by Dan Currie, Detroit
You’ll never know what you’re missing until you have used the Invisible Waves™ RF Command Center™ from Kaltman Creations. Doing RF without it is like time aligning subs to the mains without a dual FFT. Sure it can be done, but in an industry where the time between load in and doors can be limited, 20 minutes saved is the difference between having a nap, eating or catching up with some old friends. The RF Command Center™ saves time and ensures solid results come show time.
Currently I work for a few sound companies based out of Detroit. I can be a house tech in theatres, corporate A1 or systems tech. My goal has always been to eliminate as many variables during a show and the RF Command Center™ helps me achieve that. Having a baseball game across the street and another show at the venue next door really cuts down on the usable RF bandwidth. Another sound company in the same hotel handling breakout rooms for their events used to be a headache. When the press comes in to cover an event it now only takes a minute or two to assign them a frequency. All parties come away happy.
One company I work for uses wireless DMX for many of their shows. Scanning the 2.4GHz environment ensures that hotel guests have wifi, the lights act as they should and I can stay connected to my digital console and systems processors. Gone are the days where I plug in an ethernet cable come show time.
On any given day I can be using between 5 and 25 wireless devices: microphones, lavs, comm. It depends on the gig. Regardless of the amount of units the RF Command Center™ has become an indispensable item in my toolbox. It’s not about how many wireless devices I have, but who else is using wireless units in the vicinity. One of the better features of the RF Command Center™ is that it is compact enough to take on fly dates.
My favorite part of the RF Command Center™ is the ability to incorporate the RF-intermodPRO option. With the click of a button, all of my wireless devices can be assigned based on their intermod calculation; this where all of my wireless frequencies get assigned. The software allows me to have pre-named inventory groups and the FCC zip-code-based TV station database is very easy to use. It is interesting how the FCC database will sometimes show that a particular TV station should be broadcasting, when in fact it’s not. Or when it shows that no TV station should exist when in fact it does. So, the best part of the RF Command Center™ and RF-intermodPRO combination (which incorporates the real-time spectrum data right into the intermod calculation), confirms or discredits what the FCC data states. You can’t beat real-time RF analysis!
Dan is currently located in greater Detroit working for Allen Audio Systems, JC Audio and Light and Premier Creative Group.
