For peak, reliable wireless audio system performance, wireless audio accessories are essential in most applications – so essential that RF Venue built a company around providing best-in-class solutions with patented technologies to optimize the performance of any brand and model of wireless microphone and IEM.
RF Venue will be exhibiting its line of wireless audio essentials for the first time at Integrated Systems Europe, January 31-February 3, 2023, in Barcelona, Spain, at Fira Barcelona – Gran Via, booth CS604.
“Too often,” says RF Venue President Chris Regan, “end users upgrade wireless audio transmitters and receivers yet are frustrated to find they still face dropouts, noise and other system anomalies they’d hoped to cure. Fortunately, these problems can be resolved with a total system approach that includes essential accessories such as high-performance antennas, RF distribution and combiner components, interference filters and quality cabling. We look forward to sharing our world-renowned products with the attendees of ISE 2023.”
With the chassis-mounted antennas that are supplied with wireless audio systems, the RF line-of-sight can be impeded by the gear in the rack, and by doors and walls when gear is housed in an equipment closet. Additionally, closely mounted antennas on adjacent transmitters or receivers, even with just two channels of wireless in use, can create interference and intermodulation issues. “The solution,” says Regan, “is to replace those antennas with external antennas.”
Furthermore, states Regan, “For wireless microphone applications, RF Venue’s exclusive technologies provide significant performance advantages over other external antennas on the market.” Unlike traditional “shark fin” directional antennas, the patented cross-polarization approach introduced with the RF Venue Diversity Fin® Antenna allows wireless microphone receivers to see a constant signal, no matter how a user is holding a wireless microphone or wearing a belt pack relative to the antenna. By combining one log-periodic dipole array (LPDA) capturing vertically polarized signals and one dipole antenna in an orthogonal (right angle) configuration capturing horizontally polarized signals, the Diversity Fin Antenna design provides a true diversity solution in a single package saving on installation time, space and cost.
The RF Venue remote antenna line also includes the Diversity Architectural™ Antenna, a new system component that offers the core capabilities of the Diversity Fin Antenna in a virtually invisible, slim-profile footprint for installations where aesthetics matter. For indoor multi-zone projects, or outdoors where large areas of coverage are needed, such as sports venues, theme parks and amphitheaters, the patent-pending RF Venue Diversity Omni™ Antenna provides omnidirectional reception. An additional option is the RF Spotlight™ Antenna – a low-profile floor pad antenna that enables wireless mics to function reliably in the most crowded RF environments, effective on stages, in hotel breakout rooms, at conventions, in churches or wherever multiple wireless systems must inter-operate across facilities and open channels are limited. Most frequently used with wireless in-ear monitor systems (IEMs), but also in some wireless microphone applications, the RF Venue CP Beam™ Antenna is a lightweight, helical, circularly polarized antenna designed that ensures a consistent signal.
When a remote antenna is used to replace multiple chassis-mount antennas, RF distribution amplifiers for wireless microphone systems complete a full system approach, says Regan. “At ISE, we’ll also be showing our DISTRO4 and DISTRO9 HDR wireless microphone distribution systems, which not only provide buffered antenna signals for multiple receivers, but also clean up installations by providing DC power distribution, eliminating wall wart power supplies. The DISTRO4 can accommodate up to five wireless microphone receivers while the DISTRO9 HDR can feed and power up to nine receivers. Both can be linked to additional units for larger configurations. The DISTRO9 HDR can also manage two separate antenna zones while our 4 ZONE active antenna combiner takes the complexity and expense out of multi-zone wireless microphone projects.” The 4 ZONE combines up to four separate pairs of diversity antenna connections for multi-purpose rooms, indoor-outdoor configurations, or main stages with secondary breakout rooms.
With wireless IEMs, a single external antenna like the CP Beam can be fed from a transmitter combiner. “Up to four IEM transmitter signals can be brought together into a single rear-panel-mounted antenna connector with RF Venue’s COMBINE4,” says Regan. “Larger systems are accommodated by the eight channel COMBINE8.” Both are single rack space units.
“Another tool in our arsenal that’s effective in dense RF environments are our inline Band Pass Filters that reject out-of-band interference,” says Regan. “These have proven particularly valuable in eliminating the impact 5G mobile signals can have on wireless audio signals.”
RF Venue also offers its premium RG8X cabling for interconnection, and the OPTIX3 RF over Fiber system to extend antenna connections over distances of even several miles from receivers.
“We also have bundled turnkey kits including all the hardware and cabling needed for various system sizes. These kits simplify ordering and implementing wireless audio upgrades,” concludes Regan. “We invite ISE 2023 attendees to visit us during the show to learn more about how RF Venue can solve their wireless issues.”