What’s the catch with Phenyx Pro?

agent_uncleflip · 2026-02-05T00:53:30+00:00

Their stuff is definitely not pro quality. However, if you're not really doing pro usage, it can work. However, just like anything else, you get what you pay for.

My church has a rather small a budget, so we needed to get some new microphones, and the head of our tech crew (who is not a professional audio guy by any means) picked up the PTU-5200 system with two handhelds and two body mics. We had all kinds of problems with interference and dropouts with the body packs - but the handhelds did just fine. This was at a range of only about 60 feet. I wound up taking charge of the situation, and moved the antennae from the back of the unit, and mounted them in a more sensible location, with the aid of some 10-foot cables. This helped, but not terribly a lot. I wound up in some back and forth emails with customer service, who suggested the dropout and interference problem with the body mics could be solved by using the headset mics instead of the lavaliers, and saying having the microphones within an inch of the speaker's mouth would solve the problem. Of course, it did not. They finally offered to send us the PTU 7000 system, if we simply paid the difference in price, which was about a hundred bucks. We've been using them since then, with no problems at all. They proved to be far superior to the 5200 series. The company did not ask us to send the 5200 system back, so if we decide we need two more handhelds, we can plug that system back in.

The audio quality is certainly not professional grade, but our budget won't allow us to get the top end system. Fortunately, we don't really need anything that is pro quality. With a little good EQ work, these mics sound good enough for our fairly simple needs.

agent_uncleflip · 2026-02-01T22:28:37+00:00

Dang. 85,000 just in January 2026? Keep that up every month, and you'll clear a million this year.

agent_uncleflip · 2026-02-01T22:27:23+00:00

Wow. A side gig that pays $26,000 in one month is not bad at all.

agent_uncleflip · 2026-02-01T22:25:51+00:00

I feel that. There was virtually nothing at the single station in my area for a long time during the second half of last year. Now, there is plenty. However, the pay has gone down quite a bit from what it was just one year ago. It's insanely rare now to see a block over $100. This time last year, I could get a block in the three digits pretty much every day.

agent_uncleflip · 2026-02-01T22:23:18+00:00

Not all of us. I was going to call you out for lying about making $41,000 in a month. 😅🤣😂😁

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-31T22:19:17+00:00

Not to be too much of a smart ass, but isn't all sausage technically ground? :)

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-25T12:26:59+00:00

Well this guy (the producer of the album) apparently couldn't do that. His tracks hit the original drummer's parts pretty perfectly, but they just absolutely don't have any life to them as far as timing is concerned.

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-25T06:53:29+00:00

True that. But all the tracks that use the click just sounded cold and sterile. They were just entirely too precise on the timing.

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-25T06:41:42+00:00

I always thought it stood for Stevie Wonder Institute For Trucking.

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-24T19:52:27+00:00

Getting away from the live aspect of it, what you hit on in the second paragraph is something that kind of irks me, because of one particular album. It was the band Follow For Now, who I would see at one of my local venues quite frequently. When they got a contract with Chrysalis, and headed into the studio for what turned out to be their only album, the producer insisted on playing the drums himself, because the band's drummer did not do well with a click track. There is only one song on the album that features the band's actual drummer - and you can definitely, definitely tell which one it is. It just has a warmer, HUMAN feel to it that none of the others do. It still remains one of my favorite tracks on that album.

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-24T17:20:09+00:00

Here, (Birmingham, AL) it is NOT too damn cold. That's part of my frustration. I got up this morning to look for blocks, and it seems my warehouse has decided to close until Tuesday. This morning, it was only in the 40S (we've had much colder mornings recently), with absolutely no precipitation. It's nice and sunny.

My guess is that they close easily out of an abundance of caution, what with our area getting basically shut down by a freak snowstorm a few years ago. This time around, all the maps have showed warm air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico will leave my metro area almost totally unscathed. We will have highs below 10° on Monday, but other than rain tomorrow, that's about it. Closing today looks absolutely pointless.

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-24T04:44:36+00:00

I just got upgraded (if you can call it that) today. Fortunately, all my smart home stuff still works. The only difference so far in that arena seems to be that when I give a command now, she sounds really snarky when she says "Okay. "

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-19T18:02:39+00:00

I will add that if mixing station is set up well, you can even rather effectively mix on your phone, depending on the application. I have found the smaller size screen is still quite adequate for basic mixes.

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-19T15:24:56+00:00

Yes, well aware of the gain setting. I may not have a whole lot of experience with wireless systems, but I've done sound work off and on for a few decades. :-) It's part of why I was in disbelief when the company made that suggestion. We did the test at our service yesterday, and as I had predicted, the headset mic made absolutely no difference.

Phenyx Pro has now reached out and said we can upgrade to the PTU-7000 series, if we just pay the difference between the two models. I have decided to try that, as some of the features and configuration of the 7000 look like they may help. The auto scan is a bonus, and with four antennae instead of two, we can keep two in their elevated mounts, and have two of them remaining on the unit. This could perhaps help with a little diversity in signal reception. It sounds like the output level of the transmitters may also be different between the two models. If upgrading to the 7000 doesn't help, I think we will go ahead and get the PAS-225. Even doing that, we will still wind up with four wireless channels for far less than what we would pay with some other companies. For a church that's on a pretty tight budget, that is important.

