CREATION
January-February 2016
Audio never
sounded better
Alister Chapman (pictured) is a freelance
director of photography, producer, editor
and stereographer who has worked in
broadcast television since 1984. His works
include the Twister Tours documentary,
the Farnborough, Above and Beyond TV
series documentary, and the Mobile One
Rally Challenge TV series. Here, he shares
his experience using Sony’s UWP-D range
of radio microphones, a hybrid digital
microphone that uses digital processing
combined with traditional FM transmission.
by alister chapman
For years I have been happily using
Sony’s UWP-V series radio micro-
phones. These radio microphones
served me very well, getting carted
all over the world from the Arizona
Desert to Arctic Norway.
However, when I was shown
some of the neat features of the
new UWP-D range of radio micro
phones, I decided to get the UWP-
D11 kit. The kit comprises a belt
pack transmitter with a lavalier
microphone, and a belt pack re-
ceiver that comes with belt clips
and a camera mounting bracket.
As a cameraman, I find micro-
phones a pretty boring subject. But
audio is just as important as your
pictures — some would say more
important. Poor quality sound can
23
On the surface, the
UWP-D may only seem
like a small upgrade
over the previous
UWP-V series. But there
are improvements
and when combined
together into this even
smaller and neater
package, it makes
them a worthwhile
upgrade.
definitely ruin an otherwise decent
shot.
The UWP-D radio microphones
have some clever features. To me,
it will be the ability to have the re-
ceiver scan for a clear and unused
channel. Once it has found a clear
channel, it can set the frequency
of the transmitter to match the
receiver via infrared. This takes just
moments to do, and is so much eas-
ier than messing around trying to
manually enter channel numbers or
frequencies. Once your frequency’s
set, you can set the transmitter to a
low power setting.
So, what about the ‘D’ bit in
UWP-D? To get decent quality
sound from an FM radio micro-
phone, the audio from the trans-
mitter is compressed, making it
possible to transmit a wide dynamic
range over a single FM channel.
Then, in the receiver, the audio
is expanded to restore a natural
sound range. This process is called
a ‘compander’ (Compression Ex-
pander).
Traditional systems do this with
basic analogue circuits, b