Review: Sennheiser EW 112P G4 Omni-directional Wireless Lavaliere System

Office Testing

Back in the office, I noodled on how to test the quality of the G4 system. One thought was to compare the audio quality to a wired system since wired systems don’t have potential noise caused by audio processing or interference with the RF transmission. So, I shot a short video (shown above) with two lavaliere microphones, the wired Shure SM93 microphone plugged into the right channel, the wireless G4 in the left channel. That way viewers could watch the video, and switch back and forth between the two channels.

While I may have a golden eye for compression artifacts, I also have a tin ear for audio quality, likely the result of too many overly loud Springsteen records, cassettes, and CDs in my happily misspent youth. So I don’t hear much of a difference if any. Analyzing the audio in Audition delivered no additional enlightenment, as the signals looked nearly identical. Listen for yourself, but it sounds as if Sennheiser delivers the quality of a wired system with the convenience of wireless.

Though I didn’t see auto-gain control in the specs, the last Sennheiser microphone that I tested did have this feature. So, with both microphones still plugged in, I shouted into both. As you can see in Figure 3 (below), the Shure showed peaking on the right bottom track, while the G4 resisted it in the top left channel.

Figure 3. The G4’s auto-gain control (top) avoided the peaking shown by the Shure SM93.

This adds up to a microphone system that’s easy to set up and use, delivers great audio quality, and helps avoid mistakes like overcooking your audio. Plus a sturdy construction should help longevity in the field. While not cheap at $600, as I said at the top, cheap audio gear seldom, if ever, gets the job done.