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Issue with Lectro SRC in Block 941


dougdunderdale

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I’m cross-posting this to a few forums so I apologize if you see it more than once.

As part of my transition plan for moving to FCC-safe frequencies, I bought a new Lectro SRC and a pair of SMVs in Block 941 back in mid-June. I had scanned the forums and talked with dealers and the Block 941 wirelesses seemed to be working out fine. Due to a busy work schedule and a vacation break, I was only able to do a quick check of the set and everything seemed fine. Mostly I was blown away by a totally unoccupied frequency block. I used the set as a camera hop for a couple of days and everything seemed good but in retrospect I realized that all of my listening tests had happened in loud environments or using an earbud coming out of the camera’s headphone jack. Anyway, after vacation I finally sat down and listened to the set and I heard a strange noise on the channel 2 output of the SRC - an ascending sine wave kind of sound that happened in ~5 second intervals. With everything on the TX and RX and recorder set at something approximating normal, the noise was VERY obvious. I 1st noticed it when I had a mic plugged in but it was even more noticeable without a mic.

 

So I scanned the usual forums and nobody else was talking about it. So I tried to isolate the problem. I won’t go into everything I tried but to summarize, the noise was on the channel 2 output of the SR. I could lessen the noise if I moved the TX about 15’ away from the SRC but it could come back by just moving a few inches any direction. I called my friends at Gotham, Sound Devices and Lectro and nobody had heard about anything like this.

 

If you want to hear a sample of the sound, I've uploaded it below. Lectro SRC noise - Dunderdale.wav

 

So I called Lectro support and described the problem and all of the things I tried to isolate the noise. They didn’t have much to suggest so they overnighted me a replacement SRC. It sounded the same. So they tried listening to a couple of Block 941 SRCs they had on the shelf and they had the same problem. So it’s a thing.

 

Lectro has been trying to understand why this is happening. They suggested that I lower the TX output to 50mW and keep the TX at least 10’ away from the SRC. In my tests, I had to be at least 15’ away at 50mW but I work on docs and this is not a workable solution. Lectro doesn’t have any idea how long this will take to identify and fix but given how long it’s taken them to identify and solve similar problems recently, it’s probably somewhere in the 3-12 month range. Maybe they’ve learned something more in the last few days and they can give us a better estimate. They seemed pretty convinced that this was a problem with all of the Block 941 SRCs that they had in house, but it is puzzling that nobody else has noticed the issue. If anybody has one of these sets and they do not have the problem, that would be useful to know.

 

So I’m sending my SRC and SMV’s back and looking for a new solution. I have been a lifelong Lectro user and my whole wireless ecosystem is built around Lectros, but to be honest, I’m a little spooked by some of the quality issues we’ve been seeing over the past year or two. And it doesn’t help that Lectro seems averse to admitting to the quality issues or warning people that there are problems with devices that are still being sold.

 

Sorry for the long post. I’m uncomfortable writing this b/c I’ve depended so deeply on Lectro gear. But if I had seen a post like this before mid-June, my life would have been way easier.

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22 minutes ago, dougdunderdale said:

I’m a little spooked by some of the quality issues we’ve been seeing over the past year or two. And it doesn’t help that Lectro seems averse to admitting to the quality issues or warning people that there are problems with devices that are still being sold.

 

Sorry you’re experiencing these issues, but this is the first I’m hearing about this part – can you elaborate?

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A reply from Gordon Moore at Lectrosonics on another forum:

HI everyone - this IS a recent development not spotted by the beta testers or us - it does manifest only with transmitters close.  It has NOT shown up in every unit.   It should not take 3-12 months as stated in the original post but in all honesty we can't be sure until it truly is beaten.  Switching your transmitter to a lower power levels can also eliminate the problem.    We DO think we have found the solution in the engineering department and a new board layout has been already completed and sent out for PCB (which take a couple of weeks to come back in).  We'll stuff them as soon as they arrive and test to see if the design change is effective.  As soon as we confirm, we will , naturally, take care of ANYONE who is experiencing this issue.

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  • 2 years later...

Did anything become of this? I just purchased a set which includes an src, two SMQVs, and an hma in 941 and I’m getting some fuzzy kind of sounds on transients, like I’m having reception issues except my reception cones are 100% full. They seemed to test fine but while I’m rolling I hear it, and it makes me pretty nervous. This on a completely clear scan. 

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