Rated 4.9 (112 reviews)
Wireless Mics & In-Ear Monitoring
Licensing, system choice and monitoring for UK stages.
Comparisons
Buying Guides
UK Rules & Licensing
About Wireless Mics & In-Ear Monitoring
Radio microphones and in-ear monitoring are the part of a PA system that fails in public. When a wireless channel drops out mid-sentence, everyone in the room knows. These guides deal with the two things that cause almost all of it: buying the wrong frequency band, and asking too much of the antennas.
Start with licensing, because in the UK it decides what you are allowed to switch on rather than what sounds best. Channel 38 runs under an Ofcom shared licence and is where most UK-band kit sits; Channel 70 is licence-exempt and free to use but shared with everyone else in the postcode; other bands need coordinated licences. A system bought abroad, or from a marketplace listing that does not state the band, may be illegal to operate here and impossible to sell on. The licensing guide sets out the current position, what a shared licence costs to hold and what happened to the 700 MHz band.
With the band settled, system choice comes down to how many channels you need at once and how much you can spend per channel. Analogue entry systems still do a perfectly good job for one or two channels in a function room. Digital systems buy you better spectral efficiency, encryption and rechargeable batteries, which start to matter around the four to six channel mark. The buying guide covers the tiers, and the two head-to-head comparisons, BLX against SLX-D+ and EW-D against SLX-D+, settle the questions we get asked most.
Past three or four systems, the antennas do more for reliability than the receivers do. Paddles in the right place, a distribution amplifier instead of a forest of whips, and coax chosen for loss rather than convenience will fix dropouts that no amount of money on receivers will. The antenna and RF distribution guide covers gain, diversity spacing, DC bias and the fault-finding order.
In-ears belong here too, because they share the spectrum and the coordination work. The in-ear monitor guide covers wired against wireless, moulded against universal fit, and what changes on stage when the wedges come down.
