If you're anything like me and haven't exactly been
thrilled with the current selection of Wireless lav kits,
then you're about to get really excited.
Let's get Undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
[epic and thrilling music]
♪
What is happening everybody? I'm Gerald Undone.
And today we're going to be looking at the Deity Connect,
a 2.4GHz wireless audio system from Deity.
Couple notes. First of all, the sound you're hearing right now
is coming from this lav here,
which is one of the included--
Which as you've probably noticed doesn't sound that great.
So, story time. I made that video just over
two months ago when the Deity Connect was still
in pre-production and I was more so trying to cover
the awesome functionality of the wireless unit
than I was the microphone quality.
However, two things happened when I uploaded that video
many of you who saw it found the audio quality distracting
from what makes the Deity Connect great. And two,
it turned out Deity didn't actually want me to upload
my video on the pre-production model back then
and instead just wanted my feedback so they could
use it for their final retail release.
So, I took that video down and then I intended on making
a whole new video later on at this time,
but I was worried that that would come across
as a little bit sneaky, as if I was trying
to pretend that that first mic never existed because many
of you had heard it when you watched that original video,
even though I wasn't supposed to upload it.
But I decided instead to keep that old video
and show you it and mention it because it allows us to focus on
how awesome it is that in less than two months,
Deity not only made new microphones,
but improved the functionality of the wireless,
added a whole new feature, and lowered the noise floor.
And of course, shipped me their final retail version
to make this updated review. That level of care,
combined with the fact that the system
is firmware upgradeable makes me
even more comfortable recommending the Deity Connect,
especially now that it sounds so much better
because you've been listening to the updated lav
this entire time. Now, please excuse the fact
that my voice does sound a little bit
more harsh than normal.
I just got back from NAB
and have been yelling for the last four days.
Alright, so let's jump back to two months ago
again and see what else this bozo has to say,
but we'll use the audio from my hypercardioid mic
instead of the old lavs so that
we're not distracted by the audio quality.
Keep in mind though that my studio mic that we're going
to hear in this recording does sound better than even this new
updated lav, or pretty much any lav for that matter
and that's to be expected. And I'll interject occasionally
to let you know about the other updates to the system.
OK. So, let's start off with the receiver, the Deity DUO-RX,
and first of all, I just love the design here.
The shape and colours are pleasing,
which are nicely accented by the colour of the display,
and it has a really nice weight and feel
and the outer shell is aluminum, so it seems really durable.
On the bottom you'll find a 1/4-20 thread and a 3/8 thread
and there's also a Velcro band that can go in this place
if you want to attach it to a sound bag or to a tripod leg,
and this brings us to the first of many thoughtful
included accessories; the 1/4-20 to shoe adapter.
Now these things are extremely useful in general.
But in this case, you would screw it to the bottom
of the receiver and then you can mount your receiver into
the hot shoe of your camera. On this side of the device
there's a USB-C charger which you would mostly use
for charging, because all of these devices have
internal rechargeable batteries, so no more AAs. Takes about
an hour to charge and then it'll last you about ten hours and
the kit includes a USB Type-A to Type-C charging cable--
That cable is now black and now there's two of them.
You can also use the USB-C port for firmware updates because
of another thoughtful accessory, the USB Type-A
to Type-C which is included, which then lets you download
the firmware and put it on a flash drive, and then you would
just put the flash drive into the adapter.
And then into your receiver or transmitter
via the USB-C port, and then you just run the update using
the interface and it's really easy and intuitive and I thought
this was a really novel and smart way to go about it.
You can also use the Type-C port to link two receivers together
with the included Type-C to Type-C cable which allows you
to link the two receivers up so you can connect
up to four transmitters in a unified system.
On the opposite side we have LED indicators
for power and mute, as well as
sync confirmation for both of the transmitters.
Then you have the antennas. These are the two adjustable
ones that it comes with but they're interchangeable.
So, if the situation calls for it,
you can connect much larger antennas if you need them.
Also, if you're only planning on using one transmitter,
you can actually take one of these antennas
off of here and attach it to that transmitter
and leave one on the receiver, and that'll give you
a stronger connection over the smaller antenna
that normally comes on the transmitter.
There's four buttons on the face, which make
the menus incredibly easy and intuitive to navigate.
