Phenyx Pro PTM-10 Stereo Wireless in Ear Monitor System Bodypack Receiver, Performance with 89 Adjustable Frequencies

Our church bought these since we were on a budget and needed in-ear monitors, and they have worked great. We haven't noticed any dropouts or interference that being said, the receivers and transceiver are pretty close, but even when we walk across our stage, we have no dropouts and crystal clear sound. I definitely recommend this to anyone who is looking for a budget system.

First, this unit is well built. So whether you’re suing it for practice or an actual event, it’s definitely travel ready. And comes with a nice carrying case, too! Second having the ability to monitor is stereo is a plus and for the price you can’t beat it. It’s certainly a great “bang for buck” option for those looking to enter the wireless IEM’s for gigs like myself.

I won’t talk much here about turning on, changing frequencies, IR pairing and so on, as many others have covered that here. Let’s get a bit more technical.My application for IEM is fairly casual; occasional shows, maybe a few per year, as a guitar player and vocalist in a band. But more often, it is intended for use during band practice or at home as drum monitor for practice, using the seal of good IEM earphones to reduce direct sound and monitor the fully-mic’d and “produced” drum kit at a lower level via a digital mixer, driving the Phenyx IEM transmitter in stereo, from a pair of aux sends. I use an A&H SQ6, and the basic idea for me is to reduce the drum dynamics and total volume, yet have nice verbs and backing tracks mixed in. I’m learning drums as an adult with extensive (non-drum) musical experience and perhaps more from the point of view of a recording engineer…. All that said, this system checks my required boxes for cost and effectiveness.As many others have said, you can throw the (pointlessly) included headphones in a drawer with those disposables you kept from your last international flight. They are no better. Invest in a good set of multi-driver IEM headphones. Based on my own measurements, presented here, they will determine your IEM experience. You won’t make bad headphones sound good with any source – I tried judiciously EQ-ing my aux sends with the included headphones and got nowhere… I could tame the peaks, but the distortion and resonances are not EQ issues. Go get some good ones.As it happens, I have a good deal of professional RF & Audio test and measurement experience and took the opportunity to run this system over a recently-calibrated Audio Precision APx521 to determine the audio quality of the RF audio link. More on that in a moment.From the radio-side, this is a 10mW FM stereo link that uses the same analog 19-kHz pilot tone technology to encode the stereo signal as any commercial FM transmitter would, albeit at very low power in the 900 MHz ISM band. The output level was +9.93 dBm conducted (~10mW/50 ohms) as seen on an Agilent E4402 Spectrum Analyzer, and the RF envelope appeared very clean and stable, and pretty much dead-on in frequency. The included antenna was run over an Anritsu antenna analyzer and found to be a good match, under 1:2 SWR read across the 900 MHz Band. This is important because antenna match determines the effective radiated power at a distance. One huge usable-range improvement you can make with a system like this is to use a 900-MHz Yagi antenna (say, 5 to 7 -element, 50 ohm) and point it towards the people wearing the IEM receivers… Thus you can take all that power wasted in the other 300 degrees and instead point it towards the people who actually need a good signal, kinda like the reflector in a flashlight gathers up all the light and “throws” it into one, useful direction.Now to the audio. I found that at low input levels, the noise at the IEM receiver is indeed high. There is some real hash in the higher frequenices that is notable if you live down in the dirt, level-wise. But note that the Phenyx transmitter has input meters. They are real. You MUST use them for your signal setup. Remembering that each IEM-receiver user has his own volume control, my job is to feed the transmitter all it can take to hit, but not exceed the 0dBm meter peak indicators. My job is NOT to control his output level. The IEM user will do that. This system will play loud and clean if you run the correct signal level into it. Best bet is to send it an aux signal that has everything you want, with a little of the bottom end taken out (with everything below, say, 50-60 Hz being high-pass filtered) and gently compressed with an easy ratio. This will help maintain the signal-to-noise ratio you need to get a clean IEM playback and avoid overloading distortion. The audio frequency response from transmitter to each receiver (2 in my kit) was also measured. It’s pretty flat, as you can see in the APx plots. As I said earlier, get some GOOD IEM earpieces, because the transmission over the RF link is pretty good when driven properly, and fairly flat at that. The Left-Right channel gain is just a little off, by 1-2dB in both of my receivers. There is also a little distortion present, and those kinds of things are to be expected at this price point, but if you are paying attention to how you feed these, they are fine for casual use and reasonably well-made for the dosh.The first plot is freq response, which shows a respectable +/- 1.5 dB from 100 Hz to 10 kHz. Both receivers are shown here, with the slight difference in the plots due to the volume knob setting being not quite the same. Note that anything over 10kHz for an IEM is pointless. Receiver volume is set to about 50%, The slight difference in L-R channels is visible here. Response at 60 Hz is about 4 dB down, so use a HPF set to about 60 Hz on the send signal and avoid overdriving the system down low, it won’t be reproduced anyway. You’ll get a better SNR everywhere else for your trouble.The next plot shows the RF envelope up close on a spec an, where you can see the 19-kHz pilot tones as sidebands on either side of the 911MHz envelope. Next up you can see a spectral audio plot from the receiver with 1Vrms of 800 Hz fed into the transmitter from the Apx . Note the closest individual distortion product is about 48 dB down from the 800Hz. Not bad. The next plot is the overall THD across all frequencies with a 1000 mV signal input (ignore the labels). It’s a bit high, but livable for a monitor and hey, these are not $1400 per channel units either. . The next plot is for a lower input, 500mV, and at this level it looks much better. You give up some SNR for a better THD.The last photo is from the antenna analyzer, showing a good match at 1:2 SWR or better from 888 MHz to 948 MHz, with a nice 1:1.24 at 918 MHz in the middle of the band. One note I made was that I could not find the FCC/ISED numbers anywhere on the packaging or in/on the product. That’s a bit concerning, it hints that these were not type-acceptance tested nor issued the FCC ID number required for sale in the US. FCC laws require labelling to be visible to the consumer and this system seems to fail in that point. I have not had reason to open them up yet, as they are technically still under warranty, but if I get a cause to, I will open them up and make a few pics of the build quality to add here.Verdict? An OK product, and for my application I would buy them again. One star off for the high-ish THD and channel imbalance, even though I can live with those just fine. Some of that might be due to tolerances or manual tune-up at manufacture, which can be hard to hold constant over production runs. Just make SURE you get some good IEM earbuds to match with these. 73.UPDATE - I was finally able to locate these on the FCC database - it just took a little searching, and knowing the name of the company that makes them for Phenyx. Also, I see the pix got out of order once I uploaded them. If you know what they mean, you can figure out which is which, and if you don't you probably didn't notice anyway :)

