My Sennheiser wireless phones (Rs 160) exhibit sufficient latency to preclude them from recording tasks, so I'm wondering: are there wireless phones out there that are low latency?
I didn't even know these not-cheap 'phones had latency until I tried recording with them.
Those particular phones use a lossless compression system, so the sound has first got to be converted to digital, then compressed, then sent/recieved, then uncompressed and then converted back to analogue.
I’ve got no idea why they do the lossless compression unless its simply to make the bandwidth used within in the 2.4GHz band as small as possible. But they really are meant for listening, not mixing.
But that’s going to add to the standard wi-fi latency (which is normally between 1 and 3 ms for stage gear).
So I’d look at phones without any compression system (for lowest latency), or analogue transmitter technology (for no latency). But I will admit to having no idea what’s currently out there.
The latest incarnation of Bluetooth, Bluetooth LE gets real world latency down in 15ms territory. I’ve read that theoretical latencies of around 7-8 might be achievable.
You are down to audio interface territory.
But in your situation you’d need a BT LE transmitter as well. Don’t know what’s out there though.
Thanks for the suggestions: the IEM + headphones option looks interesting.
I'm living in a student cupboard for a few more months, and I'm tripping over guitar and headphone cables, whence my desire to reduce cable pollution whenever I engage in some nifty guitar-pedal footwork.
What's your ceiling like? I realised my cable situation could be vastly improved when I realised that I had a set of beams over my head and cabling could go up and over rather than down to the floor.
I'm not sure you'll improve much on what you have, even with Bluetooth AptX LL. Something like the Audeze Maxwell gets the latency down low enough, but you need to use the transmitter dongle connected to a computer AFAIUI.
I'd recommend staying with a cabled solution for the headphones.
In my opinion latency can indeed be a significant challenge, especially for tasks like recording where timing is crucial. While the RS 160 model may not meet your needs, there are wireless headphones available that offer low latency performance. Personally I know that aptX low latency technology, can help to reduce audio delay.
I've got some Senny RS120s I use occasionally. They're good old RF, so no latency.
As I rarely do any critical mixing, can't really comment on the (audio) frequency response, but they're nice and light on the neck while doing repetitive editing stuff etc…
