VocoPro16 Channel UHF Wireless Headset & Lapel Mic System with Mic-On-Chip Technology, Black, 14.00 x 18.00 x 24.00

The headsets and lapel mics provided are crap. The lapel mics a huge and the headset mics have a cover over the mic ends that will literally fall off without out touching them. ( found some of them just laying in the box) not talking about the foam mic covers. If you want to use other brands of mics you must be prepared to modify them as this brand of mics uses only a two wire mini xlr ( has three terminals but only uses 2) every brand out there uses at least three ( signal, ground and resistor) or printed circuit board) so the have a lot to be unwanted noise. The rest of the components are actually very good though. But it is 16 wireless mics for 1200 bucks what can you say.

I think they got this right - this system, with the right knowledge and supporting systems, makes an indisputable difference in the quality of a stage performance. Count me impressed. But there are lots of details.The Hardware --Many thoughtful little details made unpacking and assembly pleasant. I was very pleased from the start. There is an outer box with a handle and an inner box with a handle. This comes in handy, depending on your storage ideas; more on this later. There is an instruction manual that seems well written. I immediately consulted one section, in the middle, which was quite easy to find, and found it to be helpful both in words and diagrams. It answered my question in 20 seconds and I was on my way. I expect the rest of the manual is equally useful, but I'm just surprised that there even IS a printed manual! This is one of the many "old school" details that pleases. They also included batteries, which I did **not** expect. This came in pretty handy in my case. I used the provided coupling plate to couple pairs of units, then added the rackmount wings and stuck the pair of pairs in my rackmount box. All antennae seated soundly in the sockets. We're not talking premium quality experience, but very good; not chinsy at all.Likewise, the body packs are plastic, but feel solid. The battery doors do not feel like they'll break easily. They open with relative ease, hinge securely, and close definitively. Batteries fit well and release well, which seems uncommon these days! Pushbutton on top works well and is very clever with its simplicity -- once on, if you click once, it waits for you to click a second time before going into "mute" mode. But once you start interacting with it, and it knows you're not just an accidental push, then it responds immediately on every push. That's clever. That's the way it should be. Push and hold to turn off. The LED colors are helpful. I feel like all end-users can get the hang of this without much trouble. Body packs are labeled clearly A-P - nice and large, right on the pack.The headsets look like they'd work well, and wear well, but I don't yet have experience with them. We used the lapel mics. The cable is great - woven shielding that's so much easier to work with than typical plastic, and slides on the skin much better, too, when it's routed under clothing. The connector is standard, and implemented well enough. Again, not super-premium, but clicks well and holds well. If anything, my students had some trouble pressing the "button" firmly enough to release the cord from the body pack. Not a deal-breaker. The lapel windscreen is pretty large (the mic is pretty large, which, I hope, means that the diaphragm is large and/or robust). So, this isn't a fancy "hidden" system. But making these parts small comes with disadvantages, as well. The mic swivels well on the clip, and the clip seems very strong - good, thick plastic. I don't expect these to break easily. +1, for sure. (You just have to train the actors to use the swivel feature, and, of course, to keep the mic head, itself, distanced from the clothing properly... but that's another conversation... more below, too.)The Test --I hooked everything up to do an initial test. Now, I'm used to studio-quality stuff, so I was displeased to hear the hiss and fuzz even though I kind-of expected it. Likewise, the frequency response left plenty to be desired when listening to the nearly-raw (female vocal speech) signal through my headphones. However, in the end (you'll have to read on), the showtime clarity and experience far outweighed any lack of fidelity, and, with a properly set expander (and/or gate, possibly) and a little channel EQ, the fidelity as experienced in a live room was PLENTY good. Let me back-up a bit and describe my setup, first:My Setup --I used the XLR quads (that seem fine, in quality) to get from the receivers to my XR18. I used all 16 channels. (I.e., I did NOT use the unbalanced "mixed out" that each unit has.) This way, I had channel-by-channel control, from my wireless tablet, of all mics. I set the gain knobs on the receiver units to "up" (half-way), then established