You've got the up and down arrows, and then select
and back buttons, and the back button doubles
as the power button when held, and the select button
is also the menu button when the menu isn't up.
And this interface shows just how feature-rich this system is.
First off, you've got the home screen, which shows
which transmitters are connected,
their signal strength,
their audio status, and their battery life,
as well as the battery life of the receiver in the middle.
It even shows the audio levels being picked up
by each mic. Those VUs were made more sensitive
in the latest version because one of the complaints was
that they didn't seem to move enough during regular dialogue.
They could still possibly benefit from more tuning
but they're definitely a lot more effective now.
This has to go in the record books as one of
the most useful layouts on a one-inch screen I've ever seen.
Everything crucial you need to know is there in a glance.
You can also control if you want
the screen to stay on all the time,
or if you want it turn off after a while to save battery,
and those choices range from five seconds
up to ten minutes, with six options in-between,
and of course "Never" to leave it always on. Above that,
you have the deeper options for managing each transmitter,
and these will actually override the settings on the transmitter
so you don't have to approach the talent
or fish through your pockets to change the settings.
You can do it all right from here.
And then you also have the receiver options which include
the output settings, the pair trigger,
and that firmware update command
I was telling you about earlier. You don't actually need
to pair the transmitters by going into the menu though,
they pair automatically, and they're quite quick,
usually within five seconds of turning the transmitter on
they're paired. That pair option
is obviously good to have though.
That way if something is preventing the automatic pairing
you can go in and manually override it just like you would
with a Bluetooth connection, and when you first
get the device, you'll probably have to
manually pair it just to get it all set up
so that the automation process can work.
Now to elaborate a little bit on those output settings
that I mentioned in the receiver menu.
This is another feature that I was really impressed by.
So, on this side of the receiver,
we have two 3.5mm output jacks
that are labelled "A" and "B" and you can configure them
however you want. You can run a mono signal line for line
so that one mic will come out mono from jack A and the other
mic will come out mono from jack B,
which you can do with either a 3.5mm cable
or with another awesome included accessory,
the 3.5mm to XLR cable,
which will give you dual balanced outputs for each mic.
And that's exactly what I'm doing now,
I have it connected this way from the 3.5 to the XLR adapter
running right into my audio interface.
and all of the jacks use the locking thread type
and they're very secure.
But if you want to run to a camera, you can also do
a stereo mix out of just one of the outputs and then just use
a standard 3.5mm cable, one of which they've also
included by the way, they have a coiled 3.5 to 3.5mm
and this makes sense because likely your camera
only has the one mic in. And you can substitute
a longer cable if you want, but what's great about it
is that the Deity will separate the channel
so that one mic will be on the left and one mic
will be on the right, so that later on in post if you want
you can separate those channels out and mix them differently.
And it gets even better because that extra output
that's now free can be used as a headphone jack,
and this is extremely useful if you're using
a camera that doesn't have one, because now you do.
And you can also control the gain
of the outputs independently, which is nice if you want
to try and get a good mix from the start, but if you're using
the headphone method, you can also use this to adjust
the headphone volume separately and turning this up will give
you enough juice to power even 60 to 70 ohm headphones.
Man, this guy's videos are actually pretty good.
Probably deserves more subscribers. Am I right?
♪ He's crazy ♪
Alright, now let's talk about the transmitters. So, you might
have noticed that we didn't set the UHF frequency
and that's because this system is using a 2.4GHz band.
Now this has advantages and disadvantages.
The advantage is that you can take this anywhere in the world
and you don't have to worry about violating some radio law
in that region like you do with the UHF competitors.
But the disadvantage is that that 2.4GHz range
is usually pretty crowded, but Deity found a way
to completely remove that disadvantage
by using Adaptive Frequency Hopping and Listen-Before-Talk.
So, rather than stay on a specific frequency
and wait for interference to happen,
the Deity is constantly hopping, something like 600 times
per second and consistently avoids interference. But it also
has a fail-safe which checks for interference
and if you say something while interference is detected
it'll take that audio and move it to the next hop
and capture it there rather than on the bad frequency.
Basically creating a seamless recording as if the interference
never happened. This is genius and I can personally
say that I haven't had a single issue
with RF interference while using this device.
The RF output can also be controlled.
The lowest power setting is 10 milliwatts,
but it can go all the way up to 100 milliwatts
and there's also an auto option
which is great for preserving battery life because it will
only use as much power as needed to keep a good connection.
