How Do You Make 50,000 People Hear the Same Thing at Once? Inside Metallica's M72 Stage

You have been to a gig where the sound was bad. Everybody has. The vocal disappeared into the guitars, the kick drum arrived as a dull thud with no attack, and if you moved twenty metres to the left it somehow got worse. You probably blamed the sound guy, or the venue, or the band.

Here's a better way to think about it. Every concert you have ever attended was an engineering problem that somebody either solved or didn't — and the problem gets exponentially harder as you add people, distance and stage complexity. Metallica's M72 World Tour is the most useful example we have, because it took the hardest version of that problem and solved it in public, for three years, across 77 shows and 4.7 million people.

This article walks through it: what the show format was, how touring sound systems actually work, what specifically made M72 difficult, and what they did about it. Then we get to the part that matters to you — because the four principles underneath a 288-speaker stadium rig are exactly the same four principles that decide whether the sound at your event is good or bad. They scale all the way down to a 200-person hall in Shah Alam.

One thing we should say up front, plainly: Metallica did not use any brand we sell. Their rig is purpose-built touring inventory, not retail gear, and no one reading this will ever buy it. We named it anyway, because a case study that hides its own subject isn't a case study. What transfers isn't the gear list — it's the thinking.

Part 1 — The Format: What "In The Round" Actually Means

M72 was built around two ideas that both made the sound harder.

The first was the stage shape. Metallica played in the round — an "O"-shaped ring stage with the audience on all 360 degrees. In the centre of the ring sat the "Snake Pit", holding roughly 1,000 fans inside the stage itself. The band moved continuously around the ring. Multiple drum kits were positioned around the circle, rising into place as needed, so the drummer wasn't anchored to one spot either.

Eight ground-supported towers, each 100 feet tall, carried video, lighting and audio. There were 1,600-plus LED panels and around 650 lighting fixtures, the fixture count driven directly by the need to light a performance that faced every direction at once.

An "O"-shaped ring stage, the Snake Pit in the middle, and eight 100-foot towers. There is no front.

The second idea was the setlist. The tour ran a "No Repeat Weekend" format: two nights in each city, entirely different setlists, not a single song repeated between them. Great for fans. A significant complication for everyone operating the show.

And then there's the design constraint that follows from the first idea and is easy to miss: with a 360-degree audience, there is no backstage. Every cable, every flight case, every piece of infrastructure had to be concealed, because there is no direction you can hide it in. On a conventional end-stage show, everything ugly goes behind the band. In the round, "behind the band" is somebody's seat.

Part 2 — The Basics: Every Show Is Two Sound Systems, Not One

Before the challenges make sense, you need this — and most people, including plenty of musicians, have never had it explained.

A live show runs two completely separate sound systems at the same time.

System one: Front of House (FOH)

This is the sound the audience hears. It comes from the main speakers, and it's mixed by the FOH engineer at a console usually positioned out in the crowd. On M72 that was Greg Price, whose CV includes Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne and Chicago.

The FOH engineer's job is to make the band sound the way the band should sound, in that specific room, on that specific night. The same mix that was perfect in an arena in Jakarta will be wrong in a stadium in Melbourne, because the room is a component in the system whether you want it to be or not.

System two: Monitors

This is the sound the band hears, and it is a completely different mix. M72 had two dedicated monitor engineers — Bob Cowan, who has handled James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich for over 18 years, and Mike "Mic" Bollella for Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo.

Why separate? Because the singer needs to hear their own voice loudly enough to pitch against, the drummer needs the bass to lock to, and the guitarist needs to hear the other guitar to stay tight. Nobody in the band needs the mix the audience is getting. They need a working mix.

The analogy that makes this stick: FOH is the plate sent out to the dining room. Monitors are the chef tasting in the kitchen. Same ingredients, completely different dishes, and if you serve the diner what the chef is tasting, the diner will not enjoy it.

Monitors arrive two ways: wedges (the angled speakers pointing back at the performer from the stage floor) and in-ear monitors (a wireless bodypack feeding custom earpieces). M72 ran both — 36 floor wedges plus a substantial in-ear system.

