Radio mic packs, licenses and Range E (823-863 MHz)

FarleyUK · July 2022

Hi all,

I've got a Sennheiser G4 guitar radio wireless system, which is in Range E (823-863MHz). I've been trying to make sense of the OFCOM site around licensing for it, and it has to be one of the crappest sites I've ever used.

I've seen that 863-865MHz is now free for public use, which is great, but I cannot see anything at all about purchasing a yearly license for the other frequencies.

Has anyone done this before? Any pointers would be really appreciated here, as it looks like a minefield.

ManWithoutSkin · July 2022

A good few years back, my old band played main stage of Reading Festival. In the lead up to the festival, we received an email stating that due to the number of bands playing there would be frequency congestion so we had to submit a list of the frequencies were were using and pay a fee to reserve them. There would be an OFCOM inspector on site checking everyone's paperwork, that the frequencies being used were correct and if you didn't pay the fee you couldn't use wireless. We'd played Reading festival a few time before and had never had this, so assumed this was a new thing so submitted the paperwork and paid up.

On the day, as the previous years there was no inspector there policing it. Just as we're about to go on someone else switches on a wireless pack and now there's white noise interference blasting continuously from one of our guitar amps. We lose a few minutes from our set and are forced to drop a song as we rescan and find a free frequency. A friend working for another band, runs over to help. It turned out later he was the one that caused the problem in the first place by needlessly deciding to turn on his bands wireless packs.

Not sure my story helps you in anyway, but I would I pay OFCOM a single penny. Absolutely no chance,

FarleyUK · July 2022

ManWithoutSkin said:

A good few years back, my old band played main stage of Reading Festival. In the lead up to the festival, we received an email stating that due to the number of bands playing there would be frequency congestion so we had to submit a list of the frequencies were were using and pay a fee to reserve them. There would be an OFCOM inspector on site checking everyone's paperwork, that the frequencies being used were correct and if you didn't pay the fee you couldn't use wireless. We'd played Reading festival a few time before and had never had this, so assumed this was a new thing so submitted the paperwork and paid up.

On the day, as the previous years there was no inspector there policing it. Just as we're about to go on someone else switches on a wireless pack and now there's white noise interference blasting continuously from one of our guitar amps. We lose a few minutes from our set and are forced to drop a song as we rescan and find a free frequency. A friend working for another band, runs over to help. It turned out later he was the one that caused the problem in the first place by needlessly deciding to turn on his bands wireless packs.

Not sure my story helps you in anyway, but I would I pay OFCOM a single penny. Absolutely no chance,

That's a pretty awesome story!!

Yeah, I'm tempted to just stick with the 'free' frequencies; I can scan to see the congestion, so seems to make sense. Plus, I doubt playing at the Dog and Duck occasionally will get OFCOM targeting me....!

mike257 · July 2022

FarleyUK said:

Hi all,

I've got a Sennheiser G4 guitar radio wireless system, which is in Range E (823-863MHz). I've been trying to make sense of the OFCOM site around licensing for it, and it has to be one of the crappest sites I've ever used.

I've seen that 863-865MHz is now free for public use, which is great, but I cannot see anything at all about purchasing a yearly license for the other frequencies.

Has anyone done this before? Any pointers would be really appreciated here, as it looks like a minefield.

823 - 832 MHz is what's known as the "Duplex Gap" and is useable with an annual PMSE Shared License (about £85/year, the same license that covers 606-614).

As you've said, 863-865 is the license free band.

The rest of the tuning range in what Sennheiser call E Band sits between those two groups and is used for 4G mobile networks, so isn't available for legal use in the UK.

As far as festival frequency management goes, you can plan and prep it all you want, but if some divvy turns a rack of transmitters on when they shouldn't, there's very little you can do about it. Courteous techs don't switch their racks on when somebody else is on stage, just in case! I did Rock Am Ring/Rock Im Park the other week, no RF coordination plan for the site, I got in early and got clean frequencies, left my transmitters powered up so they wouldn't appear clean on anyone elses scan and *still* had to retune three times between load-in and show because of other people's kit. At Park, I had to pull the lead singer off half way through the first song because someone fired a rack up backstage after we went on and blew out the frequency her ears were on. I was livid.

Conversely, I actually saw real live OFCOM folks going from stage to stage at Glastonbury the other week making sure everyone was where they should be, which was nice to see!

FarleyUK · July 2022

That’s brilliant, thanks for confirming!

PolarityMan · July 2022

I was considering going wireless at the much cheaper end but sounds like it might be a recipe for disaster if even pro level gear has issues.

FarleyUK · July 2022

PolarityMan said:

I was considering going wireless at the much cheaper end but sounds like it might be a recipe for disaster if even pro level gear has issues.

I'm selling a great AKG 2.4GHz digital wireless kit if you're interested! It's digital and not radio.

PolarityMan · July 2022

FarleyUK said:

PolarityMan said:

I was considering going wireless at the much cheaper end but sounds like it might be a recipe for disaster if even pro level gear has issues.

I'm selling a great AKG 2.4GHz digital wireless kit if you're interested! It's digital and not radio.

That does seem quite a bargain. I'd be running the transmitter on my pedal board so will have to get a tape measure out and see if it would fit under a pedal train.

mike257 · July 2022

PolarityMan said:

I was considering going wireless at the much cheaper end but sounds like it might be a recipe for disaster if even pro level gear has issues.

To be fair, my "pro level gear having issues" experiences are entirely contained to busy, multistage festival sites where virtually every band is running their own ears racks, on top of whatever the in house production is running, and people are turning up at different points in the day and not always following the best protocols about checking which frequencies are available before firing up their kit. You can have the best wireless equipment in the world, but if someone fires up another one next to you that's tuned to the same frequency, you're still going to have a problem!

At the very high end of Shure's pro kit, it can now jump automatically to another frequency if interference is detected, but that's only on their top bollocks very expensive stuff.

All that said, I'd avoid cheap wireless and at the very least buy used pro level kit. Way less issues and a significant jump in quality.

mike257 · July 2022

FarleyUK said:

PolarityMan said:

I was considering going wireless at the much cheaper end but sounds like it might be a recipe for disaster if even pro level gear has issues.

I'm selling a great AKG 2.4GHz digital wireless kit if you're interested! It's digital and not radio.

It's still radio, even though it's digital, and it's in the same frequency band as bog standard WiFi and will have all the congestion issues that come with that if you find yourself in a wifi-heavy environment.

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Radio mic packs, licenses and Range E (823-863 MHz)

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