Clear-Com Unveils New FreeSpeak Edge Base Station

For several years, Clear-Com's FreeSpeak™ digital wireless product family has been one of the most widely used wireless intercom systems in Germany, a trend that is continuing with the newest addition to the family, the FreeSpeak Edge® Base Station.

Clear-Com's German Partner, Audio-Technica, has provided FreeSpeak Edge Base Stations to numerous customers since its release earlier this year—rental companies, live events companies and video production companies—and it has been extremely well-received by the marketplace.

The first FreeSpeak Edge Base Station in Germany was delivered to COBRA sound light in Hamburg, where it was immediately put to use ensuring smooth operations for several productions.

"The big plus of the new FreeSpeak Edge Base Station is its interfacing capabilities," said Hendrik Thode of COBRA sound light. In his role, Hendrik is responsible for all communications solutions for COBRA. "In addition to providing plenty of 4-wire ports, the base station can also connect directly to Dante devices, and the CCM™ programming is very self-explanatory and intuitive."

The Edge Base station has also found success in several deployments for Freaksound in Bruchköbel.

"Our main business is in the dry hire sector, but we are noticing a trend that people also like to call on our technical expertise on site for extensive intercom setups," explained Stefan Niemeyer, one of Freaksound's Managing Directors. "In our first deployment of the base station, we used it during Neue Philharmonie Frankfurt's Summer Night performance to gain practical experience with it."

Hannes Gremm, the intercom technician on site at the Philharmonie, said: "The Dante connection made it very easy on site to integrate the different mixing consoles into the intercom setup. With the help of the web interface [CCM], I was able to reliably monitor the system during the entire production.

"For us, flexibility is the trump card in day-to-day business. A base station that can connect analogue partyline, balanced audio as well as Dante directly allows us to react to our customers’ requirements at any time and to respond to spontaneous requests during production," concluded Niemeyer.

HD Wireless, a video production company in Mechernich, has been using various intercom solutions from Clear-Com in a wide variety of production formats for many years. "We often use the Eclipse® HX Matrix platform in our productions, as it provides us with maximum flexibility and almost unlimited resources," said Patrick Nußbaum, Managing Director, HD Wireless.

For smaller productions, however, HD Wireless is really enjoying the benefits of the FreeSpeak Edge Base Station can offer. "The Edge Base allows us to use our existing components of the FreeSpeak family, such as IP and E1 antennas, beltpacks and charging stations, in smaller plug-and-play setups. This makes it cost-effective for us, plus the compact base station is cheaper and easier to ship," Nußbaum concluded.

The FreeSpeak Edge Base Station provides a standalone solution for FreeSpeak Edge 5 GHz systems, as well as support for FreeSpeak II® 1.9 GHz and 2.4 GHZ IP Transceivers via AES67 connections, previously only available through Eclipse® HX Digital Matrix systems with an E-IPA card. The single 1RU device supports up to 16 total beltpacks and 6 IP transceivers (10 E1 Transceivers), with the flexibility to mix and match bands, as well as up to eight ports of IP interoperability with third-party Dante connections. With a mixture of IP, 2-wire and 4-wire audio ports, the FreeSpeak Edge Base Station can integrate a variety of systems, including Clear-Com Encore® partyline and even two-way radio systems with an intelligent GPIO interface.

www.clearcom.com