A cautionary tale against buying the line6 digital wireless

Re: A cautionary tale against buying the line6 digital wireless

Phil Graham said:
Robert,

Transmitter is clipped to pastor's stage right rear pocket, orientated vertically. Transmitter is 7m away, also stage right, direct line of sight located 2m off the floor atop an equipment rack. The rack is approximately 3m upstage of the pastor's standing position. This is essentially ideal receiver placement for RF. Antennas are set for 45 degree angle (the recommended compromise between horizontal and vertical polarization).

I've done RF a time or two, I assure you...
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Good to know.

Just checking since this is quite a common mistake to do...

Another common mistake is having the antennas not be more or less fully above the rack into free air and/or too close to the metal parts of the rack and its gear so that the signal becomes degraded/multiplexed due to reflections/standing waves bouncing of the metal causing the agc to operate or create digital errors due to multiple delayed signal paths entering into the antenna.

It could also be that some of the rack gear being too close to the reciever introduces interference due to rfi

If possible try to relocate the antennas/reciever into free air not too close to metal parts in the rack. I'm talkning very short distance, like 10-30cm, so an ordinary rg-58 should be quite enough and I think the reciever came with short cables and some half-rack antenna plate with bnc adaptors you can use for your test.
 
Re: A cautionary tale against buying the line6 digital wireless

Phil,

Are you running RF-1 or RF-2 for the beltpack? Are there any other L6 devices nearby? Are you using the standard whip antennas? Are you daisy chaining any of the receivers?

I use about 4-10 wireless units (Handheld and beltpack) and do not have issues running off of RF-1. Rf-2, however, presents some headaches when cell phones and people are brought into a venue.

I suggest switching between RF-1 and RF-2 to see which works better, I believe RF-1 is quad diversity while RF-2 is dual. If that doesn't help maybe looking into upgrading the antennas to their P180 set may help.

Greg
 
Re: A cautionary tale against buying the line6 digital wireless

Hey Phil

The mode that you are running in is likely the problem. The new generation of XDV default to RF mode 2 straight out of the box. This is the mode intended to work alongside Wi-Fi but in this mode you MUST scan before assigning channels and just like about everything else, in this mode you must operate the system in a clear channel.

In RF1 mode XDV operates in the 4 channel mode. And that's likely why you see some responses to your post that users are having no problems with XDV70's. The 70's run in RF1 mode (unless they have been updated). RF1 mode is much more robust and bulletproof ... but ... if you try to run more than about 4 channels of Line 6 wireless you will probably slow down wi-fi in the room to an unacceptable crawl. There are only so many cars you can drive down the freeway and in this case you are running out of bandwidth. You can likely run a dozen Line 6 units in RF1 mode but you will likely shut down wi-fi in the same venue. Wi-fi is just not as smart and almost always looses in this case.

So to help out users that must use both wireless and wi-fi at the same time we added the RF2 mode. This mode runs switching between only 2 frequencies so it doesn't fill up the band as much but it is also a lot less resistant from taking interference hits from wi-fi. If you run a single wi-fi channel in a room than you can likely run eight Line 6 units at the same time without either interfering with each other. But in this case you MUST select those channels carefully either by scanning or by selecting from the list in the owner's manual..

Now if you need to run say six wi-fi channels in a room for some reason you will probably have very poor luck running Line 6 in RF2 mode at the same time. However switching over to RF1 mode should take care of most situations but then the problem will be the wi-fi.

Now switching the wi-fi over to 802.11N and running at 5GHz will take care of everything (and double the throughput speed of the wi-fi at the same time) :)

Don Boomer
Line 6, Inc.
 
Re: A cautionary tale against buying the line6 digital wireless

This would explain my recent problem too. I've been using a few V70 systems racked together for a couple years with no issues at all. A few weeks ago I got a V75 and updated all my old ones. At a gig last week the system was unusable due to drop outs, even after scanning. Never thought of changing RF mode.
 
Re: A cautionary tale against buying the line6 digital wireless

Robert Lofgren said:
If possible try to relocate the antennas/reciever into free air not too close to metal parts in the rack. I'm talkning very short distance, like 10-30cm, so an ordinary rg-58 should be quite enough and I think the reciever came with short cables and some half-rack antenna plate with bnc adaptors you can use for your test.
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I've tried numerous locations, all with mindfulness of line of sight, polarization behavior and the impedance of the local transmitting environment.
 
Re: A cautionary tale against buying the line6 digital wireless

Per Søvik said:
Maybe the solution to the whole problem is to pretend that speaking and singing in a church or theater can be accomplished without aids, or is that too radical :razz:
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Per,

We are a small congregation, renting a small space. If our pastor wasn't so soft spoken, he wouldn't need reinforcement. Even if he could subsist without reinforcement, we would still want to record for the purpose of providing to our childcare volunteers, absent attendees, and other people who listen through the website.
 