New to this? Read The Basics of Setting Up a Live Band Sound System.

Why this matters historically

Both these systems are more recent than people assume.

When The Beatles played Shea Stadium in August 1965 in front of 55,600 people — the first true stadium rock concert — their vocals went through the stadium's house PA. A system built for baseball announcements. Vox had built them custom 100-watt amplifiers specially for the tour, which was a big deal at the time and is roughly the power of one modest powered speaker today.

There were no stage monitors at all. The band pitched by memory and by whatever bounced off the back wall. At their first US concert in Washington in February 1964 — also in the round, incidentally, on a plywood platform in a boxing arena — roadie Mal Evans physically rotated Ringo's drum riser by hand between songs so each side of the crowd got a turn.

They stopped touring in 1966. A stated reason: they couldn't hear themselves, and the music had stopped mattering on stage.

Sixty years later, Metallica played in the round too. The design brief was that every single person in the stadium should hear the band with the clarity of a studio nearfield monitor. Same stage shape. Opposite outcome. Everything in between is the story of the four principles in Part 5.

Part 3 — The Challenge: What A Circle Breaks

Here is what actually goes wrong when you put the audience all the way around.

Problem 1: A normal PA points one way

Standard concert sound is a directional problem with a directional answer. The audience is in front; you hang speakers at the front, aimed backwards into the crowd, and you shape the coverage to hit the seats and miss the ceiling.

In the round, "front" doesn't exist. Everyone is in front. You need full coverage in every direction, and you need it to be equally good in every direction, because the person who paid the same money on the north side has the same expectation as the person on the south.

Problem 2: The audience is at wildly different distances

In a stadium in the round you have people inside the stage ring, a few metres from the band, and people at the very back of the upper tier, well over a hundred metres away.

Sound gets quieter as it travels. A single point-source speaker loses roughly 6 dB every time the distance doubles — that's the inverse square law, and it's unforgiving. Turn it up loud enough for the back and you have injured the front row. Set it comfortably for the front row and the back hears nothing.

Problem 3: Every speaker you add creates a timing problem

This is the one that's genuinely counter-intuitive, and it's the single most common reason a system with plenty of speakers still sounds bad.

Sound travels at roughly 343 metres per second at 20°C — call it 2.9 milliseconds per metre. (In Malaysian heat it's a bit faster; we'll come back to that, because it's a practical tip you can use.)

So if you add a second speaker 30 metres further back to help the people at the rear, its sound arrives at a listener in between about 87 milliseconds after the main system's. Two arrivals of the same music, 87 ms apart, do not sound like more music. They sound like smear, echo, and mud.

The fix is delay: you electronically hold the distant speaker back so both arrivals land at the same time. Get it right and it's one clean sound. Get it wrong and every speaker you added made things worse.

Problem 4: Low frequencies do not behave

Bass is the hardest thing to control in any space that isn't a simple rectangle, and a circle is definitively not a simple rectangle. Low frequencies are long waves that wrap around obstacles and go where they like. Point a subwoofer at the audience and a great deal of that energy also goes sideways and backwards — which in the round means directly at other paying customers, and at the stage.

Problem 5: The band has to hear itself, from anywhere on a moving ring

A band walking continuously around a 360-degree stage cannot rely on fixed wedges alone. That means wireless in-ears, which means radio, which means a whole separate category of problem — and radio in a stadium full of 50,000 phones, plus broadcast trucks, plus security radios, plus the venue's own systems, is a genuinely hostile environment.

Problem 6: Two different shows, two nights running

No Repeat Weekend means the entire mix — every channel, every effect, every monitor send — has to reconfigure for a completely different set, and do it reliably, in every city.

Part 4 — The Solutions

Solution 1: Three concentric rings of speakers

The M72 PA was 288 large-format line array loudspeakers — a record deployment for that system — arranged as three concentric rings, each ring doing a different job at a different distance.

The outer ring hung from the eight towers, two hangs each, with sixteen cabinets per array on the long sides and thirteen on the short sides. This was the long throw — the system covering the distant seats.

