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Any WISYCOM users?


soundtrane

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I see a lot of sound mixers / sound recordists admiring their wide tuning range but have yet to see them adopted as a main system in the UK. They are expensive - a single Wisycom channel is double the price of an SM transmitter and a VRT receive module so perhaps two channels on separate blocs are proving preferable to a single Wisycom?

Tim

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In Sweden, Wisycoms are the standard in rental eng-kits, and I work with them all the time. To keep it short, I'll say this: They sound great, have really good, stable reception and are built like little battletanks. They are small and very, very rugged. The only downside is the price. Well, like the Senator says, "you get what you pay for". And of caurse, "It all depends...".

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I had a chance to work with Wisycoms before with a British crew. The receiver is same size of Sra, which could slot in to those big broadcast cameras. Transmitter is like Sennheiser wireless 5000 series with LCD screen. Pretty cool looks, very good quality sounding. I guess it is just not that popular in US or Asia.

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Me and Rasmus were Bs on a reality show this summer that used wisycom rack receivers. Never heard any complaints from the As. On the other hand, the receivers were never moved from their location (outdoors but in a rack under a roof). And it was a very wet, pretty cold Swedish summer. They must've held up pretty well. There was something curious with them, but I can't remember what it was... Rasmus do you remember? Maybe we could ask Ludde to chime in...

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Me and Rasmus were Bs on a reality show this summer that used wisycom rack receivers. Never heard any complaints from the As. On the other hand, the receivers were never moved from their location (outdoors but in a rack under a roof). And it was a very wet, pretty cold Swedish summer. They must've held up pretty well. There was something curious with them, but I can't remember what it was... Rasmus do you remember? Maybe we could ask Ludde to chime in...

Nothing I remember off the top of my head. It might have slipped my mind, but I recall them working pretty flawlessly. Even surviving that small fire that erupted in the rack. Damp and rainy location + electronics is never a good idea :P.

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Try contacting raycom, they're the UK dealers, Pyers is on here from time to time.

I'm pleased with my mcr42, I use it with sennheiser tx

Yes me too - Sennheiser 2000's & MCR42 have stood up well to heavy use as camera hop, except slight concern with noticeable noise undercurrent on transmission of 1Khz tone, but not evident with dynamic material which sounds as good as a cable, except soprano choral voice slightly noisy, it's an MCR42 issue of some kind and not the compander emulation as it happens with MTP-40 as well. Same setup with Audio Ltd. and Microns transmits tone clean.

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We're not legally allowed to use more than 50mW without a site specific license in the UK (or EU?). Haven't found it a problem (yet).

I use Sennheiser SK50's and an SKP3000. I haven't sent tone over the wireless link (and encountered this problem)- I've also recorded a soprano with it, found the main problem was not overloading the TX.

Found an issue where I'd get noise really cranking up lower level signals, but turning the RX output up to +12dB seems to have sorted that.

I'm also not too keen on the 'right angle' antennae you get with the RX- they tend to come loose. I've seen different ones on them, so they may have changed them

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Worked with wisys for 6 months 50mW only, never any range problems. Never a problem actually, except for occasional intermods. At one time (there's a picture of it in View from the office thread) our host was on the other side of a lake, like a 100-150m across. Perfect signal. Could probably have gone on for another 100 meters. I'd like to point out though this was in the northern part of Sweden, so quite RF free. But still!

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We can choose frequencies ranging from 550MHz to 790MHz, but we are never sure that our choice is correct, depends on the region, on the city, the area or district of a city ...we never quite to work well with the wireless microphones, We don't have a politician who help us in this, we have only Berlusconi! ^_^

Richard, where you work?

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I know that you used the band of astronomers, in that band you never have problems right? 50 mw are comfortable.

Frequencies from 790 to 863MHz now use for 4G; there isn't a dedicated bandwidth but we worked fairly well! Now we can only enhance transmitters to get those 20-30 meters of hope!!

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When i coordinated, every Tx was pretty far spaced from each other. But I was using the mcr40, which is the single receiver without the display on. Might be that that receiver is not as shielded as the mcr42.. I experienced it in random locations but with the typical intermod symptoms; trannys leaking into eachother, weird scanning noises and other rf artifacts. Not much to do but to change the freq on the Tx...

I wish I could say "it happens when..." But it was just random. In six month time I would say it was a problem on 5 days total. So maybe I was exaggerating a bit..

But to answer your question; I think you might have some problems with that, but I can't say for sure.

Physically they are very small and lightweight so it doesn't surprise me that the shielding isn't any better. Where would it go? :P

Any way, you'll be better off with wisys than sennys any day

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi. 

I have been using Wisycom MCR42s with Sennheiser SK5212 mk11s for about 2 years now. I have the DSP set to include Wisycom, Sennheiser and Audio Ltd. All the the receivers have now been fitted with soft flexible antenna. The stiff ones get broken to quickly. I regularly run over 12 channels using less than 16Mhz window. So far no problem. Battery life is poor so most of the time they are run via external NP1. Sound is fine although I must say that I do prefer the sound of my EK3241s which are warmer. The switching range of some 200Mhz is fab. I have just bought a load of the Low range units and have another 10-15 Mid range on order. 

I would like to see a simpler user  menu along side the main menu but otherwise very happy.

 

Keith

 

 

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Hi. 

I have been using Wisycom MCR42s with Sennheiser SK5212 mk11s for about 2 years now. I have the DSP set to include Wisycom, Sennheiser and Audio Ltd. All the the receivers have now been fitted with soft flexible antenna. The stiff ones get broken to quickly. I regularly run over 12 channels using less than 16Mhz window. So far no problem. Battery life is poor so most of the time they are run via external NP1. Sound is fine although I must say that I do prefer the sound of my EK3241s which are warmer. The switching range of some 200Mhz is fab. I have just bought a load of the Low range units and have another 10-15 Mid range on order. 

I would like to see a simpler user  menu along side the main menu but otherwise very happy.

 

Keith

Hi Keith

 

I would be interested to check out your 3241s and measure the frequency response vs. the Wisycom MCR42. We have already had Wisycom provide a tailored compander mode that is optimised for transient response for a customer who films a lot of cookery based shows (cutlery, pots and pans clanging and the famous key test!) and Wisycom have adopted it now as one of two 'standard' Wisycom compander modes (it's called 'ENC'). I mention this because it may be that they could provide a mode that mirrored the 'sound' of the 3241s. The existing mode is designed for neutral, flat sound, rather than to replicate the Sennheiser RX sound. This is easily achieved with the powerful Analog Devices Black Fin 32 bit DSP in the MCR42 receiver, and requires only a firmware update.

 

You are right about the stiffer Wisycom antennas, those have been superseded by highly bendy ones now that are virtually indestructible (that is not a challenge! :)).

 

Pyers

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