McCune Audio Video Lighting, recently decided to begin
replacing its entire stock of wireless audio equipment with Sennheiser
wireless, a decision made after extensive testing of all the wireless equipment
on the market, is noteworthy.
"With more and more devices taking up bandwidth, not
the least of which will be HDTV, frequency problems for wireless audio are
looming," explained Allan McCune, the company's third generation president.
"Right now, on the West Coast, we're still OK, but we wanted to make any
necessary changes before we encountered problems. Of course, the sound engineers
who work with us live or die by the reliability of the wireless equipment they
use. So we asked ten of our engineers to extensively test all of the wireless
equipment out there to ensure that we will have the systems that will allow
them to be successful going forward."
The tests were conducted with each manufacturer's flagship high-end equipment
in the same place under controlled conditions. The engineers compared sound
quality, usability, and the apparent durability of construction. In addition,
they determined the distances that the transmitters would reliably work and
challenged their RF integrity by removing antennas and crowding bands.
The results were unambiguous. "All of them independently agreed that Sennheiser's
technology was several steps ahead of everything else," McCune said.
"First and foremost, Sennheiser had an obvious edge in sound quality. But
just as importantly, Sennheiser navigated the crowded RF band with greater
agility and reliability than the competition, and their software and firmware
was more intuitive and easier to use." There was no tradeoff. In every respect,
the Sennheiser equipment excelled.
McCune's initial order includes four 8-channel packages. Each package contains
four Sennheiser EM 550 G2 dual receivers; eight SK 500 G2 body-pack transmitters
with MKE 2 lavalier heads; four SKM 935 G2 dynamic cardioid handheld
transmitters; and a single NET 1 system organizer. Over the course of the next
several years, they plan to completely replace all of their 200 wireless
channels with Sennheiser equipment thanks to the great support and product
education of Sennheiser's San Francisco Sales Manager, Marke Burgstahler.
"Everybody wants to use the newest, prettiest stuff," laughed McCune,
"so the new Sennheiser equipment has been quite busy." Notably,
McCune AVL's Sennheiser equipment was used at the Playboy Jazz Fest and will be
used at the TED Conference in
McCune Audio Video Lighting is one of the oldest and largest
rental and sound service companies in the country. With locations in