The inner ring was eight hangs of seven cabinets, flown over the stage, covering out to roughly 42 metres from centre. This handled the nearer audience.

At the centre, eight point-source cabinets fired inward, for the thousand people in the Snake Pit inside the ring.

And around the ring's perimeter, twenty compact front fill cabinets served the people pressed against the barrier, who are underneath everything else and would otherwise hear nothing properly.

Three rings, four jobs. Every section of the audience is covered by speakers chosen for their distance — not by one system trying to reach everybody.

Nobody is being served by a speaker designed for someone else's seat. That's the entire idea, and it's the idea that scales down.

Low frequency got its own treatment: per tower, two sets of six LF elements plus one set of six very-low-frequency elements, with a further eight pairs of subwoofers on the ground around the stage perimeter. Bass handled separately from everything else, because it always should be.

On the design target, the production's Creative Director Dan Braun described the goal as "full stereo sound at every point with no overlap, from the center pit to the nosebleed seats" — everyone hearing the band "as if with nearfield monitors."

Solution 2: Line arrays, and what they actually do

The word "line array" gets used loosely, so let's be accurate about it, because the reason it works is genuinely interesting and most explanations online are wrong.

A single speaker radiates sound outward as a sphere. The energy spreads over the surface of that sphere, the area of which grows with the square of distance — hence 6 dB lost per doubling.

Stack several matched speaker elements in a tight vertical line, close enough together and with the right geometry, and they stop behaving as separate sources and start behaving as one line source. A line source radiates a roughly cylindrical wavefront, whose area grows only linearly with distance. The result: about 3 dB lost per doubling instead of 6. Over a long throw, that difference is enormous.

Now the honest caveats, because an engineer reading this will want them.

The 3 dB figure holds only in the array's near field, which has a limit. Beyond it, the array reverts to 6 dB per doubling like anything else. That transition distance scales with frequency and with the square of the array's length — so the benefit is strongest at high frequencies, close in, and with long arrays. A short array is a short near field.

Real arrays are also curved, not straight, and that's deliberate. The even front-to-back coverage you get from a well-designed array is achieved as much by aiming — progressively more energy sent to progressively more distant seats via splay angles and HF shading — as by cylindrical propagation. Acousticians call the result "pseudo-cylindrical." The 3 dB figure is best understood as a design target across the audience, not a law of physics you get for free.

And low frequencies barely participate at all. An array is short compared to a bass wavelength, so LF goes more or less everywhere regardless. This is exactly why arrays always get separate subwoofers.

If you take one thing from this section: a line array is not "a better speaker." It's a way of shaping where the energy goes across depth. Buying one without understanding that is how people end up with an expensive system that sounds worse than four good point-source boxes.

Prefer it in Bahasa Melayu? Read Perasan Tak Kenapa Kat Konsert Atau Festival Pakai Speaker Ni? (Line Arrays).

Solution 3: Timing, and a fibre-optic backbone

Three rings of speakers at three distances means three arrival times to reconcile at every point in the stadium. M72 ran the whole system over three Milan AVB networks, a dozen system processors, 35 network platforms, 52 network switches and a fibre backbone.

That infrastructure isn't glamour. It's what makes the timing hold together, consistently, in a different stadium every few nights.

Solution 4: RF over fibre — the monitor problem

This is the most elegant fix on the whole tour, and it comes from a very unglamorous place.

At a show that size, Monitor World sits roughly 750 feet — about 230 metres — from the stage. That's the distance the wireless in-ear signals had to travel from their antennas back to the monitor rack.

Traditionally that's a long run of coaxial cable, and coax has a problem: the longer it gets, the more signal it loses. Long BNC runs were causing signal loss and inconsistent coverage at remote positions.

The fix: convert the radio signal to light, send it down optical fibre, and convert it back at the other end. Fibre doesn't care about distance the way copper does.

Bob Cowan, monitor engineer: "We're mixing monitors roughly 750 feet away, and it's been flawless. Reliability is everything for us."

