Pixel Voical Air Wireless Mic
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So what’s with all these tiny wireless mic systems? Let’s take a look at the Voical Air from Pixel to help you decide whether this audio accessory will help you elevate your video productions.
Rode brought out a new product in late summer 2019 that shook up the wireless microphone market. They called it the Rode Wireless Go microphone.
The thing that sets the Wireless Go system apart was its form factor. Both the transmitter and receiver are small rectangles just a couple of inches square.
This form factor revolution caused a bunch of manufacturers to produce similarly sized devices.
To stay in the low priced sub $130 dollar price range, these new sets stayed with the UHF frequency band. If you have looked on Amazon recently, you’ll see several nearly identical sets under a couple of different brand names. My guess is that they came from the same factory and might have slightly different firmware driving their radio and audio functions.
Pixel Voical Air Features
The Pixel Voical Air is one of those releases that became available on Amazon in May of 2020.
Let’s take a quick look at the size difference between the Pixel Voical Air and a more traditional Pixel UHF wireless mic set. ( Show the two devices )
As I said before, the Voical Air is a UHF band set. It has 36 separate channels in the upper 500 mHz part of the UHF band.
Both the transmitter and receiver have to be on the same channel. Multiple channels are available to allow you to change channels if you find interference on a particular frequency or if you find yourself in an area where more than one wireless mic set is being used.
Voical Air Basic Operation
Personally, I’m not a big fan of hanging the little transmitter box on a collar or lapel while making use of the built in mic. It’s just too visually distracting. On the other hand, if you’re wearing a jacket or a loose button down shirt, you can probably get way with hiding it clipped to a T-shirt or bra.
The controls on both the transmitter and receiver allow channel selection and volume adjustments. The transmitter has a 3.5 millimeter socket for the external lav and an internally mounted mic. The receiver has two 3.5 millimeter sockets. One is for the output to the recording device and the other is for headphone monitors.
The included lavaliere mic is probably a better choice in most cases.
Using a Lav mic with the Voical Air
So why use a lav mic in the first place. Good question.
As mics get further away from the speaker, they pick up a greater proportion of the background or ambient sound. This comes across as weak dialog or echoes if recording indoors. This is the same regardless of the mic’s quality or price. It’s just a fact that good dialog has to be recorded with a mic that’s within 6 to 24 inches of the speaker.
If dialog is important, a lav mic or a sound guy with a mic boom chasing the speaker around will be necessary. Since we’re all used to television personalities wearing lav mics, they’re fairly unobtrusive and easily ignored. They’re also pretty easy to hide if your project requires the mic to be invisible.
As you’ll see in these video review’s sample clips, a wireless lav mic like the Voical Air will allow you to move around and gain some distance from the camera while sounding like your standing right next to it. Besides adjusting volume, I’ve done no post processing to these sample clips.
For cameras whose audio recording is subpar, you can record to a separate audio recorder or your smart phone and synchronize the audio and video in post-production.
Voical Air Battery and Operating Time
What’s also cool is that when charging using a phone charging battery block, both the transmitter and receiver can operate and charge at the same time. That’s not always the case with wireless mic sets. This can greatly increase your operating time.
Speaking of operating time, I found this set’s transmitter to last about 3 to 3 and a half hours. The receiver went longer to about 4 and a half. That means the claim of 6 hours of battery time is a little generous. It’s one of those specifications that may have been computed mathematically rather than real-world tests.
So does this little $100 mic outperform the $300 Rode Go? Not likely. While brand names do command a price premium, certainly not that much. The fact is that this little UHF mic is pretty good for what you’re buying. What you’re not buying is a $300 2.4 gHz wireless mic.
Voical Air Pros and Cons
First the pros
One definite pro is that the kit comes with everything you need including a lav mic and cables necessary to connect to either a camera or recorder or to a smartphone.
Next, the built in mic allows you to use this as a “make due” interview mic.
The built in mic can also work in a pinch if your lav mic gets lost or broken.
36 UHF channels seem more than enough to evade frequency interference during use.
Sound quality is very reasonable right out of the receiver and can be adjusted using post processing tools like Audacity.
The small size and compact travel case makes taking it along very easy.
Last, the range is very reasonable for a compact system. Most creators will find they operate well inside the unit’s range in all but the most extreme situations.
Now some cons
One con is that the little signal display on transmitter and receiver screens doesn’t seem to mean anything other than the two are connected. It would be nice if there was a sense of signal strength.
Another con is that the advertised battery life is well – generous. You can mitigate this con by using phone charge block that you can use even while operating the system for virtually unlimited operating time.
Worth it?
Don’t let the YouTube video titles fool you. It’s not a Rode Wireless Go killer. What it is, though, is a super upgrade from a camera mounted mic when a hobbyist or on enthusiast level content creator wants to up their audio game without breaking the bank.
