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[Craig Hauber]

From the B&H listing:
"The receiver pairs with the transmitter via Bluetooth Low Energy from up to 120' away, enabling you to quickly pair the mic directly from the stage without having to bring it close to the receiver"

So, at some level, yeah, basically.

-Russ

No it doesn't
I was getting around 25' but that's about as far away as I could get without leaving the room, and totally lost connection once I did that.  Using an older model iPhone so quite possibly my blutooth implementation on that.
I had the receivers in the orchestra pit but could go far backstage into a separate building where the dressing rooms were and connect bluetooth the the transmitters.  Make adjustments and settings and then when going back to the stage building could update receivers as needed.
You need to have the bluetooth connection as there are absolutely no settings that can be made on the transmitters with local buttons.  It was nice to be able to change channels, gain and mute/pwr locks without pulling the TX out of the costumed performers pack holding belt, remove the "condoms" they were using as sweat guards and fiddling with tiny controls on a TX in a hurried rush between scenes.
One other nice feature that TX's have is that it will remember your power/mute lock settings across battery removal/replace.  Not that we ever had to as the rechargeable lasted at least 8-hours no problem.  But in testing you could eject the li-ion battery and swap in normal AA's and the pack would immediately come right back on without having to deal with the power switch -great for backstage minions fast-swapping without having to have wireless systems knowledge.
I am thinking of setting up a permanent tablet in the wireless rack that I can VNC into for over-the-network control and monitoring.  My control booth was 120' away from the RX rack and I ended up using an HD PTZ cam to remotely monitor RX displays to see front panel status.  (Which was necessary as there was some serious reception "birthing pains" in deploying this new system!)

[Russell Ault]

No it doesn't
I was getting around 25' but that's about as far away as I could get without leaving the room, and totally lost connection once I did that.  Using an older model iPhone so quite possibly my blutooth implementation on that. {...}

That's not surprising; Bluetooth is 2.4 GHz, so 120' is going to be a best-case scenario, with no congestion and full line-of-sight (it's possible that modern chipsets perform better, too).

{...} You need to have the bluetooth connection as there are absolutely no settings that can be made on the transmitters with local buttons. {...}

That's mildly terrifying.

{...} One other nice feature that TX's have is that it will remember your power/mute lock settings across battery removal/replace.  {...} you could eject the li-ion battery and swap in normal AA's and the pack would immediately come right back on without having to deal with the power switch {...}

For what it's worth, this is also true of all G3 and G4 Evolution TXs (and I think probably G2 as well, although it's been a while).

-Russ

[Andrien (No Last Name)]

No it doesn't
I was getting around 25' but that's about as far away as I could get without leaving the room, and totally lost connection once I did that.  Using an older model iPhone so quite possibly my blutooth implementation on that.
I had the receivers in the orchestra pit but could go far backstage into a separate building where the dressing rooms were and connect bluetooth the the transmitters.  Make adjustments and settings and then when going back to the stage building could update receivers as needed.
You need to have the bluetooth connection as there are absolutely no settings that can be made on the transmitters with local buttons.  It was nice to be able to change channels, gain and mute/pwr locks without pulling the TX out of the costumed performers pack holding belt, remove the "condoms" they were using as sweat guards and fiddling with tiny controls on a TX in a hurried rush between scenes.
One other nice feature that TX's have is that it will remember your power/mute lock settings across battery removal/replace.  Not that we ever had to as the rechargeable lasted at least 8-hours no problem.  But in testing you could eject the li-ion battery and swap in normal AA's and the pack would immediately come right back on without having to deal with the power switch -great for backstage minions fast-swapping without having to have wireless systems knowledge.
I am thinking of setting up a permanent tablet in the wireless rack that I can VNC into for over-the-network control and monitoring.  My control booth was 120' away from the RX rack and I ended up using an HD PTZ cam to remotely monitor RX displays to see front panel status.  (Which was necessary as there was some serious reception "birthing pains" in deploying this new system!)

It would be great if they provide a hub that can transmit the BLE over Ethernet (Like Showlink, which use same freq though uses zigbee which allows multiple mesh antenna), but so far no comments from their last seminar

There is another seminar showing on 20th Aug wonder what product they will release again. Maybe someone could try making a BLE Repeater network using Rasberry PI, that would be fun.

[Marc Gort]

Hi everyone, I am currently having the exact same 'luxury' problem. We are currently in the process of purchasing multiple wireless systems/handhelds. (budget for 4x SLX-D or EW-D) with the possibility of expansion in the future. We currently have three EW100G4 beltpack systems.

