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wi audiolink digital wireless system

morgansterne

morgansterne

Geek U.S.A.
Oct 25, 2011
2,075
1,691
Cleveland Ohio
#1
Hello,
I just got this shipped to me today so I thought I'd start a thread on these wireless units. They're supposed to be able to run as guitar wireless units or in ear monitors.
I'm intending to use them as IEM's. I tested them out listening to playback from my laptop from across the house. Sounds no different to me than being wired. Once there were a few walls between the trans and receiver it did start to have brief dropouts. Not surprising as it's supposed to be line of sight and I was near the max range anyway.
I was playing keys in this group so I had wired in ears (sennheiser 215) at the past few gigs and I'm pretty used to them. Now I'll be playing guitar about a quarter of the time so I want to be untethered! Ive been using a submixer with a board (main mix) feed + keys; now I plan to monitor a direct aux out from the main mixer.
But how should I set up? no one else in the band uses IEMs.
It comes with Y cables so I could do main mix in the right ear plus a board aux feed in the left with "more me." Easier to set up that way than trying to get a custom aux feed set up for the first time . . . ??
Or maybe I should just copy the other monitor feed settings and goose up the keys a bunch?

Just got these tuesday evening and the gig is thursday night! Any pitfalls I should be watching out for? this should be a really key gig for us, supposed to be about eight hundred people at the event so I don't want any unpleasant surprises.

these are much cheaper than many wireless units so let's keep this thread open for all the curious out there.
 
#2
If you have an available pre-fader aux out on the board then why would you keep the main mix in one ear? Go ahead and tailor a mix you want...should not be any harder to do, possibly easier that trying to get two mixes balanced. Plus I have a fear about the main mix being in my ear which is that it is post fader so someone messing with the slides or muting/unmuting channels could take out an eardrum.

Bottom line, you will have to play with it until you get what you want. But if you already used a wired setup then you should have a good idea of what you want anyways.

A couple of considerations, if you have guitarist or bassist who are relying on their amps only and don't go through the PA you will need to mic their cabs so you have them in the mix. Sounds like this is unlikely if you are playing a hall with 800+ though.

If everybody else is on wedges then you have a fall back, you can pull one ear if the mix you setup isn't working for you. Make sure to spend the time during soundcheck to get what you want.

If your aux out is stereo, consider panning the various instruments and vocalists right and left for a much better fuller mix. You can even pan according to where you are on stage versus them. Lots of options. Again you will need to spend some time here to get what you like.

New batteries for every gig.
 
#3
thank you for the input!
I was considering the main mix because we are setting up our PA, lights, etc. at 4 o clock and need to have sound check done by 5:30. Not much time to try to get a custom monitor mix.
The audiolink system uses rechargeable L-ion batteries, supposed to last 4 to 6 hours. I expect to bring the charger unit and leave it plugged in charging in between sets.
I hope tonight to get a chance to a/b it on bass with my Line 6 G50 wireless unit and I'll post my results.
 
#6
I got my first gig use out of this system last night at a good sized bar. I did the whole first set just with wedges and hooked up the wireless for second set. It worked pretty well. I think there is some latency involved. As such I left the bass and kick out of my mix so it wouldn't screw up my timing. My earbuds allow enough room sound through to hear the drums, and bass since I was standing about eight feet in front of the bass amp (really nice sized stage for a bar!)

the latency was pretty subtle, akin to playing a midi keyboard into a VST plug-in synth. Since I was playing keyboards (and guitar on about ten songs) this didn't really throw me off. I think this could be a problem if one was using it as an instrument wireless.

Sound quality wise I thought is was fine. Only problem I had was occasional pop sound, probably the lead singer's channel running into clipping.
I did find it very difficult to get an in-ear mix that I really liked. As always there's very little time for that what with setting up the PA for the night.
One nice feature of this system that I took advantage of was the dual-input. It comes with a y-cable -- I used an aux send for the right ear and the main mix for the left ear. I could crank up my keyboards in the aux send while still being able to judge whether or not I was audible in the main mix by listening to the other ear. Pretty important if you don't have a dedicated sound guy running the board all night!
 
#7
ok, folks, my test at home yesterday indicate that as an instrument wireless this thing is probably useless. Doesn't sound quite as nice as my Line 6 g50, but it's ok.
the Latency, however, is not acceptable. I do not think anyone could tolerate the guitar responding 18 ms behind the beat for an entire night. (that figure is from an amazon.com review). Imagine you're using a second audiolink unit as IEMs at the same time -- this would have around the same latency as standing thirty feet away from your amp!
these worked fine for me as IEM's for a keyboard/acoustic guitar playing gig, but if I was playing bass I think the latency might have been a problem.
 
