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.
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.