Wireless Monitors over Wi-fi?

digitalscream · March 2018

Danny1969 said:

digitalscream said:

Danny1969 said:

Ah just had a good read ... it does need a digital source so unless you have a desk with a digital source out it's useless ....

"After you’ve connected your instruments to the digital audio source such as the soundboard at a venue, connect your laptop to the digital audio source"

All it can do is take the place of the IEM transmitter and receivers in as much as it can send the audio over wifi .... that's still a cool feature and could save bands money if the latency is low enough and the band have a digital desk already

No, you just use a USB interface into the laptop where the software's running - at least, that's my understanding from all their pretty pictures. It requires an aux send from all your gear, or an alternate mic system next to the house mics.

So you could have an analog desk with lets say ..... 12 aux sends which can feed an audio interface ( with 12 simultaneous inputs) or you could use mic splitters on every mic used and feed that into an audio interface ... Whichever way you look at it the software needs the audio on a TDM or ASIO stream before it can split the signal into individual mix's for the performers and send that over wifi.
It's interesting but needs a lot of gear to work, where a normal digital desk needs next to no external gear but does require individual IEM transmitters and receivers to work.

Yes, but for monitoring the average 5-piece band (for example), that doesn't need to be anywhere near as onerous.

Drums - kick, snare, overhead - easily mixed down to 1 with a cheap mixer
Guitar x 2 (mic or emulated)
Bass x 1 (usually DI)
Vocals x 3 (yeah, that'll have to come from the desk)

= 7 inputs

Get a Tascam US16x08 (£220), a cheap Behringer mixer (£40?), and a dual-band router (£30), job done for less than £300. That's a shitload cheaper than individual digital IEM gear times 5.

I really don't think the question is whether it's cheaper or do-able - that's a lock. It's really a question of whether it actually works reliably at usable latency levels, IMO.

BigMonka · March 2018

It seems to be designed for digital mixers, but instead of requiring a separate wireless transmitter for each mix it does it all over wifi. So I'll be using it with an A&H QU16 (as favoured by @Danny1969 ), then taking the USB out into my macbook (as it is Apple only at the moment) which is connected by ethernet cable to the router. I can then have "unlimited" individual monitor mixes for anyone with an iphone 6 or later.
But when it's released the pricing will be on a per-person basis, currently expected to be about $100/individual.

BigMonka · March 2018

digitalscream said:

BigMonka said:

The above posts are why I've signed up to the Beta ;-)
It really does sound too good to be true - which things normally are if they sound it, but having seen comments from other beta testers it seems like people are impressed.

I guess a couple of questions are:
- in a live gigging environment how low an audio quality are you willing to put up with?
- in the same live environment what level of latency becomes unusable?

Are you under NDA, and are there any details you can give us? I'm thinking...

- Is there a hardware component, or is it app-only?
- Is it iPhone-only, or does it include Android?

I'm guessing that details about latency etc are definitely going to be under NDA...

There is an NDA but I can still talk about most things.
To answer your questions
1) There's the main Soundcaster software than runs on a mac. This needs the audio for each channel, but that's fairly straight forward from a digital mixer, otherwise you'd need to be using an audio interface of some description
2) It is iphone at the moment, but they're hoping to get the windows version of the software and an android version of the app released later this year.

I don't have the facilities to measure latency, but as soon as I've tried it I can let you know if the latency is acceptable.

digitalscream · March 2018

BigMonka said:

digitalscream said:

BigMonka said:

The above posts are why I've signed up to the Beta ;-)
It really does sound too good to be true - which things normally are if they sound it, but having seen comments from other beta testers it seems like people are impressed.

I guess a couple of questions are:
- in a live gigging environment how low an audio quality are you willing to put up with?
- in the same live environment what level of latency becomes unusable?

Are you under NDA, and are there any details you can give us? I'm thinking...

- Is there a hardware component, or is it app-only?
- Is it iPhone-only, or does it include Android?

I'm guessing that details about latency etc are definitely going to be under NDA...

There is an NDA but I can still talk about most things.
To answer your questions
1) There's the main Soundcaster software than runs on a mac. This needs the audio for each channel, but that's fairly straight forward from a digital mixer, otherwise you'd need to be using an audio interface of some description
2) It is iphone at the moment, but they're hoping to get the windows version of the software and an android version of the app released later this year.

I don't have the facilities to measure latency, but as soon as I've tried it I can let you know if the latency is acceptable.

