Cheap wireless director's feed

Noiz2 said:
Just had a 24hr bug that took me out, slept for about 30 hrs straight!

Airborne, double doses has worked well for me.
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Wish this was a 24hr bug. Actual influenza, they did a smear test. I asked why I was paying him for Flu Vaccine if I still got the flu. He said the vaccine was working, otherwise I would be in the hospital instead of walking around. Anyway, 7 days now and it looks like at least another couple of days, call it a 240hr bug? Miserable!

On the positive side of things, I now have a shipping number for the replacement from Monoprice...
 
For those interested, got my two kits yesterday in the mail. I can't believe what I got for the money I spent. Initial tests confirmed the delay in audio but no big deal for those using the systems as communications between crew, might be an issue with clients however but not what I need them to do. Must say the quality of the transmission was pretty damn good when I swapped out for one of my other lavs. And should it ever become necessary to use them for that syncing would be simple with all the software tools out there.
So though they will probably get used rarely, glad I bought them.
 
Well, I finally got them. No AAA batteries in the apartment so can not test them.

How come no one mentioned that these are transceivers (2-way, you only need one set to talk back an forth)?

It is going to take some testing to find out just what you can do with them, because the instructions, for all intents and purposes, are nonexistent.
 
Someone must have mentioned it because I had this understanding before I ordered it. It mentions this in the title of the product. 2.4GHz Wireless Lavalier Microphone System with Hip Clips Camera Shoe Mount and 2 earbuds for 2-way com.

Hats off to Batutta. This is the find of the year so far.
 
graywolf said:
Thanks, Scott.

Actually I can not even get them to talk to me. That is the kind of customer service they have.

I saw that they have knocked the price down to $7.99 now. They must have a heck of a lot of them they can not sell.

It is my fault, I should have checked resellerratings. 2-stars WOW!
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When the price is that low then it is zero surprise they've got zero margin spare to spend on effective customer service.
 
It's 2.5gHz so probably about the same as the other 2.4gHz sets. I think people got 4 ish with out issues but that also probably depends on how crowded the 2.4gHz is in your area.
 
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Thought I would post my initial test with the Monoprice wireless. Just a "do they work test", I have not gotten around to checking them out with the camcorders or the Zoom F4.

Plugged into the Line In on my laptop, very low sound. Plugged into the Mic In they sounded okay. So apparently mic level outputs on these things. Which makes sense as they seem to be designed to work with digital cameras rather than pro-camcorders. I do have 1/8" to 1/4" adapters and 1/4" to XLR adapters, so should be able to use them with the mic inputs on both the recorder and the camcorders. I kind of hate using more than one adaptor though.

I am finally over the flu and the secondary infection, but energy is not up to its usual low level yet. Real soon now, I hope to do a real test of these things.
 
Well, double adapters do not work too well. If I jiggle them around I can get a connection, but otherwise not. Certainly not reliable.

Not enough output on the monoprice to use as line in, despite the jack being labled line out. When I get a decent connection throught the adapters it works okay as mic in. I suppose I need a couple of mini-TRS plug to XLR plug cables. Sigh!
 
? My test was on a DR40. I bought awhile ago some 1/8" ts to XLR cables so that part was simple. Didn't have any big hurtles. The output (compared to Lectrosonics UCR100) was lower but not unusably lower. It's $10 a channel , including the mic! You could spend more on a Starburns whatever and a cookie. It's functional at less than the price of a "good" cigar so...

I'm not giving it a big recommendation but as long as you understand the limitations it's pretty incredible that it does what it does at the $ they are charging.
 
I am not complaining, Scott. Just reporting for anyone interested.

A Starbucks only cost's me a quarter. I bought one of those 25-cent refill cups 25 years ago and still have it (GRIN).
 
Well that paid for itself!

BTW the adapter cables I have are TS -> XLR. The danger with using a TRS to XLR is that they may have all the pins connected to the TRS plug and in that case you are going to get a really low output because the hot and cold will be in phase as opposed to 180 out of phase as they should be and will cancel out.

Oh and correcting myself a bit I was going in to the DR40 Mic. I think I implied I was going in line.
 
I think you are thinking of stereo, there, Scott. I believe the connection here is mono.

The provided cable is TRS to TRS, so TRS to XLR should be correct. Correct?
 
A unbalanced 3.5mm TRS (stereo) to XLR adapter cable would need to be custom wired. I'm not aware of an off-the-shelf cable).
 
graywolf said:
I think you are thinking of stereo, there, Scott. I believe the connection here is mono.

The provided cable is TRS to TRS, so TRS to XLR should be correct. Correct?
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The TRS 1/8" out is sending the same mono signal on the T and the R. If you are going to a consumer recorder with a 1/8" TRS input that is fine, you will get dual mono.

But if you go to an XLR mic input then the recorder is expecting a balanced mic signal and that would have pins 2 & 3 having the same mono signal BUT 180 degrees out of phase. The input stage flips one and mixes them together to get the mono signal (that is why you get less noise on longer runs and RF heavy environments).

If you feed a consumer TRS one to one to an XLR mic connection the flipping will put your dual mono out of phase and mix them. If the consumer output was perfect then you will get complete cancelation and no signal. Generally they are not perfect matches and you get some low level of signal.

A 1/8" TS to XLR solves this because you are grounding out the R connection and should be shorting pin 3 & 1 with your hot signal on pin 2.

You could also go through a matching transformer to convert. In that case it would still be a TS connector but the XLR would be balanced, but it adds bulk and I don't think you would get much/any benifit in this case.
 
A 1/8" TS to male XLR cable is a rare bird. Only a few listed.

Some 1/8" TRS to male XLR cables are specifically listed as "balanced" (AT has one, for instance, $22 though). Others are not, but several say they are for mono TRS to XLR. Furthermore, usually, you can open the XLR plug and rewire if necessary. A mono TRS should have T & R for balanced signal and S for ground. However, there are cables that are listed specifically for Stereo Microphones and those would be a problem. I am going to guess the cheap ones fall into that category even if it does not say so.

That leaves me wondering if I want to spend $20+ for a cable for a $10 wireless mic? Maybe the thing to do is order a couple of the $3 ones from China and see if they are going to work, or not. (The TS to male XLR seem to be about $12 each.)
 
You don't want "balanced" they are for things that have a balanced 1/8" TRS jack.
B&H $8

You could get one of the "balanced" ones and open the XLR connector and solder a jumper between pins 1 & 3. That will short it to ground and leave pin 2 hot (which is what you want 99% of the time). Some old gear from the east coast will want pin 3 hot, pretty rare to see these days though.

BTW if you do that mod to the "balanced" cable be sure to label it that way ;~). Can't tell you the number of hours I have wasted troubleshooting because some cable I converted for a special purpose in my youth and then didn't label ended being used for something it shouldn't have.
 
"I have wasted troubleshooting because some cable I converted for a special purpose in my youth and then didn't label ended being used for something it shouldn't have"
- I hear ya Scott, I have/had a lots of 'specialty cables' I built and/or modded over the years. I started to labeling them about two years ago due to the sheer confusion.
 
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