SVG Europe Audio – State of Wireless Mics Forum: “If we lose the spectrum, it’s going back to the boring stuff”

Sports television has never sounded so good, and the creative adoption of wireless microphone technology is playing a big part, providing more creative opportunities for broadcasters to deliver more visceral live packages. But it is not without its challenges, and broadcasters’ ability to work in these increasingly challenging environments is becoming more difficult. External forces threatening to reduce the available spectrum lurk around every corner, and each of those corners exists in a global environment that is far from harmonious.

In SVG Europe Audio’s State of Wireless Mics Forum, a panel of people from across the programme making and special events (PMSE) community illustrated once again how strategy, teamwork, the adoption of new technologies and clever network integration are helping negate these challenges on both sides of the Atlantic.

Too clever for our own good

Kicking off the online session, Jackie Green, director at Nexonic Design, delivered a comprehensive overview of where the PMSE industry is and began by asking a difficult question that introduced the elephant to the rest of the room; are we being too clever for our own good?

“Wireless devices are fundamental to developing engaging content production and advancing the fan experience, and there aren’t any PMSEs without that content,” she said. “But while the available spectrum continues to shrink, clever people keep finding more ways to add more wireless to not only keep the show running, but to improve it. Sound is getting better, consumer experiences are getting better, and we’re supporting more audio feeds to create more immersive experiences.

“Wireless capture enables a lot of different audio opportunities and everyone in this session is keenly aware of that. So while we can say that there is a problem, the people on the other side of production can’t see it.”

Green explained how the audio community has utilised a variety of approaches to achieve this, from spectrum sharing tools and technologies like wireless multichannel audio systems (WMAS) which make more efficient use of the available spectrum, to better frequency coordination and the offloading of content to other services like cellular, private 5G, the cloud or traditional Wi-Fi.

Yet there is an omnipresent threat that is not going away, and this is especially prescient in the US where the broadcast spectrum doesn’t generate any money for the government. As traditional over the air (OTA) broadcast networks lose ground to other delivery formats and open up spectrum for other uses, powerful international mobile telecommunications companies (IMTs) and mobile network operators (MNOs) are all poised to muscle in to grow their businesses; and auctioning that spectrum off could be worth billions of dollars.

In addition, argued Green, the PMSE industry is supporting these moves by delivering more engaging content for content providers to distribute, encouraging them to demand even more spectrum so they can grab more customers and make even more money.

“And so I ask the question; are we too clever for our own good?” Green challenged the group. “We keep solving the production problems that are caused by severely shrinking spectrum, and then we provide what is really an extraordinary asset to these companies that are producing and distributing entertainment content. That asset is a key ingredient to the others making money.”

Different approaches

The argument kicked off a debate that spanned continents, policy influencers and technology suppliers, and ended up with a call to action that sounded more like a timely battle cry than a warning. Joining Green on the table was a wide range of stakeholders, including two former Ofcom representatives in Martin Brock, Shure’s senior manager for spectrum and regulatory affairs, and Vaughan John, Sennheiser’s spectrum policy and standards manager. The panel also included Alex Lepges, technical director for EMEA at Audio-Technica; Gary Trenda, RF applications engineer at Sound Devices; and Jonny McClintock, commercial director for UK-based manufacturer AntennaWare.

As traditional broadcasters exit spaces that are being reallocated by regulators, the US appears to be focussed on selling them off. But the situation in Europe is very different. Sennheiser’s John presented a diverging picture with some countries in Europe coming to the end of digital terrestrial television distribution and others, like Spain, Italy and France, still seeing a future in DTT distribution.

“What has been a very stable sharing environment between PMSE and broadcasting for decades is starting to change,” said John. “But in Europe there does seem to be a better understanding and acknowledgement of the value and importance of PMSE, and many reports at national level reference and highlight PMSE. The radio spectrum policy group, an advisory group for the European Commission, has carried out a number of recommendations over the last 10 years which have highlighted the need for more spectrum for audio PMSE, even before the threat of changing DTT distribution highlighted the need to find additional bands.”

The licensing of spectrum in the UHF band for PMSE is very different in Europe too. In the UK it is coordinated by Ofcom and its historical use has been used to help develop policy within Europe, but Shure’s Brock sees clearer divisions between policy on both sides of the Atlantic.