The analogy: it's the same reason your home internet got better when the copper was replaced with fibre. Copper degrades with length. Light doesn't, not meaningfully.

There were 56 wireless bodypack receivers on stage — band, spares, techs, guests, plus VIP and accessibility support. The transmitters were wideband, which delivered a second benefit for a world tour: because different countries allocate different frequencies to wireless audio, a narrow-tuning system needs re-racking or re-buying for each territory. A wideband system meant, in the crew's words, that one rack essentially supported the entire world tour.

Hold that thought. It's the single most important idea in the buying section later on.

Solution 5: Recall

Two completely different setlists on consecutive nights is only survivable because modern digital consoles store scenes — complete snapshots of every setting. M72 ran two gain-sharing monitor consoles, letting two engineers work the same stage inputs without fighting over preamp gain.

Scene recall is why night two can be a different show without rebuilding the mix from scratch. If you've used presets on a keyboard or a multi-FX pedal, you already understand it.

Part 5 — The Four Principles (This Is The Part That Scales Down)

Strip Metallica out entirely and four principles remain. They are the same four whether the audience is 50,000 or 150.

For Principle 01 in practice, see Practical Tips on Loudspeaker Placement for Live Sound (Part II).

Part 6 — What This Looks Like At A Size You Can Actually Buy

Nobody reading this needs 288 speakers. What follows is what the same four principles look like in equipment you can own, with real trade-offs stated.

If your audience is up to a few hundred: point source done properly

A point-source powered speaker — one box, one coverage pattern — is the right answer far more often than people think. Two good boxes on stands, correctly placed, beat a badly-deployed array every time.

The QSC K.2 Series is the reference point here, and the detail that matters isn't the one on the front of the box. All three models share the same 2000-watt amplifier and the same DSP. What separates them is coverage angle, and it runs backwards from what most people expect:

Bigger box, tighter pattern. That's deliberate, and it's the single most overlooked spec in PA buying. A K8.2's wide 105° suits a wide, shallow room where the audience is spread sideways. A K12.2's 75° is tighter and throws further, which suits a long, narrow room. The right box is determined by the shape of your room, not by how loud you want to be.

The feature that matters most for Principle 02: every K.2 has onboard delay, up to 100 milliseconds, adjustable in milliseconds, feet or metres, with all three units updating live as you turn the encoder. You can time-align a delay speaker with no external processor at all. Dial in the measured distance and you're done.

A genuinely useful Malaysian tip, and you won't find this in any brochure. QSC's delay converter hard-codes the speed of sound at 340 m/s — you can see it in the spec, where 100 ms equals 34 metres. 340 m/s corresponds to roughly 14–15°C. Malaysia is not 14°C. At 32°C, sound actually travels at about 350 m/s.

So if you dial "30 metres" into a K.2 in a hot hall, you get 88.2 ms when the air only needs 85.7 ms. You're about 2.5 ms long.

Is that a disaster? No — 2.5 ms is small, and at typical distances this is a refinement rather than a rescue. But it's free to get right: set the delay in milliseconds rather than metres, and calculate the milliseconds yourself using 350 m/s (distance in metres × 2.86). It costs nothing and it's correct.

The related point is bigger: a system tuned at a 10am soundcheck in an air-conditioned hall is not the same system at 10pm with 800 warm bodies in it. The air is hotter, the speed of sound has shifted, and the room's absorption has completely changed. This is why engineers re-check before doors.

Choosing between QSC boxes? Read Which QSC Powered PA Speakers Are Truly Right For You?.

Low frequency, handled separately

Principle 01 says subs get their own treatment, and QSC's KS Series gives you three ways to do it. The KS112 is the compact single-12" option at 28.4 kg. The KS118 is the big single-18", the loudest of the three at 136 dB peak and 47 kg. Both are conventional, omnidirectional subwoofers — they throw bass in every direction, including backwards.

The KS212C is the interesting one. It packs two 12-inch drivers into one cabinet in a phased arrangement that achieves cardioid low frequency — it throws bass forward and actively rejects it backwards by about 15 dB at 70 Hz. Remember Problem 4 from the M72 challenges? This is the small-scale version of the same solution, in a single box you can wheel in.