Thanks, dude

But...

BigMonka said:

But when it's released the pricing will be on a per-person basis, currently expected to be about $100/individual.

...that kills it dead for me. With all the other gear involved, it does put it pretty close to the cost of traditional IEM systems.

BigMonka · March 2018

digitalscream said:

BigMonka said:

But when it's released the pricing will be on a per-person basis, currently expected to be about $100/individual.

...that kills it dead for me. With all the other gear involved, it does put it pretty close to the cost of traditional IEM systems.

To be honest I had a similar thought! It is still cheaper and less to carry though (not including the cost of a macbook of course!!!)
A gear4music wireless system is about £70 per individual mix (would work out cheaper if people are willing to share a mix)
An LD system is about £175
A Shure system is closer to £500 per individual mix

So this audio fusion system is priced competitively at the bottom of the market. It could be a bargain if it provides a similar result to the mid to higher end wireless IEM system - but that's a massive IF at this moment.

digitalscream · March 2018

BigMonka said:

digitalscream said:

BigMonka said:

But when it's released the pricing will be on a per-person basis, currently expected to be about $100/individual.

...that kills it dead for me. With all the other gear involved, it does put it pretty close to the cost of traditional IEM systems.

To be honest I had a similar thought! It is still cheaper and less to carry though (not including the cost of a macbook of course!!!)

Therein lies the rub - would you risk running your monitoring system on a laptop that's not dedicated to that purpose?

bob21 · March 2018

BigMonka said:

I guess a couple of questions are:
- in a live gigging environment how low an audio quality are you willing to put up with?
- in the same live environment what level of latency becomes unusable?

As a monitor engineer who spends plenty of time serving up IEM mixes to bands..

1) 40hz-12khz, with minimum 40db of dynamic range (that is a reasonably large number to achieve - but a minimum standard) - most people will feel the mix is squashed with any less

2) we try and keep round trip below 5ms on IEM mixes.. most pro digital consoles are in the 2-4ms bracket (some need to be put into non-compensation modes for this) - and then we use analog wireless IEM to add no further latency. (if we are using digital wireless mics, we're talking 1ms or so for this)..
Most pro musos will feel more than 5ms, even if they can't hear or explain it. Towards 8-9ms it is pretty obvious. I can tell 5 and up every time,

Considering the hurdles big manufacturers in this industry are having making digital RF IEM systems that do this reliably, in a hardware box at £1000/channel price point... I seriously doubt this product can achieve the above..!!

My biggest issue regardless of sound quality and dynamic range is reliability.. Even if you use 5GHz, use a hidden SSID, etc etc... You are inviting hundreds of potentially hostile transceivers into your RF environment (everybody in the audience will have at least one WiFi device!).. A short dropout or significant packet loss when you're scrolling Facebook isn't really an issue.. But losing even .5 second of audio in an IEM is massively disorienting!

digitalscream · March 2018

bob21 said:

2) we try and keep round trip below 5ms on IEM mixes.. most pro digital consoles are in the 2-4ms bracket (some need to be put into non-compensation modes for this) - and then we use analog wireless IEM to add no further latency. (if we are using digital wireless mics, we're talking 1ms or so for this)..
Most pro musos will feel more than 5ms, even if they can't hear or explain it. Towards 8-9ms it is pretty obvious. I can tell 5 and up every time,

Interesting - I find I can't really play properly with less than 7-8ms of total latency, given that sound travels at roughly 1ft/ms and I'm always 5-6ft away from the amp and I have the converter latency in my Helix. Any less than that, and it feels way too immediate.

Then again, I'm guessing the rules are slightly different for vocalists.

bob21 · March 2018

I can see that - this is why a good ears mix has some effects to give it space (and stereo!) - I think if you just have dry-ish guitar served up, it could be a little uncomfortable - but once you mix it in with reverb etc, I can't say I've ever heard any complaints.. If you're on clicks, it's important to all be at the same time reference too..

Yes, there is a further issue at play with vocalists - occlusion - where you hear some of your vocal back physically because you have something stuffed in your ear.. If the latency is too high, you get a comb filter effect between the occluded sound and the IEM sound - which can ruin the sound of the vocal and make the singer very unhappy!

(same applies with effects though.. Rev (and sometimes even delay) in a stereo mix are a must for vocalists!)

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Wireless Monitors over Wi-fi?

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