“There’s quite a lot to unpack in Jackie’s presentation, but there are several things that jump out for me,” he said. “The situation in the US is more politicised and there is less visibility of wireless audio and PMSE; I think the US is a lot further down that road. And I also think Special Temporary Authorisations (STAs) have masked the problem; having something that was really intended for exceptional use that is now routinely used masks the underlying problem. We have heard from some regulators in Europe that although the US has lost some 600 spectrum, it is doing just fine. There’s some education that needs to happen.”

Technology applications

The stark difference between the US and European approaches also means that manufacturers need to be developing equipment that works even harder wherever they are being used globally. They not only need to be adaptable to different regulatory requirements and frequency bands, but they need to be more efficient within them.

In the case of Sound Devices, that means producing equipment that can be used in a large number of countries. “It’s understanding how you satisfy the different regulatory requirements in the various countries,” said Trenda. “We’ve got a system where a mobile device with location services is able to change country settings and automatically remap these frequency tables so that the user knows what they’re allowed to use, and we also have a separate mechanism that can unlock a frequency range for a special temporary license. So there’s some additional complexity needed to find all the extra bits of spectrum that we are needing to service some of these very large events.”

For AntennaWare it’s more about making the best use of the available spectrum to work more effectively in challenging environments, allowing greater range and reducing power consumption

“We can stay where we are and complain bitterly, or we can do what we always do, which is engineer our way to a better solution,” said McClintock. “Ultimately, everybody here is a problem solver by nature and we probably have two options in front of us. One is to make ourselves more efficient, such as applying compression algorithms that better utilises the spectrum that we’ve got.

“But I think the true route to the grassy uplands is the move to higher frequencies, and the performances that we have at ultra-high frequencies (UHF). You look at the frequencies of ultra-wideband (UWB) and it reads like a magic list of data availability and latency. The downside of those frequencies is body absorption, so even though you get all the potential of the data throughput, you suffer terribly whenever you’ve got a product close to human tissue. It is an issue that we have directly addressed with AntennaWare.”

Working together

There is no shortage of innovation – perhaps we are too clever for our own good after all – but when each one is developed independently and added to the list of other technological advances like WMAS and UWB, that too has the potential to create blockers. Lepges from Audio Technica emphasised the need for the wireless audio industry to work more closely together to develop more universal and interoperable solutions. He suggested creating technologies that can be used across different platforms and where a microphone could support multiple transmission technologies. He argued that by showing a united front and demonstrating efficiency and compatibility the industry could make it easier for regulators to understand and support its spectrum needs.

“We’re developing different technologies, and there are limits for every technology,” he said. “End users need to decide on which brand to buy, which is kind of weird. You buy a mixing console, and you know you can use any microphone you want because phantom power is standardised. As soon as you go with wireless systems, you need to have a complete kit with a transmitter and receiver. Nowadays even the antenna plays a role.

“It leads to segmentation in the market that is not pleasing for the user, and I think this is a risk for us as an industry. We will never be the size of the mobile phone industry because the number of users that we need at any one time is when it is at its peak, so you can’t easily make money out of the spectrum. We need the regulators and the governments to understand that there is something higher going on which we want to have; we want to have culture, and we want to keep it.

“To make that easier for them to fight for us, I think we need to work more closely together to find solutions which are more universal, which everybody can use, and are interoperable. We have an interest to be compatible with others and to make it easier for users to adopt.”

Not too late

If there was a unifying voice during the session, it was exactly this. Irrespective of how the US, Europe, the UK, or anywhere else regulates and manages spectrum policy, the landscape is becoming more and more challenging everywhere. And while politics and economics play a big part in all of that, it is ultimately our culture that will suffer, and it’s going to take a concerted and unified approach to protect the spectrum if the PMSE industry is to survive.

“If you leave your representation until there is a petition for rulemaking or a consultation, you’re leaving it too late,” warned Brock. “You’ve got to be part of the conversation before that happens. So when spectrum geeks like me come to the industry and say, “let us know your thoughts”, let them know your thoughts! When the industry offers a unified voice and contributes it can be incredibly powerful.”