Sound Devices has announced the introduction of a new modulation type for its wireless products as part of version 5.00 firmware for the A10-TX, A10-RX, A20-Mini and companion app A20-Remote.
The new long-range modulation is 100-percent digital and and stated by the company to offer the longest transmission distance of any wireless system on the market.¹ Both line-of-sight and heavy multipath transmission can see marked improvements over the original “standard” modulation. Long-range modulation is stated to offer the same audio quality (10 Hz – 20 kHz) as the standard modulation with little additional latency.
“We’ve been very pleased with the performance of the new long-range modulation in our field testing,” says Gary Trenda, RF applications engineer at Sound Devices. “We’re seeing significant improvements to audio range in all RF environments.”
The new firmware also introduces a quality meter or Q-meter. Previously, the A10/A20 system only offered an RSSI meter that displays information on incoming signal strength. In an RF-heavy environment, it’s possible to have a strong incoming signal but still experience dropouts due to RF interference. The new Q-meter displays the difference between the signal from the transmitter and any interference. When a frequency without little to no interference is selected, the Q-meter will display five bars.
Other enhancements in version 5.00 (which can be downloaded here) include additional group control settings in A20-Remote, menu enhancements for A20-Remote and A10-RX, and more.
¹ When comparing systems with same transmit power, same antennas, and same transmission frequency.
