Asia-Pacific Broadcasting (APB) January/February 2016 Volume 33, Issue 1 | Page 23

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