Once again, I find myself running late on the review, which undoubtedly makes someone pissed off at me. And as with most of the reviews I procrastinate on, I wish that I had done it sooner, because I usually find myself pleasantly surprised. This go-around, my victim is AKG's DMS 700 Digital Wireless RF system, using AKG's DSR 700 digital receiver.
The Gear
If you have been paying any attention at all, you know that the entire wireless world has been turned on its butt in the past year or two. As of June 12, all of that cool high-end stuff operating in the 698-806 MHz range that cost you a small fortune became spare parts at best. And no one knows where all of this will end up by the time the FCC, Google, HP and Microsoft get done screwing us. One reaction has been a slow move toward digital in the wireless world.
I had to do some research here, so bear with me. Digital wireless is not really new. A company called Xwire was selling digital guitar wireless back in the 1990s. That technology was bought out and kind of disappeared. About four years ago, Xwire founder Guy Coker emerged from non-compete exile and started X2 Digital Wireless, which did the guitar thing again and moved quickly into a handheld mic product. He got bought again, this time by Line 6, which put out a version of the digital handheld a couple of years ago.
AKG announced their first digital wireless more than a year ago, and we have been itching to try one ever since. When I first started researching the product, I thought that it was priced at $1,799 (MAP price). With such a modest price tag, I honestly wasn't expecting much. In the past, I've experienced good RF and bad RF, and I can tell you, the good and bad is usually dictated by price. But a closer look showed that what I thought was the price of the system is the price of the receiver – which puts a whole different spin on things. Handheld and bodypack transmitters are another grand or so a pop.
One of the selling points is a very wide operating range – from the mid-500 to the high-600 MHz range. (There is a second band available in the mid-600 to high-700 range, but as we noted before, those are not usable at this point in the U.S.) That wide range, split into 25 kHz slots, means that you can – at least in theory – run as many as 100 of these puppies at the same time. But I live and work in Las Vegas, which is also known as Wireless Hell, so I am not even going to think about trying to run 100 of anyone's wireless.
Another cool thing is the inclusion of some dbx algorithms for compression and limiting and – using the optional Ethernet hub – the ability to control it all via Harman's HiQNet system from a laptop, or even an iPhone.
The Gig
I do double duty, working as an A-1 for HAS Productions in Las Vegas, and I also run all of the audio for a large church here. This one was a church gig.
As I crack open the box, I find a fairly sexy-looking 2-channel single rack space unit paired with a handheld and a bodypack. To my surprise, both handheld and pack are constructed out of metal. This is a huge plus in my eyes. When you buy lesser RF, it is commonly made of plastic. Merely based on construction, I will qualify it good RF. Once the system was started up, I started scrolling through all of the functions, and I found it very easy to use. The system has an onboard spectrum scanner that easily found "clean" channels in my area. Once the clean channel was found, all the info was passed on to the transmitter via an IR sync.
The system has very wide 155 MHz operating range, which makes finding an open channel very easy. One thing that I found extremely cool was that the system has an onboard, low-cut, 3-band EQ, dbx compressor and dbx limiter built in. This makes for a wide variety of options where outboard processing is unavailable.
On the microphone end, I was also pleased. You can purchase the system with either the D5 dynamic, D7 dynamic or a C5 condenser capsules. The test piece had the C5 condenser capsule. I used it equally on singing and spoken word. Although it performed well on both, I thought it shined greater on spoken word. The spoken word was very clear and had rich and full bottom end (pun intended). What I noticed was that as I switched to a singing voice, the low end tapered off and it became a little rough around 2KHz, although it was easily smoothed out with EQ.
I think that the system's most powerful asset is in its ability to network, its use of Harman's HiQnet, and a sweet iPhone app. I've seen the system in use on the road, but was not able to test the network ability due to my lack of having AKG's HUB4000 at my disposal.
Let's get back to that price thing for a moment. All in all, this product does quite a lot for the reasonable price tag. Yes, 1,800 bucks for a receiver is a lot. But keep in mind that this is a two-channel unit. Throw in two handhelds, and you are looking at right in the $2,000-per-channel range, and remember that I was ready to write the system off when I though it was $1,800 total. As I said, wireless is one place where, generally, you get what you pay for.
Add the fact that few of the sound guys I know are RF experts. We want a wireless system that sounds good, is easy to use and doesn't drop out in the middle of a show. The AKG 700 system completely qualifies on all of those fronts.
AKG DMS 700 Digital Wireless
What it is: Dual channel digital wireless system.
Who it's for: How many 700 MHz units do you have to replace? It's probably for you…
Pros: Heavy-duty construction. Onboard EQ, compression and limiting, easy to set up and use.
Cons: It's not cheap, but then, there is that whole "get what you pay for" thing…
How Much: $1,799 MAP for the DSR 700 receiver. Transmitters are $1,099 to $1,199, depending on capsule type and format (handheld or bodypack).