But to give you an idea, at full power, this system
is over three times stronger than the Sennheiser's
and over ten times stronger than the RØDELink.
I did an open-air range test and I was able to get over
a 150m away before I noticed any issues.
And that was using the small antenna on the transmitter.
56, 57, 58, 59, 60. So, this is about 50m away.
Give or take. I'm doing it based on pacing. I have the receiver
set to the lowest power, which is 10 milliwatts.
And as far as I can tell the audio is still good to go.
[slightly choppy] OK, so we first start to experience
a bit of the problems here around 100, 120m away.
And that was still at the lowest power.
[clear audio] OK. So, now I've set it
to maximum power 100 milliwatts and I'm going
to go as far as I can before it starts to cut out.
52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60.
[intermittently choppy] OK. So, here I am now
this would be probably...
Close to 200m. I'm probably 170, 180m away.
So, I'll just go down to the edge
of the street and call it a good 200m.
One, two, three, four--
52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60--
[choppier audio] Over 200--
Not sure if you can even-- see me in the lens any--
The transmitters have a similar design to the receivers,
aluminum exterior, nice weight, compact.
And they have a nicely shaped and strong metal belt clip.
They also have LED indicators for pair, power, and mute,
and they have the interchangeable antenna
like I was talking about earlier, and then a 3.5mm
locking thread for the mic input.
The controls are the same on the transmitter
as the receiver as well.
So, again, intuitive and consistent.
You have a similar display for presenting
the pertinent information. But in this case, it's only relative
to the transmitter. And again, you also have
an option in the menu to decide how long
you want the display to stay on.
The retail version now also features
a buttonholed unlock function
so that your transmitter doesn't get muted or have
its settings change when your talent is moving around.
This is a great add-on and it's activated by pressing
both of the arrow buttons at the same time. So, this
is the transmitter I'm actually using and as you can see
no matter what I press, doesn't actually do anything.
But if I press and hold these two buttons at the same time,
then eventually the screen
will come on and then we can change the settings.
So, this is great means you're not going to have to worry about
something funky happening to your transmitter
In the menu you have an option for setting a mute hotkey
which when enabled will allow you to mute
the transmitter just by pressing the back button
when on the home screen. You also have the firmware update
function because the firmware also needs
to be updated on the transmitters.
And that's done the same way via the USB-C
which is also used for charging just like on the receiver.
You can also adjust the mic level down to -12dB
and all the way up to +21dB which is a fantastic range.
There's also a mic limiter and a low cut filter
for 75Hz and 150Hz.
which is great for preventing
some unwanted lower frequencies in your recording.
So, a couple things. First, the limiter is actually
an analog limiter which is a fantastic decision and will
give you much better results when managing spicy vocals.
And one of the issues with the old kit was that
there was quite a bit of distortion that crept in
when you increased the gain on the transmitter
and I think this is probably what caused some of the problems
with the reduced audio quality,
because when it comes to gain staging
one of the things that you want to try and do
is load the gain up as early in the chain is possible.
That way you can activate and fully juice
the microphone and use all of its sensitivity.
But we had to keep the gain lower on the transmitter
and then just boost the signal later on in the chain,
which meant that we were just taking an already somewhat
weak microphone signal and then just turning it up.
And so it didn't really sound very good.
But now I have
the transmitter turned way up.
Then only boosting it a little bit in my recorder
and I think it sounds so much better.
Lastly, another great feature is the frequency boost function,
which allows you to add up to 10dB to all
the frequencies between 7KHz and 20KHz.
This is a really smart function that allows you
to overcome much of the muffle that's created
when you hide lav mics under clothes or in fabrics
and also helps to preserve a lot of the vocal range
that would otherwise be suppressed.
[muffled] Test. One, two, three, four, five.
[clearer] Test. One, two, three, four, five
And again all of these functions
can be implemented from the receiver
as well without ever needing to touch the transmitter.
And when you combine all of these audio control settings,
it really lets you accomplish a great deal on location without
needing to rely on fixing everything in post. You can get
a well-mixed, well-controlled recording
just by tweaking settings on the receiver
and those efficiencies will be worth money
when you factor in time saved editing.
So, I think that's it for everything
that comes in the box.
Well, except the box itself,
which is actually a really nice
Pelican style case. You got egg crate foam,
well fit cutouts, and quality latches.