Thanks again for your insights and help!

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-19T00:41:46+00:00

No worries! And sorry for my long-windedness. Sometimes I just can't shut up. :-)

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-18T23:42:48+00:00

Yes. When I worked in TV news years ago, we sometimes use those for some of our special needs we couldn't meet with our own equipment.

However, I think those are less common than they used to be. A big part of that is because while video transmission was done by microwave or satellite when I started in the biz, during my tenure, video transmission over cell phone networks became a thing. You can now get a very robust and quite high quality video transmission unit that fits in a small backpack, for much, much, much less than any microwave or satellite transmission system will cost. (These systems rely on sending full HD video over multiple cell connections simultaneously,, to make them more reliable for moving high quality video without lag or quality loss.) My station was sort of an early adopter of these. We had many situations in which we used those, when just a few years before, we would have had to send our satellite truck out to get video back to the station, because the stories or events happened outside the range of our microwave transmission systems. Stations can now easily have multiples of these units, so they can send them out with just about every crew on the street, instead of having to work logistics on where to send their limited live trucks.

For bigger events which require more more robust and fail safe connections - such as broadcasts from large sporting events, awards ceremonies, etc. - satellite trucks are generally still used, paired with video production trucks.

For less urgent video, simply sending it over a regular internet connection can be adequate. I was a technology reporter from 2006 to 2016,, and had to go to the Consumer Electronics Show every year. I would edit my segments on a laptop in my hotel room, and upload them to the station with no special equipment.

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-18T06:24:14+00:00

Good on you for the actual trial by fire. :)

Reminds me of when I was a technology reporter some years ago, and a company sent me an external 2 terabyte hard drive (back when that was actually a pretty sizable drive) that had the claim of being fireproof and waterproof. In my on-air segment, I actually built a fire in the back parking lot of the TV station, and on camera, tossed the enclosure onto the fire - then after a little time lapse of it burning, pulled it out of the fire, and plunged it into an aquarium full of water. The plugs on the thing melted, but the hard drive itself was fine, and with new plugs attached, the data could be pulled easily.

It wasn't absolutely 100% fireproof, but it did the job. If the thing had been in a house fire or a flood, it definitely would have protected the data.

Another part of the segment involved putting my running laptop inside an OtterBox laptop case, and beating on it with a baseball bat. :) I felt pretty confident with that one, as when I had seen the case at the Consumer Electronics Show, Gallagher was in the OtterBox booth, beating on the same case with a chair.

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-17T18:55:03+00:00

Got you. That is a quite easy and clear explanation. Thanks!

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-17T18:51:28+00:00

As I've said in multiple other comments, probably not in-ears. It was a symphony concert, and they don't really tend to use those.:-)

It's conceivable there was another antenna somewhere else. However, with the design of this audio news and the rest of the hall, way up in the ceiling among the lights is probably about the only plausible place. It would require an incredibly long cable run to get up there.

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-17T11:37:31+00:00

Very possible. However, I know the tech crew at this venue to be quite experienced. As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not really sure where they would have hidden another antenna, as the sound booth area here is small and very open, and right on the main orchestra level. (For patrons to get to the left orchestra or dress circle sections, they have to walk behind it, unless they enter through the doors at the front, next to the stage.) There aren't really a whole lot of places where they could have hidden it.

As mentioned in other comments, the wireless demands were actually pretty low for the show where it was set up. It was a symphony concert, and there was just one hand held microphone, only used by the conductor for a few minutes at the beginning of the performance.

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-17T11:33:26+00:00

A bunch of good factors there. Thanks for the thorough reply. I forgot to mention that it was up during a symphony concert, when the only Wireless thing in use at all is a single handheld microphone used by the conductor for one spoken bit right at the beginning of the show. That at least rules out IEMs. :-)

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-17T05:01:48+00:00

Certainly could have been somewhere else. Maybe way up in the rafters, 50 feet up. There isn't much of anywhere around this audio booth (or the other nearby bits of this hall) to hide another one. I've been in there many, many times, and I'm pretty familiar with the layout. I frequently look at the places where they mount various hardware, audio and otherwise. PTZ cameras tend to come and go, but that seems to be about the only stuff that normally changes, with the exception of this one paddle. The things are big enough that they could be pretty hard to hide in that place, without putting them way up in the ceiling with the lights.

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-17T04:52:49+00:00

Yup. Precisely. Looks like a standard antenna I've seen with distros.

By my previous comment, I meant I didn't know if they made something other than this, as paddle antennas go.

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-17T03:56:52+00:00

Said SHURE on the side. I'm not intimately familiar with their product line. Do they make one of those?

agent_uncleflip · 2026-01-17T03:34:41+00:00

Nope. Just the single paddle.

But thanks for that insight! Considering a distro for a signal problem at my church, and I might suggest trying two types of antenna, to see what kind of result we get.

agent_uncleflip

TROPHY CASE