Orbital Sound – Broadcasting Communications at BVE 2009

Orbital highlights the benefits of Zaxcom's digital wireless mic transceiver.

Orbital provides system design, sales and rental services to the broadcast industry, and at Broadcast Video Expo 2009 we demonstrated
equipment from Zaxcom – including the TRX900 digital wireless microphone system – as well as products from Telex, RTS and HME.

Zaxcom – digital wireless flexibility.
As Zaxcom's exclusive UK dealer, we gave centre stage to the diminutive Zaxcom TRX900, headlining it as the industry's first digital
wireless microphone transceiver with built-in IFB facility. With applications in ENG, and in film and television production, it also offers a back-up recording capability, as Tim Sherratt, Technical Director at Orbital Sound, outlined:

"This apparently simple step of integrating an IFB receiver with the tiny transmitter has opened up some extremely useful and powerful
possibilities. Audio output is linear and inherently of very high quality – virtually indistinguishable from a cabled microphone – while the
digital modulation ensures the design is free of intermodulation artefacts: up to 30 TRX900 transmitters can be operated simultaneously
within the same block of frequencies.

Individual sound recordists, as well as recordist-and-camera crews, will benefit from the system's flexibility in a number of scenarios, from
establishing stereo camera links, to stereo links with internal back-up recording, while using the integrated IFB facility to deliver a
confidence return signal, complete with time code, back to a TRX900.
It's a great concept, representing a shrewd investment at its extremely competitive price point and is already in use with sound recordists on some major productions – we look forward to announcing these shortly."

Capable of stereo operation, the TRX900 transmitter is accompanied by the integral IFB receiver and, with an optional IFB remote control transmitter, adjustments can be made to parameters such as body-pack audio gain, high-pass filter settings and RF channel selection, even while transmitting.
The optional recording module enables up to 6 hours of two-channel, time-coded storage, with the IFB transmitter offering time code synchronisation.
Zaxcom's TRX900 can be deployed in multi-channel systems, with the time-coded recordings synchronised across the whole system, and with the choice of BWF or MP3 time-code stamped files.
The TRX900 is designed for operation between 518 and 870MHz, and can be supplied with either a CR123 or twin-AA batteries. Other Zaxcom products include the Deva range of hard disk and Flash media recording and mixing systems.

At BVE 2009, Orbital Sound also showed the Telex Communications' BTR intercom systems, including the BTR-800 two-channel UHF frequency-agile wireless intercom system, and the BTR-700 single-channel base station.
These products were complemented by the RTS brand from Telex Communications, which is renowned as one of the widest ranges of hardwired and wireless inter-communications products, and is based on 40 years' experience of the broadcast sector.
Products include the ADAM™, ADAM™-CS and ZEUS™ Digital Matrix Intercom Systems, which represent the state-of-the-art of scalable intercom design and offer the capacity to handle up to 1,000 users.