This is actually my first wireless in-ear monitor system so I can't compare it to anything. I bought THIS particular unit because of the relatively good reviews and the price. I've used it on two gigs so far. Both have been positive. Once or twice it cut out (like lost power or something for a couple milliseconds). Not a biggie and it could have been something I was doing. It sounds good- not awesome. I could hear everything I needed to hear and there seems to be plenty of volume (I can compare it to a couple of hardware headphone amps I was using and it's louder that both). The noise floor is a bit high but I wasn't expecting high-end performance on this level. I'd have to say if you're looking for an "entry-level" wireless system it's not bad at all. I opted for the three receiver set only because I wanted it now and the single receiver set was sold out. But I'm happy I have two back-up receivers. The controls on the headset aren't very intuitive. It's also difficult to see the receiver in bright light (one of the gigs was outside in bright daylight). So aside from some minor quirks, I had to give it five stars for what it provides at the price point. So far, I'm very happy with the purchase.

Let me say first that I am a professional musician with 50 + years of experience in the music industry. I am a multi instrumentalist that will play as many as 5 different instruments on stage at times as well as do vocals. I am very much into the technology and advances that are being made. I just recently got into the world of wireless with my sax guitar and bass and I’ve never used in ears before because I really didn’t see the need and was just not affordable but decided to take the plunge when I saw this and looked at a few reviews that were for the most part positive. I don’t know the difference between this and more expensive systems but I got it and tried it and it seemed to work but I gotta say that there’s a reason things are priced the way they are. You get what you pay for and you sometimes pay for what you get. As a performer who likes to move around the stage and sometimes even go into the audience, I don’t know that this does the job for me. I tried the range and after about sixty feet I started getting that white noise and some dropouts so I don’t know about that hundred and sixty feet range that they advertised. The unit doesn’t sound bad to me but I’ve never heard a more expensive system to compare it to and I did buy higher quality earbuds as suggested. I haven’t tried this on a real gig yet with other band mates with systems and that’s why I’m on the fence with weather I’ll keep this. I don’t know how this would do in a venue like Lincoln Center or any festivals that I do. I really want to like this and not sure if I will return it and just shell out the extra $$ to get something better. I have my eye on the Audio technica 3255. My biggest issue with this system is the range and the noise I hear when I play Bass! This does not work when I play bass and I saw where switching to mono would solve this but it only helps a little and I would prefer listening in stereo. But I have a few weeks before I decide. I’m very new to this but there’s alotta room for improvement with this system