Re: A cautionary tale against buying the line6 digital wireless

Greg Hyson said:
Phil,

Are you running RF-1 or RF-2 for the beltpack? Are there any other L6 devices nearby? Are you using the standard whip antennas? Are you daisy chaining any of the receivers?
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Based on Don's comment below, evidently RF2. Standard whip antennas, and only a single receiver.

If that doesn't help maybe looking into upgrading the antennas to their P180 set may help.

Greg
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Frankly, if I'm going to do an antenna upgrade or other expenditure, I'm switching to a different system outside of the ISM band.
 
Re: A cautionary tale against buying the line6 digital wireless

Don Boomer said:
Hey Phil

The mode that you are running in is likely the problem. The new generation of XDV default to RF mode 2 straight out of the box. This is the mode intended to work alongside Wi-Fi but in this mode you MUST scan before assigning channels and just like about everything else, in this mode you must operate the system in a clear channel.
Click to expand...

I was operating in what I thought was a clear channel after doing a scan. Channel 4 shows the least interference in our space (see above), showing one bar of red on both channels while sitting idle.

In RF1 mode XDV operates in the 4 channel mode. And that's likely why you see some responses to your post that users are having no problems with XDV70's. The 70's run in RF1 mode (unless they have been updated). RF1 mode is much more robust and bulletproof ... but ... if you try to run more than about 4 channels of Line 6 wireless you will probably slow down wi-fi in the room to an unacceptable crawl. There are only so many cars you can drive down the freeway and in this case you are running out of bandwidth. You can likely run a dozen Line 6 units in RF1 mode but you will likely shut down wi-fi in the same venue. Wi-fi is just not as smart and almost always looses in this case.
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Don, I'll try the RF1 mode. We only have one unit, so I'm not worried about coordinating multiple units. Also, I'm not concerned with hammering the other facilities wifi, as they aren't actively using their networks on Sunday mornings, and I've already talked to them about our situation when I was looking to clean up the WAP channel allocations for the building.

However switching over to RF1 mode should take care of most situations but then the problem will be the wi-fi.
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I'll give it a go and report back.
 
Re: A cautionary tale against buying the line6 digital wireless

BJ James said:
This would explain my recent problem too. I've been using a few V70 systems racked together for a couple years with no issues at all. A few weeks ago I got a V75 and updated all my old ones. At a gig last week the system was unusable due to drop outs, even after scanning. Never thought of changing RF mode.
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The biggest no-no is to mix modes. This will likely result in most everything not working.

Use the channel scan function in the XDV-75 and with all of your transmitters turned on you will see either "To" (original RF1 mode) or "Tx" (extended RF2 mode) in the window. They MUST all be the same to avoid problems.
 
Re: A cautionary tale against buying the line6 digital wireless

Don Boomer said:
The biggest no-no is to mix modes. This will likely result in most everything not working.

Use the channel scan function in the XDV-75 and with all of your transmitters turned on you will see either "To" (original RF1 mode) or "Tx" (extended RF2 mode) in the window. They MUST all be the same to avoid problems.
Click to expand...

I've got a single XDV-55, how does that change the procedure?

I've also got a full RF spectrum analyzer and several antennas, but I'd rather not drag them in.
 
Re: A cautionary tale against buying the line6 digital wireless

Well if you only have one then you can't be on in two modes at the same time of course. But I think your problem Phil is that you are running in the wrong mode for your venue.

Here's the button pushes to switch modes ... Community: Line 6 Wireless RF1 And RF2 Mode Switching

You only have to switch the transmitter as the receiver will automatically follow.

As far as dragging in an analyzer, well it never hurts to understand what the playground looks like. If there is enough interference then any wireless would crash. But with our system interference never becomes audio. So interference does come into the antennas and then the system deals with it. Because we are looking for an encrypted signal we can pretty much ignore almost anything else. We only need a couple of dB of signal above the noise floor to create normal audio.

So in the RF1 mode (4 channel) you could well be taking many thousands of hits per hour but you'll never hear it in the audio. Our system is randomly jumping to a different frequency every 300 nano-seconds so even when you lose a complete packet it is extremely tiny and the error concealment system covers it. In order to go off the air you usually need 6 or more consecutive hits. And since we are jumping and wi-fi is jumping statistically that is highly improbably. The other thing is that the 4 frequencies that we jump to are distributed over multiple wi-fi channels and they are also in the guard band where wi-fi is prohibited. So that frequency theoretically should be clear.

