Very low latency Bluetooth transmitter/IEM Headphones

monkey42

Long story short

our female singer wants to move across to IEM for on stage. Her limitations is how to mount her transmitter and wired headphones when wearing a dress.

an ideal situation would be to have a wireless headphone/bud and use a Bluetooth transmitter plugged into the receiver. I had a cheap transmitter lying around and it does work but for one thing….latency

so my question is: is there such a thing as little to no latency to make this work

otherwise it’s how to best mount a transmitter without being noticeable or cumbersome

thanks in advance

shufflebeat

Bluetooth won’t do it but lots of small/light options exist, including:

https://www.inta-audio.com/nux-b-7psm-personal-monitoring-system-5-8ghz-p18326

My mate has one and I’m planning to borrow it next week to compare with my Xvive u4.

The Nux is light and would clip onto a shirt/jacket lapel, hang on a lanyard or the edge of a pocket.

Dresses often have belts as well.

(…ahem, so I believe).

mike257

As you've rightly assumed, Bluetooth won't do it. 

Your Taylor Swifts and Beyonces of the world are all wearing standard IEM belt packs with wired earphones in their costumes. Likewise, West End and Broadway casts are wearing lavalier or head mics wired to belt pack transmitters, so it's something that people are managing to deal with - she's possibly overthinking the solution here. 

I've mounted belt packs to the inside of dresses, to undergarments, have had artists wear a strap with a small pouch to hold their pack under their costume, or simply augment their costume with a belt or similar accessory that provides a mounting point for the pack. She just needs to think about where it can realistically go on what she's wearing. Tucking the pack on the inside of the dress and the belt clip on the outside also makes for a more snug fit without the pack starting to flap about when she's dancing etc. 

As for the wires - I'd usually use surgical tape to secure IEM/mic cables down the back of the neck. Excess cable can be gently wrapped and taped/tied and tucked away inside a costume to stop it flapping around. 

shufflebeat

Borrowed the NUX IEM and tried it last night - excellent piece of kit.

The receiver is minuscule and would easily clip onto a decorative upper-arm bracelet or “jogger” style armband. In a worst case scenario she might give the impression she’s carrying ten B&H like a Geordie bricklayer, but probably not. Cable could go up her sleeve and out to the back of her neck.

It should be noted that the NUX is designed to plug into a headphone socket but if you’ve got one you’re not using on your mixer and you “solo” her aux send then it should work fine. For an overall stereo view of the out front mix just “un-solo” the aux.

p90fool

We have a similar issue with our female singer. On two occasions she's handed me her IEM transmitter which has "stopped working" after the soundcheck and on both occasions she's admitted that it's wet because it fell down the bog. 

She uses a belt these days. 

Musicwolf

shufflebeat said:

Borrowed the NUX IEM and tried it last night - excellent piece of kit.

@shufflebeat ; How was it for noise?  I've seen some very negative comments online re this, but I'd value the opinion of someone who I actually know, allbeit virtually.

shufflebeat

Musicwolf said:

shufflebeat said:

Borrowed the NUX IEM and tried it last night - excellent piece of kit.

@shufflebeat ; How was it for noise?  I've seen some very negative comments online re this, but I'd value the opinion of someone who I actually know, allbeit virtually.

I’ll be exploring it over the next few days and will report back.

On first listening it appeared no worse than my Xvive unit but provided more gain. I made a mental note at the time that gain-staging between aux send/mixer headphone output/NUX headphone output might have implications for background noise but will know more soon.

PolarityMan

We use the tbone ones and the packs are really light. I'd expect you could clip it to the back of a dress and that would be fine.