building an in ear system

[[Director] drew ryan]

for each individual mix you would need a separate transmitter. You can have multiple receivers for each transmitter though. So if you are creating 1 mix for several people, you just need one transmitter and however many receivers.

As to the fuzz problem, is it distortion, or more of a higher frequency hiss?

[EricE]

Originally Posted by audioa89

1. For wireless would I need one transmitter and lets say 4 receivers for each person and ill be set. If we only run 1 mix. (obviously headphones) Or do I need multiple transmitters for each person.

I'm not necessarily an expert, but it makes sense to me that if all your vocalists are using the same mix, and your wireless gear supports it, one transmitter should be able to drive multiple receivers.

At least I can't see any technical reason why that wouldn't work

2. Wired I have two headphone amps and have used them but we constantly have fuzz/static sound in the headphones. We have moved the amp away from electrical stuff and have ruled out it being a problem with cables. Tried both amps and they have the same problem and have used 2 different mixers and they have the same problem. Any ideas????

Your power source for your gear matters. A couple of good articles:

http://www.sweetwater.com/expert-cen.../d--03/10/1998
http://artsites.ucsc.edu/EMS/music/t...Grounding.html

The most effective thing I have found is suggestion 1 in the second link. Another way to think of grounding issues are they are really voltage potential difference issues, and the easiest way to control potential differences is to make sure you are plugging everything into the same source. And to clarify what that means, you need to understand how your electrical system is wired (or get an electrician to check it out/tell you). In homes and some commercial buildings, at least in the US, 220V will be coming in - two hot leads and a neutral. Your typical home and some smaller commercial circuit breaker panels will alternate these two hot leads every other slot - single pole breakers yield a 110V circuit, two pole breakers yield a 220V circuit. You want all of your AV equipment to be on the same hot "leg" - if split on multiple circuit breakers, make sure they are not directly adjacent to each other but alternated with a gap between if on the same side of the panel. If you can plug everything into the same circuit - great! That's the easiest. But if you are like us and you have stuff on stage, and the mixer in the back of the house and even worse the amps in a third location, a single circuit may not be feasible. Never mind power issues on larger systems too!

Larger buildings can have higher voltage coming in, with on-premise transformers and more feeds - we have a 480V system that has four hot lines in our power distribution system that house the circuit breakers and power distribution for the larger loads like the HVAC or lighting system. Unlike home systems, all the breakers in each of the four sections of our power distribution center are on the same hot lead (four hot leads, four sections - each with their own hot lead) which made it easier to troubleshoot (think of a power distribution system as a giant metal cabinet with what looks like four home panels as part of it housing the smaller breakers for individual lighting and plug circuits). After some investigation and correcting some of the labeling that was wrong (grrr!) we discovered that the front of house, mixer in the back, and the amps were all on separate hot loads! Our electricians spend about an hour re-arranging circuits to get all of the audio-related circuits onto one hot leg (into the same section on our power distribution center) and viola! Hiss is gone! I had to stop blaming the cheap dimmers on our wall sconces (just for the noise anyway, I still hate them ) for the system hiss.

If you aren't in a space you control (portable church, for example), this is harder to deal with. There are various kinds of isolators you can try - but so far having clean and consistent power up front is the far most reliable way to go. And needless to say, if you have to move anything around get a qualified electrician to do it! You really don't want to be playing around in a panel if you don't know what you are doing, and in some jurisdictions - especially in a commercial setting - not pulling proper permits before making changes could void your insurance if you ever have, say, an electrical fire so also be careful of that too! We are all on tight budgets, especially with the current economic situations - but this is NOT an area you want to cut corners on!

Good luck!

One final note - if you are mobile or in a space you don't control, and can't have the stuff on stage and your mixer/amps on the same circuit, but you can get everything onto two circuits - one for the stage and one for the mix/amps in the back - one of the advantages of digital or digital snakes is some of them will let you use optical or can have an optical isolator installed which will electrically separate the stuff on stage vs. the rest of the equipment. Just another thought and an example of where digital can sometimes provide additional flexibility (and it could be as easy as just replacing the snake - you don't necessarily need a digital board too). Anyway, some food for thought.