Josh Swart, the monitor engineer for Journey and an account executive at CLAIR Global, began working with Wisycom MPR50-IEM wideband receivers and MTK952 wideband dual transmitters on tour with the popular American rock band in 2016 and has now added a CSI16T wideband combiner to his workflow for the “Freedom Tour 2023.”
“The first thing that sold me on Wisycom was simply the fidelity of the units,” says Swart. “We set them up in the shop, in a scenario where you could hear them next to some competitors all at the same time. The competition wasn’t even close to providing the same caliber of sound, and that alone sold me on the brand. Once I got them out on the road and saw how unbelievably stable they were from the RF side, I was blown away. LED video panels have always been a challenge in the past, but the Wisycom solutions have no RF interference.
“We currently use 12 channels of Wisycom’s MTK952 dual transmitters with 24 MPR50-IEM packs along with the CSI16T combiner,” adds Swart. “I drive eight of the current mixes via AES and the last four via analog.”
Swart also notes the various parameters available on the volume knob of the MPR50-IEM packs: “Two of the artists didn’t want the volume knob to move during a show and we would always have to tape them off, but now I can put them on a locked volume. So, it doesn’t matter if the volume pot is on 1 or 10―it won’t move from the setting that we have predetermined, even if I run my cue pack on the option of variable volume. I can turn it down, but if I blindly spin my pack up, I know it will stop at the same volume that the two primary artists are currently using. This feature has been a game changer.”
In addition, he points to the audio fidelity of the IEMs. “Wisycom is as wide and deep as a hardwired IEM solution; and it is wider than any other wireless IEM pack I have heard,” he says. “That alone helps you place things in the audio spectrum and gives you an enormous amount of space in your mixes, which is an invaluable asset to monitor engineers. The RF is also rock solid, there is zero noise floor and no annoying hiss when audio is not present.”
