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[brian maddox]

Tonight we're going to compare my Senn with the Galaxy.  Time will tell.  Nice to know AT also offers a viable product.
Thanks
frank

The AT unit is comparable in quality to the S and S offerings as is the MiPro.  In some ways the MiPro may even be superior.  But both of these suffer from the same resale issue i referenced above.  If you can find a good used unit though, you can leverage that to your advantage.

Curious to here your head to head comparison of the Senn with the Galaxy.  Keep us posted.

[frank kayser]

The AT unit is comparable in quality to the S and S offerings as is the MiPro.  In some ways the MiPro may even be superior.  But both of these suffer from the same resale issue i referenced above.  If you can find a good used unit though, you can leverage that to your advantage.

Curious to here your head to head comparison of the Senn with the Galaxy.  Keep us posted.

Well, the head-to-head did not happen the other day.  We concentrated on getting the mixes correct.  I did have some major brain flatulence using the Galaxy... Had the whole gain structure ass-backwards.  I was concerned about the player inadvertently turning the volume on the receiver too high and blowing their ears, so I had them set full-on minus a tick or two.  Of course, that made the receivers use the max amplification to make the relatively low signal loud enough, resulting in a lot of hiss, not surprisingly. D'Oh!  So, despite the hiss, practice went well. Bud balance was good, so with luck and a little fine adjustment, correcting the gain structure should result in a smooth changeover.


One of the members did a straight comparison of the Galaxy supplied buds vs the Westone AM-10 buds - No surprise, the Galaxy buds did not hold a candle to the Westones.  Good enough to get started?  Mmmm... Could be.  We spent a lot of time getting the mix in everyones Galaxy buds as tuned as we could - must have been pretty close as the members could immediately notice their own mistakes as well as the others.


We'll use them tonight for the first time in anger - Performers will have the Galaxy and my Senn will be attached to the monitor bus.  When the guest performers on the stage using regular stage monitors, we can A:B them then.  Or, that's the plan, anyway.  Will keep you posted...


One more question... This group a type of variety show, where they open, have a poet, comedian, and some other musical groups.  We plan to deploy floor monitors for the guests today, but that begs the question of whether trying to get guests to use IEMs is practical, or whether the floor monitors remain a fixture.  What is the best practice on that?


As always, thanks for all the help getting us through this!


frank

[Stephen Kirby]

If there's other live amplified or loud instruments on stage, wedges still help.  Note that most varsity situations still have monitors in the stage floor.  The IEMs keep the level down at the ear, a good thing, and let someone add what they need back in to what leaks around the plug (at best 30dB attenuation but likely much less).  So if there's acoustically a good balance on stage, the IEMs can enhance that.  When they're all there is, it takes some real getting used to.

[brian maddox]

Well, the head-to-head did not happen the other day.  We concentrated on getting the mixes correct.  I did have some major brain flatulence using the Galaxy... Had the whole gain structure ass-backwards.  I was concerned about the player inadvertently turning the volume on the receiver too high and blowing their ears, so I had them set full-on minus a tick or two.  Of course, that made the receivers use the max amplification to make the relatively low signal loud enough, resulting in a lot of hiss, not surprisingly. D'Oh!  So, despite the hiss, practice went well. Bud balance was good, so with luck and a little fine adjustment, correcting the gain structure should result in a smooth changeover.

...

It sounds like you're already going to fix this, but i posted something recently explaining why this practice [turn the pack up all the way and adjust input volume into the transmitter] is a Really Bad Idea.  And it's not just that it raises the noise floor.  Although that certainly happens to. 

Anyway, here it is if you want to peruse...

http://forums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/topic,166287.msg1533599.html#msg1533599

[frank kayser]

It sounds like you're already going to fix this, but i posted something recently explaining why this practice [turn the pack up all the way and adjust input volume into the transmitter] is a Really Bad Idea.  And it's not just that it raises the noise floor.  Although that certainly happens to. 

Anyway, here it is if you want to peruse...

http://forums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/topic,166287.msg1533599.html#msg1533599

Ah yes, Brian.  I've perused it, but hardly an in-depth reading.  Many things I want to go back to as I progress on my journey.  Thank you for a great writeup.


As far as the head-to-head. 
Honestly, the Galaxy's were surprisingly good, the hiss much reduced once gain structure was corrected.  Once sound started coming out of the headsets, not surprisingly the hiss became all but inaudible.  There was some interference in at least one of the Galaxys - the owner noticed it in his ears.  No one else said anything, but that did not mean it was not present. The Senns were definitely quieter i.e., hiss.  I was in and out of the Senns and possibly for that reason, did not notice the same interference.  We're still fumbling through band and groups/banks, and of course no scan was done.


The Galaxy transmitters run either stereo or mono, but the body packs do not run in a mono mode. The owner of the system made a pigtail to "hot wire" to either all left or all right, which may have contributed to the noise... or not.  He is running two transmitters to four receivers. 
The band seemed happy enough with IEMs only, no floor monitor.  I think we did a decent job at practice to get the mixes close - Saturday required only minor adjustments. 


One thing we did notice that affected the IEMs but were not specific to either of the brands, the keyboard player used an accordion-sounding preset on the keyboard that put out significantly more signal, which had noticeable musical imbalance in the in-ears.  I anticipated this and was able to drop its level. 


The additional hiss was strike one, the need to pigtail the receivers to mono was strike two.  It seemed there was room to grow in the Sennheiser, where features were maxed out in the Galaxy.  That ended up being strike three.  He's sending them back and getting two Senn G3 systems each with 2 receivers at nearly 2x the cost.   The G4 were beyond our time requirements, and the bargain-basement sell-off of G3 units have not started yet either.  Timing is everything.


All in all, during the short time we were using them, the Galaxy 1100 were good enough for proof of concept, and to get the band on-board.  Someone on a budget could get a lot of good use out of the Galaxy system and not go broke getting there. 


That was the end of the experiment.  Thanks for the comments, help and interest  shown in this thread.


frank