Wireless vs cellular issues?

[Bredian]

Played a concert in the park setting a few weeks ago and lost signal to the singers wireless microphone as well as the guitar players higher end wireless..... while my Line 6 G30 (un) plugged away happily.

Attendance was maybe a thousand cell phone owners.

Meanwhile back at rehearsal the wireless mic was perfect on the same batteries a few days ago.

Thoughts and experiences?

 

[Rick Auricchio]

It depends on the frequency band used by the instrument wireless system. Cell phones operate on various bands in the US; see Cellular frequencies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for a list.

You're more likely to have interference/noise from the phone you're wearing than from someone in the audience. We often put ours into Airplane Mode when playing to avoid issues. Though the GSM (AT&T) and CDMA (Verizon) phones cause different interference issues, we just treat all of ours the same.

 

[seamonkey]

There's a lot of radio signals in the air. Walls actually do filter out some of this.
Could be cells, could be other radios, walkie talkies, ...

Line 6 is digital. It can "share" it's bandwidth with other wireless on the same channel. Analog gear is not so versatile.

 

[two fingers]

Phones are just radios. (Well, they are actually little computers with a radio app, but that's picking nits.)

Some frequencies are more subject to interference than others. Digital is better at avoiding it but not 100%.

You can look up frequency band charts from the FCC (sometimes referred to as the band plan). Things are more tightly packed than you think, and only getting more crowded.