gain for each actor, independently, on the XAir, by asking them to belt out their strongest lines. Then I unmuted channels to get house levels.Now, I actually did this, first, for a single channel and person. Then I played with gating the signal, to keep the noise out, at least while the actor wasn't speaking. But I landed on a 37dB-threshold expander with a default (medium) knee (using the XAir app (android), actually, not XAir Edit (my preferred tool). So I just took the basic default there, other than setting the threshold. It worked like a charm. Then I duplicated these channel settings to the other 15. Now, I had all the other body packs on, sitting on a table, with mics attached, and, because of some vibration in the table or something, they were being particularly noisy, but with this expander setup, I could get just about perfect silence until really using one of the mics. With the EQ and all, the audio, again, was not perfectly expressive of the real source. This could not pass for a studio mic by any stretch of the imagination. But it clearly represented the voice and made for very a decently pleasant experience, even over headphones. (Once I got to the venue, which was not a very ideal room, the signal coming out of the medium-grade speaker was really quite impressive. No distortion that would be perceived by any normal person AT ALL.)My Test (again) --So, that brings us back to the real test. This is actually the point at which I established the many actors' gains. Once the gain structure was sound, I unmuted and leveled and we were off. Generally, of course, I tried to mute backstagers, which is pretty tough to do on the fly. Ideally, I would have set up scenes and just cycled through them, but we went for it, just a day after getting the mics, with no practice, and it came off really well. The whole show would have been your typical, "well, that was nice, even though I couldn't really hear many of the words" (if unreinforced). Instead, it was very clear, even in the far reaches of the auditorium. I never could have achieved that with a few condenser (pencil) mics front-stage without fighting feedback and background noise (feet on the stage, etc.). This was a top-notch experience, with one problem....The Problem --It's mostly a training problem. The students are great dramatists, constantly waving their arms about and hitting their chests... and mics! Pop. So, if I'd anticipated this, I could have done some more mixer magic to help keep that at bay. Next time. But the tradeoff was well worth it. A few bumps was nothing compared to being able to hear everybody clearly.Back to the Review --Opening all body-pack doors and removing batteries was unchallenging. This is saying a lot, I've found, with some devices these days. The ergonomics are pretty good. +1. Furthermore, the entire set of 16 body packs (with mics disconnected) fits very nicely, stacked two high in ONE top foam in the case. If they planned it this way, I've gotta give it to 'em. It's brilliant. I'll try to post a picture. This means I can store and carry the entire set of 16 body packs and lapels in one case. (The lapels go on the bottom floor, in the larger foam cutaways.) AND, the batteries fit in another of the foam cutaways, standing upright, side-by-side. Everything is tight and padded, well preserved for next time. I can carry the case without anything moving, bumping or scraping, inside. I have to keep the headsets and extra hardware in another case. I put all the original packaging (bags) in the third. The fourth is "empty". The cases are perfectly rectangular and stack easily. I like keeping even the "outer boxes", so it's nice that they have handles, too. This will make getting to and from shows very easy - I'll take just the one case, or, if I'll need headsets, then two. Or I can re-pack headsets where the lapels currently are, on the lower deck of the one main case, stacked, in their protective bags, in the headset-shaped cutaways. It's a little tight, but not bad if you're gentle.All in all, great product. I'd like to give it 5 stars, and, honestly, given the price, it really should get 5 stars. For a high-fidelity (studio-quality) version of the same, I'm sure the price tag would be 5-10 times as much, and I'm sure you could spend 20 times as much for really nice gear. But that gear also often comes with more complexity, e.g., in the body-packs; this simple system really does the trick, and, since it's relatively dispensable, a replacement could be easily acquired if one is damaged. Again, FOH - sounds great, when setup is carefully done. So who needs studio?! This is a perfect solution for so many student and, I'd say, even professional groups, IF you know how to set up the rest of your reinforcement system. Good work, designers and makers. Maybe I'll even re-consider, and mark this up to 5 stars. I tend to only reserve 5-star ratings for super high-end stuff. We'll see....