In my opinion, the SLX-D can be considered a more mature/professional system than the EW-D. The docking station, WWB, Ethernet and dual receivers are the main advantages. But my feeling is that the sennheiser will offer better quality. It has a better choice of microphone capsules in my opinion (I'm a fan of the E945/65) and it has lower latency (1.4ms less). In addition, the bluetooth connection between transmitter and receiver/app is both an advantage and a disadvantage.
Do the better capsules (in my opinion) from sennheiser outweigh the major benefits that shure has to offer?

It is a very difficult choice. Both systems compete directly with each other. Do you guys have experience with either system or have a direct comparison between the two?

Thanks in advance!
Greetings, Marc

[Dave Garoutte]

Please change to your real name per the forum rules.  No answers until you do.

[Mac Kerr]

Hi everyone, I am currently having the exact same 'luxury' problem.

Please go to your profile and change the "Name" field to your real first and last name as required by the posting rules displayed in the header at the top of the section, and in the Site Rules and Suggestions in the Forum Announcements section, and on the registration page when you registered.

Mac
admin

[Marc Gort]

My apologies, I didn't see that correctly. I just changed it.

greetings, Marc

[Dave Pallant]

As a current Sennheiser XSW user I have also been looking at a new system and both EW-D and Shure SLXD are on my list to look at . The alternative would be to move to EW300 analogue. I would like to get to 16 channels at some point. Main uses are drama and musical theatre.

I think I had naively assumed that one of the gains of digital would be to make more use of the limited UHF band I can use with my basic license in the UK. I have 606-613MHz without an extra site license and that reliably gives me 12 channels with XSW. From what I can see on the support websites Shure SLXD gives me the possibility of 14 but hedges this by calling it TV38 "Max Freq" and also lists TV38 "Standard" with 11 channels and TV38 "Robust"(!) with just 9! Similarly Sennheiser just gives me the same 12 channels that I already have. I could get site licences in 48hour per channel blocks but would not want to buy systems that I have to pay for every time I use them!

Any gains then are the network access (Bluetooth for EW-D) I can get to monitor the receivers (which I can get from EW300 as well) and any improvements in sound quality of using the digital transmitters over the XSW and possibly the alternative EW-300.

Are users hearing the improvement in dynamic range and noise that are promised over an analogue system like the EW300/500?

Thanks
Dave Pallant

[Russell Ault]

{...}
I think I had naively assumed that one of the gains of digital would be to make more use of the limited UHF band I can use with my basic license in the UK. I have 606-613MHz without an extra site license and that reliably gives me 12 channels with XSW. From what I can see on the support websites Shure SLXD gives me the possibility of 14 but hedges this by calling it TV38 "Max Freq" and also lists TV38 "Standard" with 11 channels and TV38 "Robust"(!) with just 9! Similarly Sennheiser just gives me the same 12 channels that I already have. I could get site licences in 48hour per channel blocks but would not want to buy systems that I have to pay for every time I use them!
{...}

This is generally the case. In truth, I'm a little surprised (okay, a lot surprised) that Sennheiser claims to be able to pack 12 channels of XSW into 7 MHz (although they claim 8 MHz up to 614 MHz, and Channel 9 in the free-to-use Group 1 is 613.100 MHz). Judging by the fact that the frequencies for the channels in Group 1 don't run lowest-to-highest I'm guessing (because I haven't run the math) that Sennheiser are making fairly significant sacrifices in their intermod allowances to pack that many channels in (particularly for Channels 10 though 12, where the frequencies stop being in numerical order).

At the lower end of the price scale, digital may not offer you many (or any) more channels, but ought to offer you increased reliability. If you're committed to trying to pack as many channels into 8 MHz as possible, though, you'll be rewarded for looking at more expensive options: QLXD, for example, will do 22 channels in a 8 MHz bandwidth, and ULXD should do at least 47 (although probably closer to 60) in its High Density mode.

{...} Are users hearing the improvement in dynamic range and noise that are promised over an analogue system like the EW300/500? {...}

I'm not familiar with how EW-D or SLXD handles this, but the best way to describe the dynamic range of the ULXD and QLXD systems is "clever" (in a way that would be basically impossible to achieve with FM). My rough understanding (which was confirmed by a Shure rep somewhere along the way) is that each TX has a couple of independent preamp-ADCs with different gain levels, and for each sample the TX basically just picks the highest ADC value that is still below full-scale. In practice this means that the "gain" of the system is effectively determined at the RX, where the data from the multiple ADCs is interpreted back into a coherent audio stream.

As far as noise in concerned, FM starts noisy and then the noise is (ideally) suppressed, while digital starts from (and fails to) silent (which is the other reason the dynamic range of digital systems tends to be greatly improved). Digital also tends to have few-or-no companding artifacts (since companding isn't needed to fit ~100 dB of signal into ~50 dB of FM modulation range), although most digital systems will tend to demonstrate at least a little "distortion" (in the technical sense; rarely in the audible sense) related to lossy data compression.

-Russ

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