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Cell phone interface for Remote Mix 4 and crowd noise

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domerlady

Guest
I manage a mid-market station which does a lot of high school sports broadcasts. We recently purchased a JK Audio RemoteMix 4 for remotes and sports broadcasts.

It does fine with remote broadcasts via bluetooth or plugged in cell. It does fine with sportscasts on a landline. But so far, when we put it in a gym, crowd noise screws up everything--even when we only have mikes (dynamic mikes) on the sportscaster and color guy.

We've been told by the manufacturer that the noise cancellation factors within a phone make a big difference in sportscasts. Right now, we are using a Samsung SGH-a837, which we have to use via Bluetooth as it has no input jack opening to plug in an interface. It does great in our typical remote broadcast. It is a mess inside a gym where noise is bouncing everywhere.

Does anybody use the RemoteMix 4 inside a gym with a cell phone and get good results? If so, could you please let me know what kind of phone works best?

I would appreciate your help SO much. :)
 
We use the JK RemoteMixSport, mostly with POTS or RPU, but occasionally with cell phones.
More to the point, cell phone only when we have no other alternative.

Your problem is the digital cell phone transmitter. This is a limited bandwidth digital channel, and the cell phone does not have that much processing power. It cannot handle a lot of audio without creating undesirable processing effects, most noticeably a "swimming" sound; clipping; or other strange noises.

The only real solution is to use headset mikes, such as the Beyer DT-190, which minimize the amount of crowd noise getting into the system. Unfortunately, this also makes the broadcast sound kind of "dry," compared even to a normal wired telephone feed. However, at least the audience can understand what the p-b-p people are saying, instead of being buried in a sea of noise.
 
This sounds like a problem I had on the first cell-phone pxp we ever did on the station I was working for at the time (this was the late 90s). I had everything all set up before the equipment left the station and couldn't figure out why the crowd noise was dominating the talent once the first quarter started. Kept telling the talent to turn their mics up.

Wrong move. The cell phone was being overdriven, causing the terrible audio.

This was using a 4 channel Mackie mixer and an early digital cell phone from Nokia. Mikes were Beyer headsets.

So to follow on what Tom said ... be sure you're using good headsets. And don't let the levels go too high on the RemoteMix. I might suggest telling the pxp guy to set up for -10 dB for his pregame. It'll get louder as the game goes on.
 
Or, the mike in the cell phone is still on and picking up crowd noise. Double check to make sure it is off when you switch to Bluetooth
 
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