Where that's worth real money in Malaysia: any venue where the bass going backwards is a problem. A mosque or church where the sub sits in front of the congregation and you don't want it hammering the stage. A wedding at a hotel ballroom with a noise-sensitive function next door. A club with a neighbour upstairs. In those situations a cardioid sub isn't a luxury — it's the thing that keeps you welcome.

The KS118 can also do cardioid, but it needs two or more units arrayed to achieve it. The KS212C does it in one box. That distinction is worth knowing before you buy.

Also worth knowing: the K.2 series has scenes — save and recall your whole configuration. That's Principle 04, on a speaker you can buy today.

If your audience is larger, or the room is deep: line array

This is where the QSC L Class comes in, and we're going to be straight with you about what it is and isn't.

The range is four models. The LA108 is the 8-inch array element, 100° horizontal by 15° vertical, 134 dB peak, 13.7 kg. The LA112 is the bigger 12-inch element, 90° by 15°, 136 dB peak, 21.4 kg. Underneath them sit the LS118 single-18" subwoofer and the LS218 dual-18" (available on request — speak to our team).

The feature that genuinely separates L Class from its competition is AWARE. The boxes have infrared sensors between them, so the array physically knows how many elements are in it and at what splay angles — and applies the correct array EQ automatically. On most systems, getting array EQ right is a skilled job with a laptop and measurement software. On L Class, the array works it out itself.

That is not a marketing gimmick. For a small crew without a dedicated system tech, it removes the step most likely to be done wrong.

Alongside it, SysNav handles design, control and monitoring over a network, and its AIM module models array coverage in a scaled drawing of your venue and gives you rigging and pick-point data. Useful caveat for the technically-minded: AIM is a coverage and geometry visualiser with rigging data — it is not a full SPL prediction engine in the EASE or Soundvision sense. We'd rather tell you that now than have you discover it later.

Now the honest limit, and this is the most important paragraph in this section.

L Class arrays cap at six boxes. Six flown, four ground-stacked on a sub (three for the LA112), two or three on a pole. That's QSC's own figure, based on a 10:1 rigging safety factor.

Six elements is a short array. Go back to the caveats earlier: near field length scales with the square of array length, so a short array's cylindrical-behaviour region is correspondingly modest. L Class is not a stadium system and we won't pretend it is. The M72 outer ring ran sixteen boxes per hang — nearly three times the maximum L Class array, on each of sixteen hangs.

What L Class genuinely is: a coupled, self-configuring, networked array system for events where you need to shape vertical coverage across real depth — a ballroom, a mid-size hall, an outdoor community event, a house of worship with a deep floor and a balcony. QSC's own applications material places L Class from their "up to 5,000 people" regional bracket upward, while K.2 appears in both the local and regional brackets. Note that QSC publish no headcount figure for L Class — if you see a specific number quoted elsewhere, that's someone's guess.

The honest way to choose between them. K.2 is point-source coverage, for a space you can cover with one or two boxes per side. L Class is coupled array coverage, for when you need to control how sound is distributed from the front row to the back wall, plus networked design and control.

And a genuinely useful detail from QSC's own documentation: K.2 boxes blend coherently with an LA108 or LA112 main array. So K.2 isn't an abandoned first step — it becomes your front fill and your out-fill when you scale up. That's a real upgrade path rather than a sales story.

Part 7 — The Band Has To Hear Itself: Wireless, Honestly Ranked

Principle 03. This is where budgets get spent badly, because the tiers are poorly explained almost everywhere.

First, the question that actually determines what you need. It isn't "how good does it sound?" — everything current sounds fine. It's:

How many wireless channels do you need running at the same time, and how hostile is the radio environment? Everything else follows from that.

The Sennheiser ladder

XSW 1 and XSW 2 are where most people start, and here's something the marketing doesn't emphasise: they are analogue FM systems, not digital. That is not an insult — analogue FM is mature, reliable technology, and a well-coordinated XSW rig sounds good. But it's honest to say it, because the tier above is a genuinely different technology and not just a nicer version.