Now in RF2 mode the channels ARE on wi-fi channels (although their channel numbers and ours are not the same) and if wi-fi is active at the same time you are on you will have collisions. The idea being that you can select a channel that is not being used by wi-fi (much as you would use a TV UHF wireless and steer away from broadcast TV)
 
Re: A cautionary tale against buying the line6 digital wireless

Hanno Meingast said:
Are there any other differences between the two RF modes? I seem to recall a reduction in latency when you went to the new software.
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You can only have a maximum of 12 systems in RF1 mode. In RF2 mode you can have 14. I have 14 systems downstairs right now ready to go into the theatre tomorrow - with 2 ADUs and 2 sets of active paddles, and I thought I'd try them in RF1 only to find that channels 13 & 14 disappear from the beltpack settings when in RF1 mode.
 
Re: A cautionary tale against buying the line6 digital wireless

A long delayed post mortem to this.

Moving the receiver to a new location (away from the putative locale of a third parties WiFi source), having another tenant (software company) leave the building, and switching operational modes got the receiver settled down. Don was quite helpful throughout. We are still using it, and my frustration has waned.

My only remaining complaint is about the microphone's sensitivity to face stubble.

Don, if you read this, I owe you back that second headset microphone you graciously let me try in the troubleshooting process.
 
Re: A cautionary tale against buying the line6 digital wireless

I know this is an old thread, but I didn't want to start a new one just for this.


i used two xd-v75 systems last week and I'm really impressed with the sound quality of it. I did however use a different microphone head for the handheld transmitters, can't comment on the original heads, but the wireless transmission was very good.
 
Re: A cautionary tale against buying the line6 digital wireless

Don Boomer said:
In RF1 mode XDV operates in the 4 channel mode. And that's likely why you see some responses to your post that users are having no problems with XDV70's. The 70's run in RF1 mode (unless they have been updated). RF1 mode is much more robust and bulletproof ... but ... if you try to run more than about 4 channels of Line 6 wireless you will probably slow down wi-fi in the room to an unacceptable crawl. There are only so many cars you can drive down the freeway and in this case you are running out of bandwidth. You can likely run a dozen Line 6 units in RF1 mode but you will likely shut down wi-fi in the same venue. Wi-fi is just not as smart and almost always looses in this case.

So to help out users that must use both wireless and wi-fi at the same time we added the RF2 mode. This mode runs switching between only 2 frequencies so it doesn't fill up the band as much but it is also a lot less resistant from taking interference hits from wi-fi. If you run a single wi-fi channel in a room than you can likely run eight Line 6 units at the same time without either interfering with each other. But in this case you MUST select those channels carefully either by scanning or by selecting from the list in the owner's manual..

Now if you need to run say six wi-fi channels in a room for some reason you will probably have very poor luck running Line 6 in RF2 mode at the same time. However switching over to RF1 mode should take care of most situations but then the problem will be the wi-fi.
Click to expand...
This seems to address why some of my higher ed, corporate, hospitality, medical, etc. clients are not amenable to 2.4GHz or 5GHz wireless microphones. They're often dealing with not only mutliple rooms and/or systems in proximity to one another but also multiple, heavily used Wi-Fi networks. I have also found that "Wi-Fi" seems to be seen as the domain of the IT departments and since they are responsible for the wireless networks they tend to discourage use of the 2.4GHz and 5GHz spectrum other than for the networks they can directly control and manage.

I really wonder what many universities, conference/convention centers and so on are going to do with ever increasing use of their 2.4GHz/5GHz Wi-Fi systems and even more restricted RF spectrum.
 
Re: A cautionary tale against buying the line6 digital wireless

Brad Weber said:
This seems to address why some of my higher ed, corporate, hospitality, medical, etc. clients are not amenable to 2.4GHz or 5GHz wireless microphones. They're often dealing with not only mutliple rooms and/or systems in proximity to one another but also multiple, heavily used Wi-Fi networks. I have also found that "Wi-Fi" seems to be seen as the domain of the IT departments and since they are responsible for the wireless networks they tend to discourage use of the 2.4GHz and 5GHz spectrum other than for the networks they can directly control and manage.

I really wonder what many universities, conference/convention centers and so on are going to do with ever increasing use of their 2.4GHz/5GHz Wi-Fi systems and even more restricted RF spectrum.
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Stanford has moved to all ULX-D in new construction.

Pro Tip regarding wifi: The new generation Cisco WAP's will actually "fight" and disconnect any unauthorized WAPS from their own networks inside the building. If you are using your own wireless router for AV control in a building with Cisco waps, it is important to use channel 9 to avoid being disconnected.
 
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