#8
Thanks for the reports back! I had played with these as an assisted listening system device for people with hearing loss. Looked like a good cheap idea. With older people with both hearing loss and bad eyes (hence they had no lip reading capability left) they worked fine. But with older or younger people with decent vision that tended to match words with lip movement, it was like watching the poorly subtitled Japanese Samurai movies.

I never once had thought of it for instrument use since I knew there was a significant delay, but was curious to see if you had a similar finding. I'm thinking the AD/DA converters are so crummy that they are slowing the signal down. That is not to say that this is not a feasible idea in the fairly near future. But until then, stick to your name brands.
 
#9
that's the thing that kind of annoys me about 'em -- latency is doubtless due to AD/DA conversion, which means if they upgraded the internal CPU they could have avoided it. Of course this would have upped the cost, but I love the size and design so I might still have bought them at twice the price.
 
#11
Take a "Y" cable and record left channel direct, and the right channel through the wi
It would be a cinch to calculate the wi latency from this.

Sound travels in the air at about 1ft per millisecond
If you stand 5ft from a speaker, you have 5 ms of latency.

I bet the wi latency is just a couple of milliseconds
 
#12
seamonkey said:
Take a "Y" cable and record left channel direct, and the right channel through the wi
It would be a cinch to calculate the wi latency from this.

Sound travels in the air at about 1ft per millisecond
If you stand 5ft from a speaker, you have 5 ms of latency.

I bet the wi latency is just a couple of milliseconds
Click to expand...

Good idea! Unfortunately, the latency seems to be quite a bit more than a couple of milliseconds.

Using your suggested test setup, I tested my Wi AudioLink and found about 26ms of latency:
Latency Test - Wi AudioLink.png

I then connected my Line 6 G30 instead of the Wi AudioLink, and found about 5ms of latency:
Latency Test- G30.png

I was actually surprised by the amount of latency with the Wi AudioLink as I found it to be usable for IEM at 2 bar gigs and about 5 rehearsals. I am not using it now due to confounding factors.

My classic rock cover band uses Bose L1s (I go direct), and I was tired of getting blasted all night standing in front of them, even while using ear plugs (my Db meter shows ~105 from 6ft away at average show volume). I picked up the Wi AudioLink to use for wireless IEM hoping to be able to move my Bose in front of me and be able to stand further away from the other speakers.

The first gig I tried it at had a large enough stage that I could get away from the speakers and I was happy with the IEM setup. However, the next show was a tighter stage, and I didn't have enough space to get away from the speakers. I had to push my IEM volume higher than I was comfortable with (I'm probably a little paranoid after a too-loud rehearsal once left me with tinnitus for 2 weeks). I was using Shure SE215s with memory foam tips.

The rest of my band is very committed to the Bose L1s, so I've gone back to using earplugs.
 
#13
Outstanding post Quantified!

Simple measure shows all. 26ms latency is not good enough for most people, me neither.

While it can be "practiced" away most people aren't going to bother.

Good for Line6 at being 5ms. Still the best value in wireless. I'd add another 5 to 10 from other signal processing, but that's easy to deal with.

Bose L1's are a good approach for when the volume doesn't need to get too loud.
Ear protection and stay away from tinnitus first. Wired IEM always an option.
 
#14
thanks for sharing your research on this!
26 ms is really just pathetic. I don't know how they could possibly market these as instrument wireless units.

That having been said, I just used them saturday night as IEM's playing keys and acoustic guitar. The couple times in the night I pulled them out to adjust them mid song, I was shocked how freakin loud it was onstage. Twenty feet away from us it was totally reasonable and people in the bar could talk to each other without too much problem.
The key for me is hearing the drums and bass "live" so that I'm basing my timing off of that. If the vocals and guitar sound 26 ms behind the beat that's probably closer than lots of bands are anyway.:hmm:
 
#16
for 26ms, Yeah, I'd like to see better but it's not unusable.
Many Orchestras, Choirs have this kind of separation for centuries and figured out how to work with it. Brains are smarter than some would think.

Another example is your mouse on your computer. There's not much relationship between how far you actually move it on your desktop, to how far the pointer moves on the screen. The brain figures out how to work it.
 
#17
I was pretty surprised to see 26 ms too, but I have to agree that you can adapt to it pretty quickly. As I said, I had used it successfully for rehearsal, a couple of gigs, and practicing at home to backing tracks and click tracks. It actually took a fairly speedy or tricky riff to make me annoyed with the latency.

At first I was suspicious that the test was showing extra lag perhaps because I was using the Wi in stereo mode, but it was the same result for both mono modes.

I just got back a pair of ear phones that I had put into custom molded shells, and I'm liking them so much that I might have to give IEM a try again, but probably wired for now.

Who knows, maybe Line6 will make one unit that is a combination receiver and transmitter to work for both instrument and IEM...
 

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