Earworn Monitors: Lindop Speaks
Wireless equipment for entertainment use competes with television broadcast for spectrum alocation
Garwood Communications was founded in 1992 by Lindop who, as mentioned
in the previous article in this series, advanced the EWM concept while
mixing Stevie Wonder. Early VHF devices were road-tested on North America
tours by artists such as Michael Bolton and The Outfield.
On the eve of the release of the System 24, Garwood’s first all-new product
in four years, LSMAG! cornered Lindop at his new offices in London for
a historical chat and glance into the crystal ball.
While Lindop discussed Garwood- specific experiences here, the technical
references are globally generic to Professional EWM use.
LSMAG!: When did this EWM thing really start?
CL: There are many claims as to who first pioneered RF-based earworn
monitoring, but for me it started when I toured Stevie Wonder with in
1987. Stevie had a full-blown, mobile, broadcast standard FM radio station
- Wonderland Radio - set up for touring that was so powerful it could
sometimes compete with any commercial radio stations in the area.
Wonder used a standard FM Walkman receiver and ear buds and tuned this
domestic system in to Wonderland Radio whose sole broadcast content was
his own performance - minus the band whose job was simply to follow his
lead.
This was in effect ‘Pirate Radio” and an imprisonable offence in the UK
where, as other countries where RF access is strictly controlled. The
owner of the trucking company coming to a show at Wembley turned on his
radio around Hampstead and got Stevie’s monitor mix. Wembley to Hampstead
is around six miles. I have no idea ow we got away with it.
Stevie’s original idea was to listen on standard Walkman buds so he could
walk around a bit during the show. This idea was improved when this guy
from Virginia came along, took an impression of Stevie’s ears, designed
a mold, put Sony drivers inside this mold and called them micro-monitors.
LSMAG!: Were others developing this technology?
CL: A few other companies including Future Sonics, were carrying
around crude FM transmitters, while continuing to use the FM Walkman-type
receivers, incorporating their own versions of micro-monitors into these
systems.
One year later, I did a gig for Elaine Paige, who was killing her musicians
with monitor level and killing her career because she couldn’t do the
type of gigs she needed to do at those monitor levels. Remembering Stevie’s
set-up, I cast around London looking for the required RF bits of kit needed
to assemble some kind of system.
I soon realized it wasn’t to be found. The only option was to make one.
I must mention at this point that beyond emergency fixes at shows, using
a soldering iron ‘in earnest’ was never my forte.
Enter, London’s project specialists Hardware House and, in particular,
guru and all-round nice guy George Glossop, who among other things made
ear pieces. Unknown to me, George had already been working on something
similar to an EWM system with Howard Jones.
I started to discover that, coincidently and separately, many skilled
people had been working toward the same thing. Everybody had different
parts of the jigsaw. Some people were doing ear-pieces, some people were
doing radio, but no-one had yet put the jigsaw together and made a saleable
system.
At that time Hardware House were probably the UK’s number one RF experts.
Martin Noar serviced all their gear and was the guy who made Nady radio
mics work in the UK.
LSMAG!: What about the first Radio Station?
CL: I had the first prototype Radio Station made, which I carried
around the USA with a band called the Outfield. We used it with the drummer
of the Outfield but it was a bit of a lash-up and soon the RF side stopped
working.
As a compromise, we used the headphone output on the front to provide
a hard wire system for the drummer, and he loved it! I reported this major
success back to Yan Stile and Pete Edmonds at CaneGreen and soon after
we formed Personal Radio Systems to munufacture the first VHF Radio Stations,
used by the Pet Shop Boys, Sinead O’Connor and Luther Vandross.
Vandross took a system back to America and showed it to Marty Garcia at
Future Sonics who had been providing his EWM rig to that point. Marty
then flew to the UK and offered to buy one hundred systems. Bearing in
mind we’d only made twenty-five, and it had taken a year to sell eighteen,
teaming up with Marty was the turning point.
Martin Noar and I came up with the first UHF units and agreed that Marty
could brand them Future Sonics in the US, while everywhere else they remained
as Personal Radio Systems. The first twenty-five units didn’t even have
a brand name on them because we didn’t even have a company back then.”
LSMAG!: The original UHF systems were quite pricey weren’t they?
CL: A full UHF Radio Station System at the time was in the region
of US$8000 and, as well as being a practical piece of kit, all are still
in use as far as I know, and something of a status symbol. Systems are
far more affordable now. Current economies of scale allow us to produce
System 24 at around a quarter of the original Radio Station price.
LSMAG!: How has RF legislation in different territories affected
the design and feature set?
CL: The “original” Radio Station EWM was a one-frequency VHF unit,
but for full-time production we chose to move to the UHF band to avoid
any VHF radio mics and guitar systems. We also added an alternative second
frequency.