XSW 1 gives you up to 24 MHz of tuning across 8 banks, and up to 10 systems running at once, with antenna-switching diversity. XSW 2 has the same 24 MHz but stretches to 12 systems at once, and adds True Diversity — two full receiver sections comparing signals, which is real dropout protection rather than a simple antenna switch — plus adjustable squelch and a metal receiver. Audio response tops out at 16 kHz on both, a real and measurable characteristic of the analogue generation.

EW-D (Evolution Wireless Digital) is the genuine step change. It's true digital, with up to 56 MHz of switching bandwidth depending on band, up to 90 channels, 2,240 selectable frequencies, and 1.9 ms latency. It has a 134 dB input dynamic range — wide enough that you don't set transmitter sensitivity at all. There's no compander in a digital chain, so none of the pumping and high-frequency artefacts that analogue systems use companding to hide. Setup is Auto Scan, control is through the Smart Assist app over Bluetooth, and you get up to 12 hours on the Li-ion pack.

Here's the part worth understanding, because it's the real reason to move up. Analogue FM transmitters generate intermodulation products — spurious signals created when multiple transmitters interact. Coordinating an analogue system means finding an irregular set of frequencies that dodges all those products, which is specialist work. Digital transmission doesn't generate them. So EW-D channels sit on a regular 600 kHz grid, evenly spaced.

That is what turns frequency coordination from a specialist job into pressing "Auto Scan." For a worship team, a school or a function band with no RF tech on staff, that's the upgrade — not the latency figure.

The Shure ladder — and one thing everybody gets wrong

Before the numbers, a distinction that almost every article online gets wrong, and which changes what you buy.

Shure publish two different channel figures. "Channels per band" is how many frequencies are selectable across the whole tuning range. "Simultaneous systems per TV channel" is how many mics can actually be switched on at the same time.

SLX-D is commonly advertised as "32 channels per band." True. It is also 10 simultaneous systems per 6 MHz TV band. Both facts are real. Only the second one answers "can I run my 14-piece worship team?"

So here is the ladder, measured the way that matters:

Two corrections to widely-repeated claims, both from Shure's own documentation.

First: the original SLX-D has no encryption at all. Shure's own comparison table lists it as "None." Plenty of retail listings claim otherwise. If you need encrypted audio — corporate AGMs, government, anything confidential — SLX-D is not the system, and we'd rather lose that sale than sell you the wrong thing. (The newer SLX-D+ does add AES-256, along with 138 MHz of tuning and 85 channels.)

Second: read those numbers again. ULX-D and Axient Digital have identical channel density. 17 standard, 47 in High Density, either way.

This matters because Axient Digital is routinely sold as "the one with more channels." It isn't. If raw channel count is your only problem, ULX-D solves it and Axient Digital does not solve it better — at a substantially lower cost.

So what does Axient Digital actually buy you? Resilience under radio duress, and live remote control.

Frequency Diversity transmits the same audio on two independent frequencies simultaneously. This is the "the lead vocal microphone must never drop out, under any circumstances" feature. Quadversity receives one channel on four antennas placed in four different physical locations, so a performer anywhere in a large venue is always in range of one — worth knowing that this consumes two of a quad receiver's four channels, so it's a trade rather than a freebie. And ShowLink gives real-time two-way control of the transmitters: without it, if a transmitter's frequency gets stomped mid-show, somebody has to physically take the mic off the performer to retune it; with it, the system detects the interference and moves the transmitter to a clean frequency while it's live on a performer's head. Tuning range runs up to 184 MHz at launch, with current AD4Q documentation citing up to 210 MHz across its band models.

That's the honest answer to "why do touring professionals use Axient." Not channel count. The guarantee that the show does not stop.

Which means the honest recommendation for most readers is SLX-D or ULX-D, with Axient Digital reserved for when a dropout is genuinely unacceptable — live broadcast, a televised national event, a high-stakes corporate keynote. ULX-D and Axient Digital are available on request — speak to our team.