It's a really terrific little value-add to keep
your kit organized and safe. I appreciated this.
So, the last piece would just be the microphones--
Here I'm about to complain that the foam windscreens
came off way too easily on the old mics,
and they definitely did, but I'm happy to say
that is no longer an issue on the new mics.
I also go on to give you some audio comparisons
which are no longer relevant because the mics
have been completely upgraded in the system.
So, instead let's just give you some room tone
with no noise reduction so you can see
how clean this system is.
[very slight room tone]
However, if you prefer the sound profile
of another microphone, you can easily change out
the mics of this kit as long as they follow the 3.5mm standard
because this system is really all about
the amazing capabilities of the wireless.
You can even use an on-camera shotgun mic as a wireless boom
if you wanted, or mix-and-match a shotgun
with a lav, you've got plenty of options
with the two transmitters. The only other con
that I can think of is maybe the latency.
It's at 19 milliseconds, which is a bit
higher than some of the competition.
But even if you record directly into the camera,
it still seems perfectly in sync and there's no noticeable
lip lag to my eye. And if you record externally
you're going to be syncing in post anyway,
so this spec is kind of irrelevant.
OK, so that's it for the hardware.
Now, let's talk about value.
Everything about this kit to me
feels like premium professional.
And when we're talking that price category,
we're usually at, like, $1,300 to $1,800 US,
and that's usually for a single connection.
If you want a dual kit they're probably, like,
$2,300 to $2,700 and up.
But this kit from Deity I'm told is going to be priced
at $650 US, which is crazy to me.
if we compare that to the Sennheiser G4s,
which are probably the standard
for a reasonably affordable wireless kit,
this is a no-brainer. Those Sennheisers are $600
and you only get one transmitter and mic.
I never really loved the value proposition
of those Sennheisers, but there just wasn't really
any other great options without spending two grand.
I never liked the battery door, the fact that it was UHF
and there were restrictions on where you could use it.
I didn't like the mic that it came with.
And the list goes on but what else was I going to do?
Because I didn't have the budget for a $2,500 kit.
And if we step down a notch and compare it to the RØDELink,
which depending on the kit you choose
costs somewhere between $400 and $450,
again you only have one transmitter and one mic
and you're missing out on
so many features that the Deity has.
So, in the case of the $50 difference between
the Deity and the Sennheisers, it's easy.
spend the extra 50 bucks on the Deity.
You're going to get a whole 'nother mic and transmitter,
a much better interface, a higher level of polish,
and much more useful audio controls.
But if $650 is out of your price range,
I completely understand, but I would seriously consider
maybe saving a little bit longer rather than going
and buying a $300 to $400 solo system from RØDE
or the like, I think that you'll be happy you did. And if you're
looking at one of those super premium systems
that we were talking about,
I would highly suggest maybe taking a look at the Deity first
because I think you'll be pleasantly surprised
how close it can get you to a $2,500 system.
And then you can use that extra budget on mics,
or a better recorder, or craft services.
So, obviously since filming this
RØDE has announced their new Wireless GO system,
which does provide another interesting option
in this space. Now, I haven't actually gotten a chance
to test that system yet, so I don't have much
to offer other than I don't believe it to be
in the same professional category as the Deity
or some of the other systems that we were talking about.
I think it's more intended for like a run-and-gun style setup
and I believe it's priced accordingly for that.
Anyway, that's it. Overall, I think
the Deity Connect offers the best value
in the wireless lav category and I'm kind of glad
that my review worked out this way.
Making my first video and finding issues,
and then sending them to Deity,
and have them be listened to and fixed quickly and satisfyingly
makes it so easy to recommend this system because I actually
thought the system was really great before
and it just needed a few tweaks, but now we know that we're
dealing with a company that will listen to our feedback
and take care of our investment
long after the purchase is complete.
This guy's videos are actually pretty good.
I re-- kind of regret calling him a bozo earlier on.
[loud cough]
Kind of...
Am I right?
[laughing]
What am I doing right now?
Why am I talking to a tablet that's not even on?
Oh, God. But that's gonna be it for me.
I hope you found this video helpful
or at least entertaining. And if you did,
make sure you leave it the old thumbs up
and consider subscribing if you haven't already,
but if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining
feel free to hit the dislike button twice.
Alright... I'm done.