Every now and then, Shure's Product Portfolio Manager and Technical Guru Gabriel Benitez receives
questions about various things audio. In this new Shure Notes department, Gabe serves up his favorite questions, tips and tricks.
We'll start with this one:
How many microphones can I use with this wireless microphone receiver?
The answer, simply put, is one microphone per receiver. This may be a simple question for an experienced sound
technician or engineer to answer but this is not an intuitive subject for a beginner.
Two wireless microphones transmitting on the same frequency interfere with each other and “confuse” the
wireless microphone receiver. This problem manifests itself by audio cutting in and out intermittently making
both wireless microphones useless.
While researching wireless products a customer may learn that Brand A has a receiver that can work with
two wireless microphones and Brand B can only operate with one. In these cases a receiver that can work
with two wireless microphones usually has two receivers simply built into one chassis. Some manufacturers
make up to six wireless receiver channels in one unit! This obviously increases product cost; it's a very
expensive feature.
Many wireless microphone receivers operate in a wide frequency range. This may give a customer the
impression that it can work with many frequencies simultaneously. With the ever-changing RF environment, wireless microphone receivers need to operate in a range of frequencies even though it only uses one frequency at a time. This gives the customer the flexibility to change an operating frequency which may experience interference to a clean frequency.
Think of this as a car radio that can tune from 88 MHz to 108 MHz, but a car radio that can only receive one
radio at a time.
As a rule of thumb every wireless microphone in use requires an individual receiver and each wireless system
must be tuned to a different compatible frequency.