Going deeper on SLX-D? Read Shure SLX-D: The Best Value Wireless System in 2026.

In-ear monitors

Same principle, other direction: instead of transmitting a mic to the desk, you're transmitting a mix to the performer. Same radio rules, same coordination maths, same frequency law below — and IEM channels count against your total. A band with 6 wireless mics and 5 in-ear packs is running 11 channels, not 6. This is the most common planning mistake we see, and it's the one that turns a system that should have worked into a system that drops out.

Planning in-ears for your band? Read How To Build Your Band's In-Ear Monitoring System For Live Shows.

The frequency law in Malaysia

Remember the M72 crew's point that different countries allocate different frequencies to wireless audio? That isn't a touring curiosity. It decides what you can legally switch on here.

In Malaysia, wireless microphones are licence-exempt under the MCMC's class assignment — no licence, no fees — as long as they operate in the permitted bands. For most UHF mic and in-ear systems, that band is 470–694 MHz, at up to 50 mW. The 2.4 GHz band is also permitted.

The 694–798 MHz band has been prohibited for wireless microphones since 1 July 2018. It now carries mobile broadband. Plenty of systems built for other markets — including grey imports and second-hand listings — are tuned there. That isn't only a legal problem: you'd be transmitting into spectrum a mobile network is using, and losing.

Approved equipment carries the MCMC label, and the certificate holder has to be a registered Malaysian company — which is why a private buyer can't self-certify a grey import.

Before you buy, check the band code on the box:

Not sure about a system you already own, or one you've seen online? Send us the model and band code and our team will check it for you.

So What Would You Actually Do?

Back to the four principles, as a checklist you can use this week.

And the one that only applies here: check the frequency band before you buy anything wireless.

Shop The Gear at Music Bliss

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QSC L Class — line array

• QSC LA108 1300W 8-inch Active Line Array Speaker
• QSC LA112 12-inch Two-way Active Line Array Loudspeaker
• QSC LS118 4,000-watt 18-inch Active Subwoofer
• QSC LA112-AF Array Frame for LA112

QSC K.2 Series — powered point-source speakers

• QSC K8.2 2000-watt 8-inch Powered Speaker
• QSC K10.2 2000-watt 10-inch Powered Speaker
• QSC K12.2 2000-watt 12-inch Powered Speaker

QSC KS Series — powered subwoofers

• QSC KS112 2000-watt 12-inch Powered Subwoofer
• QSC KS118 3600-watt Powered Subwoofer
• QSC KS212C Cardioid 3600-watt Dual 12-inch Powered Subwoofer

Sennheiser — wireless microphone systems

• Sennheiser XSW 1-835 Handheld Wireless System
• Sennheiser XSW 2-835 Handheld Wireless System
• Sennheiser EW-D 835-S SET Digital Wireless Handheld System
• Sennheiser EW-D 965-S SET Digital Wireless Handheld System
• Sennheiser EW-D ME4 SET Digital Wireless Cardioid Lavalier System

Shure — wireless microphone systems

• Shure SLXD24/SM58 Digital Wireless Handheld System
• Shure SLXD24/B58 Digital Wireless Handheld System
• Shure SLXD24D/SM58 Digital Wireless Dual Handheld System
• Shure SLXD14/85 Wireless Lavalier System
• Shure BLX24/SM58 Handheld Wireless System

In-ear monitoring

• Sennheiser XSW IEM Wireless In-Ear Monitoring System
• Sennheiser EW IEM G4 Wireless In-Ear Monitoring System
• Shure P3TRA215TWP PSM 300 Twinpack Pro Wireless In-Ear Monitor System

Mixing

• QSC TouchMix-8 Compact Digital Mixer
• QSC TouchMix-16 Compact Digital Mixer

Available on request — speak to our team

• Shure ULX-D Digital Wireless Systems
• Shure Axient Digital Wireless Systems
• QSC LS218 Dual-18-inch Active Subwoofer

About the author

Jun Kit

Jun Kit is part of the Music Bliss team, writing about live sound, guitars, recording and the gear on our showroom floor — and how to pick the setup that actually fits the way you play.