Another wireless Mic question.

[Dylan Morgan]

Can someone please tell me what the purpose of having control over the sensitivity on the receiver is? If you set your transmitter to the correct level, is bringing up the sensitivity on the receiver adding gain? I'm guessing that it's there so you can adjust your levels if something changes, but not totally sure. Also, if you suddenly have clipping, does bringing down the levels on the receiver eliminate those peaks?

[Steve House]

Strictly speaking, receiver sensitivity deals with its sensitivity to the RF signal from the transmitter and has nothing to do with the level of its audio output. An FM receiver puts out the same level of audio with a strong signal or weak one. If the transmitter is nice and strong, reduciing the receiver sensitivity might lower any background hiss thats present.

Clipping can occur at several points in the chain. If a loud sound causes the transmitter to clip at its input, nothing you do t the receiver will help. OTOH, if the receiver is putting out too high a signal, clipping can occur at the device it's feeding and in such cases lowering the receiver output levels will help.

[Dylan Morgan]

Thanks for the response. Is there any preferred setting for the receiver? I'm guessing I don't want to set it to "0" with my levels set perfectly with my transmitter.

[John Willett]

Originally Posted by Dylan Morgan

Can someone please tell me what the purpose of having control over the sensitivity on the receiver is? If you set your transmitter to the correct level, is bringing up the sensitivity on the receiver adding gain? I'm guessing that it's there so you can adjust your levels if something changes, but not totally sure. Also, if you suddenly have clipping, does bringing down the levels on the receiver eliminate those peaks?

You don't normally have a sensitivity control on the receiver at all.

The *transmitter* has the sensitivity control so you can match the transmitter to the microphone level.

On the receiver you have an *output level* control to match the receiver to whatever to are sending the signal to - eg: mic. level, consumer line level or professional line level. It is normally best to output the receiver at line level for best quality and feed to a line level input.

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by John Willett

You don't normally have a sensitivity control on the receiver at all.

...

Indeed, I should have mentioned that. I'm not aware of any wireless receivers that do have a sensiivity control but that's not to say they might not exist. There are other types of communications receivers that do have sensitivity adjustments - my Kenwood R-5000 does, for example - so was answering more generically. Thanks for clarifying.

[Paul R Johnson]

The sensitivity control on a communications receiver does the same job as the input gain on the mixer channel strip - just matches the input level to the level expected by the first amplification stage to optimise level matching - maximising signal to noise and minimising distortion.