have whip antennas connected directly to each receiver? For the GLXD, that's tricky physically separating it from the TX will definitely help. GLXD is a more "cost friendly" line and doesn't have the same filtering as higher end wireless devices, so physical separation can definitely help. the other issue is that it utilizes the 2.4 GHz range which can be heavily congested. There are also different propagation characteristics at 2.4 GHz rather than UHF. A directional antenna such as a 2.4 GHz LPDA could help.
@@stephenpavlik811 yes i had to desperate the GLX from other receivers and the transmitter (wireless monitors) and that helped it. I also had to manually change the group and channel for the receiver to find a clean signal. Thank you.
If I was using paddles for IEM transmitters instead of helical domes and paddles for mic receivers would the placement diagram of the microphone tx shooting into the IEM rx still apply?
Let's ask Stephen!
Great question! So the main thing the diagram is trying to show is that generally we don't want high power IEM transmit signals being sent directly to an antenna connected to a receiver that is looking for extremely low level signals. However there is an exception but it really depends on the "net gain". For this we need to know the forward gain and front to back ratio F/B (or rear rejection) of both antennas. For instance, excluding free space path loss and cable loss. If we have a professional wireless systems 8089 which has about 10 dBi of forward gain and a F/B of 12dB firing directly into a sennheiser a2003 which has 4 dBi of forward gain and greater than or equal to 14 dB F/B with an IEM transmitter operating at 10 mW or 10 dBm we would get something like this. 10+10-14 = 6 dBm of the IEM transmitters signal into the receive antenna. That's a lot! the receiver is looking for signals as low as -90 dBm! Now lets look at this the other way If the 8089 was in front of the a2003 we would subtract the rear rejection from the transmitter gain then add the a2003's forward gain which would look something like this. 10 - 12 + 4 = 2 dBm at the receive antenna. That's still a lot of the IEM transmit signal into the receiver antenna but it is the lesser of two evils. Again this didn't take into account free space path loss which will decrease the amount of IEM signal into the receive antenna with further separation (in either configuration). So if you have two identical antennas, you could pull this off but you might need to separate the two paddles farther to get more isolation. And so that is what I mean when I say firing antennas into each other (if unavoidable) really depends on the net gain. And all antennas are different. for instance the professional wireless systems LPDA (paddle) has a F/B of 35 dB which can become very helpful when firing antennas into each other. I hope this helps!
Great!