The UHF band in the UK is used primarily by television. If an EWM signal
were to be “stepped on” by any TV signal, the engineer could off-set the
transmitter and receiver frequencies slightly and be interference free.
This later became a kind of artificial standard format for all earworn
monitor systems. It must be remembered this arose from UK broadcasting
system peculiarities. This seems not particularly relevant elsewhere.
Radio mics of the period, for example, only had one frequency.
LSMAG!: Can you elaborate more on international use?
CL: Everyone is confused by the lack of an international standard.
In different parts of the world there are different regulations regarding
the use of RF spectrum and transmission equipment. Early Radio Stations
users carried a bunch of systems or interchangeable modules. If the crew
arrived in a country and the frequency they had set up already worked,
without interference, they’d use it - legal or not.
Today, there’s heavier policing of the airwaves as governments sell off
chunks of spectrum. Wireless equipment for entertainment use competes
with television broadcast for spectrum allocation. Digital broadcasting
and Mobile telephone network expansions put further pressure on available
spectrum.
Channel designations come from TV bands. Unfortunately, these don’t correspond
between different territories. Channel 69 in the UK is not the same as
North American Channel 69. It’s a different television standard with different
bandwidth.
When systems move from the UK to the US, or visa-versa, interference can
be a problem. As such, we had to develop a series of interchangeable frequency
modules. In the North America, we found the area from 520Meg to around
600Meg worked well. What was legal in the UK was designated Channel 69,
around 855Meg.
LSMAG!: How did Radio Station deal with the congested spectrum?
CL: “Early on, end-users wanted a unit that had enough frequencies
for world tours. That’s where the IDS Radio Station came in with up to
sixty-four on-board frequencies. We spent seven years moving from crystal-based
technology, on which the original Radio Station was based, to synthesised
technology, which allows programmable frequency sets.
These days, when specifying systems, we try to refer to the frequency
alone, although you still find legislation which only refers to TV bands
because TV is the major user. Even within Europe the situation is a mess.
For example, the UK Channel 69 is unusable elsewhere in Europe.
Some useable frequencies in Belgium correspond to US frequencies. In neighboring
Holland legal frequencies are in a band which is no good anywhere in Europe.
In Germany, it’s okay if you use something like 800Meg, which, if you
are lucky, gets you round most of Scandinavia as well.
World touring however, is less of a problem anymore. For the same price,
you can buy four systems, each set to a different region.
Meanwhile, the amount of wireless required on a production (multiple radio
mic, earworn and comms systems) increases every year and therefore synthesized
technology is the only way forward.
Our latest System24 offers many frequencies, custom-programmed by region
or to order, creating multiple options.
LSMAG!: Many techniques pioneered by PA guys have been adopted
by broadcasters. Has this happened in Earworn monitorland?
CL: A live sound engineer’s job is very similar to that of a broadcast
engineer. The difference is mainly the zeros, 20,000 at the gig, two million
viewers. The first broadcast people to adopt EWMs were location recordists.
For Garwood this started with Madonna in the film Evita.
Increasingly, Directors want to record dialogue, music and vocals straight
to film, rather than doing protracted and expensive over-dubs. To do this,
the sound recordist has to distribute feeds to the Producer. Director,
Director’s assistant, Cameras and so on - normally around six audio feeds,
or, as a monitor engineer would term it, one foldback mix to six outputs.
The initial solution was to distribut a load of belt packs and transmit
what they were recording. Sound recordists then began to feed sync music
or other audio to actors who have to speak on cue, be given their lines,
or listen to music. Usually, the actor will just use one ear, the side
off-camera, for the cues from the RF link.
Soon, several high-profile news readers soon found they had a better quality
audio feed from our system than they were used to with their existing
interrupt fold-back (IFB) system. (Editor’s Note: The UK term is presenter
talkback.)
LSMAG!: What is next for EWMs?
CL: Earworn systems are presently at an intermediate stage. Globally,
governments realiz they can sell available spectrum (expensively) to Mobile
Phone Franchises, and Radio and TV Broadcasters.
This means our less lucrative entertainment technologies will be moved
to much higher frequencies than we currently occupy. One possibility is
the relatively small, unregulated band around 2.4gig, presently used mostly
by low power, domestic wireless devices such as garage door openers and
domestic video sender transmitters.
More likely is a much higher frequency band for Professional use. Either
band will require a totally different design technology from any current
models. The deadline for this change remains unclear, and as with most
government initiatives will probably slip, but the time will soon come
when existing UHF, EWM and Radio Microphone systems will be rendered obsolete.
July/August 2001 Live Sound International