Lectrosonics HH and Venue Receiver

Jeff Knorr was my hired gun monitor engineer at a blues festival I was providing for this past weekend and he brought along with him a road test Lectrosonics wireless system. The system included a Venue series Receiver, an HH series transmitter unit, and a couple of the SNA600 antennas.

What I liked:
Hardware felt like good quality stuff, it reminded me of some of the higher quality commercial 2-way radio equipment I have dealt with.

It's my understanding you can use just about any wireless capsule on these, we used the SM58 since that's my preferred standard vocal mic, and what was in use elsewhere on the stage. With the wide variety of popular vox mics bands are using these days, this would be great for fulfilling riders while only having to own one brand of RF.

The HH transmitter has a button the talent can press that routes the audio to an alternate audio output on the receiver for talkback to a monitor engineer, etc. That's pretty cool!

The SNA600 antenna is adjustable for the frequency band in use, which should really squeeze every last bit of RF performance out of the system. I had no issues with drop out during the show.

The venue series receiver allows for more receive modules to be added for more channels, which is really economical and space saving.

The battery life was good, with the "freebie" supplied batteries we got about an entire day of use from the transmitter.

What I didn't like:
The screen is kind of small and hard to read compared to other wireless systems on both the receiver and transmitter. With the Shure UHF-R and Sennheiser gear I own, I can tell what's going on from 10 yards away. The transmitter screen especially on the Lectrosonics could stand to be a little larger, and I feel like the plastic "window" that covers it could be enlarged to facilitate easier viewing.

The SNA600 antenna would probably be good for a fixed install where you set it one time and install it on a wall near the stage, but it looked just a little too complex and fragile for road abuse. But then again, I feel that way about most of the other popular wireless antennas.


As far as the sound quality is concerned it sounds very neutral to me, like a wired version of whatever capsule is on it. I used to have the Shure SLX which I never cared for the sound quality of. My current A-Level wireless are my Shure UHF-R systems with SM58 capsules, which sounds fantastic to me, maybe even better than a wired 58 if that's even possible. I felt like the Lectrosonics was probably around 90% of my perceived audio quality of the UHF-R, as mentioned before, very "neutral". I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this system to anyone in the market for wireless.
 
re: Lectrosonics HH and Venue Receiver

Tom's post is spot on. The new Lectrosonics HH Transmitter is a quality piece of kit that lives up to the Lectro brand name. Attached to this post should be a bunch of pictures of the HH transmitter and the Venue Receiver.

In addition to what Tom said, the HH transmitter has some other cool features:
-The internal menu that allows you to select: variable frequency High Pass Filters, Transmitter Power level, mic capsule sensitivity and more.
-The battery eject lever! No more trying to pry out dead batteries!
-The ability to easily use a multitude of mic capsules makes it easier to accomodate picky artists and riders with one wireless system.

Not specifically the purpose of the review, but the Venue Receiver is also darn cool. It can support up to six channels of wireless mics in a single rack space. All power and antenna distribution is built right into the unit. Anyone looking for 2 or more channels of wireless should seriously consider this option.

More info:
hh | Transmitters
 

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re: Lectrosonics HH and Venue Receiver

I received an email from David Karol regarding test driving the new Lectrosonics Venue wireless system and immediately began to salivate. Through my experience as an A1 on corporate gigs as well as an audio department head of a national production company, I know that when I have Lectrosonics gig on a show that I’m going to hear nothing but rave reviews of the wireless equipment. My experience with the new Venue system did not disappoint.

One of the things that immediately struck me was the form factor which allows for 6 channels of receiver “packs” to be loaded into a single, 1U chassis. This means that one set of antennas can be used for 6 channels of RF without the use of any antenna distro. As the guy who allocates gear between a lot of shows at any given time, this is a blessing. Being able to add additional channels of RF at the last minute without having to reallocate antenna distribution is, simply put, one less thing that I have to think about.

The technicians who used the Venue (as well as the clients we serviced with it) all agreed that sonically, the system is excellent. Range was reported to be excellent in everything I read, and this turned out to be an understatement. In a world of high end private parties where the FOH mix is often obscured by trees, décor, and sometimes even permanent structures J, we experienced no dropouts during our use of the system.

I wish I would have had more opportunity to use the onboard HPF, as it could be an ideal solution with small, self powered speakers, for standalone announcement systems.

Everyone on my team agreed that the antenna seems a little fragile for long term use/abuse, though the tunable arrangement is a novel concept. Perhaps a similar concept could be used one day by Shure, Sennheiser and the like for tunable whip antennas…. I think we’ve all ended up with the wrong band of whip antennas on a show over the years. The display screens on both the transmitter and receiver were only OK compared to the more modern offerings from other manufacturers.

Pricing on this system is very competitive, and with the ability of the transmitters to accept capsules from other manufacturers, including the old school rock and roll standard SM58 capsule, will certainly allow Lectrosonics to give the big boys a run for their money. Capsule acceptance is something that traditionally has made high-end RF a bit of a “members only” club, and cross platform capsule compatibility is a good move in the right direction to me.

Build quality – very good
Technical features – excellent
Ergonomic features – good
Sound quality - excellent
Overall – very good to excellent

-Gabe Nahshon
Delicate Productions