By The Colton and Zara Band
BW360 Wireless System - First Impressions;
Our first look at the BW360 wireless microphone system was one of surprise. They came in a nice locking plastic case that has padded cutouts and a few additional cutouts for cords and any accessories. The microphones looked really nice, they were well constructed and had a good weight and feel to them. They have a nice amber LED display and the “ON/OFF/MUTE” button is located right below the LED display. The microphone is matt dark gray in color with a matt stainless mesh grill, it also has a seven sided rubber ring around the center of the grill to prevent rolling (nice feature).
We opened up the microphone to install the batteries, this is accomplished by un-screwing the metal base sleeve of the microphone. Once the sleeve is removed you see the battery location on one side of the microphone, the microphone takes two AA batteries. The batteries are simple to install and the battery compartment has a cut-away slot for your finger and thumb so you can pull out the battery with ease. On the same side as the battery compartment is the IR (infrared) window, this is used for programming frequencies and we will cover this later in this review.
Turning the microphone over reveals the “Select” and “Set” buttons for additional programming as well as the microphones programmed frequency range. This particular microphones frequency range was 655 – 679MHz. This side of the microphone also has the serial number and bar code for the microphone.
Once the batteries were installed, we turned on the microphone. This is done by holding the “ON/OFF/MUTE” button for three seconds. The “USER” LED display shows “ON” with decreasing countdown “–“ bars to indicate each second of time remaining until “ON” Turning the microphone “OFF” is the same process (we liked this feature as it would prevent turning the microphone on and or off accidentally) Once the microphone is on, the display is bright for three to four seconds then dims down to save power unless you touch the “ON/OFF/MUTE” switch again then the display brightens up again.
The “USER” display has a lot of information on it for its size. The display shows the frequency that the microphone is tuned to, the frequency display is in a six digit format (678.200MHz). It also shows antenna “Transmitter Output Level” (a nice feature) in a bar type format that can be adjusted in “LOW/MED/HI” level, along with an “antenna” symbol (Nice). There is also a “battery” indicator symbol in the shape of a battery with level bars inside the battery to show remaining battery life. The last part of the display shows a “GAIN” section; this can be adjusted from -3db to +9db gain. All of these features are adjusted via the “Select” and “Set” buttons accessible by removing the lower battery sleeve cover as mentioned above. Last is a “MUTE” indicator that has a symbol of a “Speaker” with a slash through it to indicate its “Muted” The “MUTE” feature is activated by pressing the “ON/OFF/MUTE button once to turn “ON” the “MUTE” feature and then pressing the button once again turns “OFF” the “MUTE” feature.
So, so far the microphone is pretty straight forward in functionality and operation. It looks good and has some pretty cool features that are nice to have on the microphone itself. Now on to the receiver unit!
BW360R Wireless Microphone Receiver - First Impressions;
Once unpacked, the BES BW360R UHF Wireless Receiver looked very cool. The receiver unit is comprised of a single space rack unit that houses two receivers in one unit. The receiver unit is black in color with the main display/control areas outlined in a brushed faux stainless faceplate. The faceplate surrounds the LED display along with a few function buttons as well as the Infrared Data Sync window. Each receiver unit contained in the BW360R is numbered (1) and (2) for easy identification.
The back of the BW360R unit is comprised of (A&B) external antenna BNC plug in locations, along with ¼” unbalanced and XLR balanced (A&B) outputs. There is also a DC power supply plug. The back of the unit is pretty straight forward and well laid out and each set of outputs is divided (A&B) per unit prospectively.
Powering on the BW360R is done by pushing the power button located on the left side of the front face of the unit. You have to hold the power button for a second for it to power up. This is a nice feature as it prevents accidentally turning on or off the unit. Turning off the unit is the same process. Once powered up, the power button is illuminated in “red”. The main display is illuminated in “amber” and has a ton of info contained in the display.
The display information from left to right, on the far left of the display is the “AF” or Audio Sound Level, the level is displayed in a vertical “Ladder” bar type of display. Basically this is the sound input level meter coming from the microphone. The next group of information is the “Group” and “Channel” numbers located on the top of the display just left of center. This information is what the unit and microphone channel is set too. Next to this is the “Lock” symbol. The next symbol is the “Mute” symbol. Then there is the “Antenna A/B” symbol to show what antenna is receiving the signal. Below these symbols and information is the “Frequency” display and is displayed in a six digit format, this particular frequency was set to 862.000 MHz.
Located to the right side of the display is the “RF” or Receiving Signal Status, this shows how much signal the unit is receiving from the microphone. The RF display is shown in a vertical ladder bar type of display along with a ascending numerical value located next to each ladder bar that goes from 10 to 40. Next to the RF level indicator is a “Squelch” level indicator. This display is also a vertical display but instead of a ladder bar type of display, it’s a pointing left “arrow” that coincides with the RF meter ladder bars to indicate the current level of squelch that is being applied.
At the very bottom of the display is the “IR” indicator along with the “Auto” channel search indicator and last but not least is the “Battery” level indicator. I thought this was a really cool feature because you can monitor the battery level in the microphone remotely. Really cool! The battery level indicator is in the shape of a battery in a horizontal position that has three sections to indicate a “LOW/MED/HI” battery level.
Programming for usage;
All of the programming and usage instructions are located online via the BES Audio website. You must register and login in order to access this information.
Without reading the instructions first…a guy thing for sure, we found it was pretty user intuitive and simple to figure out via the display on both the microphone and receiver units. The most simplest way to program the microphone to the receiver is by using the “IR” (Infrared) Data Sync. Simply turn on the receiver and microphone, remove the microphones lower sleeve, point the “IR” window on the microphone to the “IR” window on the receiver and press the “ADS” button on the BW360R receiver and presto your microphone is now programmed to the same frequency as the receiver, it’s that simple. Nice!
If you need to find a better or another frequency, just press the “Auto” button on the receiver and it will automatically search for a clear frequency, then repeat the “IR” Data Sync and your good to go. If you need to manually select a frequency, this is done by pressing the “SET” button once, this will cause the “Group” number to start flashing, once flashing you can change the group number by pressing the “Up or Down” arrow buttons under the “SET” button to find the desired frequency within a 1400MHz range, I think of this as “fine tuning” the frequency.
Next is setting the channel, this is done by pressing the “SET” button “twice” once you do this, the “Channel” indicator starts to flash. Once this occurs you can change the channel setting by pressing the up or down arrow buttons under the “SET” button. This gives you 16 different channels within the factory preset frequency range, this particular microphones frequency range is 838-865MHz
Another item that is pretty cool is the “AF OUT” The AF OUT is the sound level that can be adjusted by pressing the “SET” button Three times, the AF Out is displayed and the “AF” level meter lights up. The AF OUT can be adjusted in seven levels. I think of this as gain sensitivity adjustment.
So that’s about it for my first impression, I would say overall this looks to be a pretty awesome unit. It has some really nice features, very user friendly and a nice unit to have in your system arsenal. Next we’ll be doing a first time usage report on the BW600HT and the BW360R.
