RØDE Wireless Go II 2.4GHz Limits
People typically associate 2.4 GHz with the internet connected toasters harassing their owners, baby monitors that are carried on the old school WiFi if it’s not the newer dual band kind that includes the 5 GHz radio spectrum.
However what people often forget that 2.4GHz had become way more liberal spectrum and is prone to a lot of interference thus many typically for WiFi use the less crowded 5 GHz spectrum.
This kit does not employ any diversity signal path and even on the UHF systems it is important to check for properly done true spaced diversity with complete separate RX/TX and spaced antennas etc.
So I went out with a friend of my acting as the warm body narrating improv to see where the limits are with the signal path .. all of the kit was on loan from an acquaintance in film and I have done nothing expect normalised levels tiny bit to see things as-is.
Realistically one would use this kit with lapel microphones which sadly cannot be locked on the TRRS inputs but we just wanted to see how far we can go with the internal Omni mics and we got to mount them quite close where we wanted them to be as this kit is aimed more for “the next level” from onboard mics for the guerilla vloggers etc. who typically have had to hold their face stuck to the camera in order to be heard :)
It’s about the use case..
Not only that but depending on the use-case and environment 2.4 GHz can be seriously limiting say compared to UHF whilst solving other problems.
Compared to the WiFi standard use you need to think the realtime problems where with TCP/IP surfing web pages over HTTPs the latency might not matter that much or buffering with streaming services but for making films you really want to match your audio track to the moving lips / other things where it can become highly distracting very quickly.
Unless you are deliberately likes of emulating a thunder off the flash delay that is :)
This article mostly touches radio microphones modern use of the 2.4 GHz spectrum bypassing the trouble associated with using the ever decreasing UHF spectrum.
Note this article is separate from other things like compressor, limiter and companding (dangle some keys a.k.a key-test..) or workflow difficulties what may influence purchasing decisions and are important things to be aware of.
GO II includes on-board recording for rescuing all the TX/RX disconnects to mitigate the radio problem but the workflow has it’s own challenges.
If you take long clips on both audio and video and don’t have many clips like in typical narrative scenario you might do well without having any pluraleyes type of automation that matches either the plurals or the TX/RX disconnect markers with the digital pee-pee which I am not aware there is any tool yet.
Line of Sight (LoS) and/or reflections ..
UHF rarely struggles in “open environment” where as these 2.4GHz kits are notorious of struggling as soon as your talent turns their back on the receiver breaking the Line of Sight (LoS) — or some random crowd dances between your TX/RX.
Question largely at that point is how difficult it is for the TX/RX to recover if we got there to begin with and we have no time to rescue the audio with painful workflow to sync the on-board recording to replace the digital pee-pee we get from the fault scenarios.
Normally the talent is close by so we shouldn’t be too worried about the distane but here we illustrate the recovery scenarios and how the reflectivity affects things.
Like on the below Left/Right TX units were rigged on the shoulders whilst the environment had reflections at top and some pillars.
Use of headphones strongly required, please.
Tracking shots from close distance with 90deg reflections
Normally talent is facing the camera but we illustrate what happens when the talent is facing the whole time off us whilst we have some crowd getting between us whilst we keep close distance tracking shot in medium reflective EXT. environment.
Left rigged at waist back, Right rigged front near mouth. Use headphones, please.
Open Environment
Open environment when losing the LoS is really difficult for these mics and we can hear how the alignment between TX/RX really destroys quickly the wireless signal path.
Left rigged at waist back, Right rigged front near mouth. Use headphones, please.
Horizon is out there..
Perhaps even more crucially we can illustrate a radio horizon scenario where we see LoS effect very easily. Typically radio horizon is something you need to take into account where one designs radio transmission over the curvature of earth but it’s everywhere when it comes to LoS ….
Left rigged at waist back, Right rigged front near mouth. Use headphones, please.
How about over the water?
Water effects are important to test with radio transmission at 2.4GHz. I really love that SFX coming from that creaking dock too.
Left rigged at waist back, Right rigged front near mouth. Use headphones, please.
Let’s reflect a bit …
90deg boxed reflections surrounding us will work really well.
Left rigged at waist back, Right rigged front near mouth. Use headphones, please.
Humidity will be your enemy
Okay we had a dead body.. kind of. I think these units need to be wrapped into a medical wrap that keeps the humidity out if you are say to work in Sydney summer humidity and/or related environment. These things are not IP rated.
Left rigged at waist back, Right rigged front near mouth. Use headphones, please.
