A Sennheiser Freeport wireless tie pin or hand-held mic system is hard to beat

If you’re looking for a mic system that’s good enough quality to use in video and audio podcasting and seriously affordable at the same time, I can’t fault the Sennheiser.

We’ve been using the tie-pin version for over a year now and it’s never failed us yet.

It’s ideal for capturing seminars and keynote speeches. You can sit way off from the stage and monitor your recording and the rotary gain on the back of the base unit makes a nice ‘analogue’ control for those who like to adjust their levels on the fly.

I just ordered the hand-held unit to give us the possibility of capturing audience questions since we’re podcasting from an academic event at the University of Plymouth in a couple of weeks time.

On the day, I’ll be running the tie pin from the keynote speaker into one channel of the mAudio microtrack and the hand-held into the other channel. That will keep the signals separate, allowing me to create a final mono mix with the audience questions mixed in only when they occur, doing away with any additional background noise.

The Freeport is fantastic value for money – but be warned; take it to a busy conference at your peril as the unit only has 4 preset frequencies to choose from. The chance of someone else’s system interfering with your is high – and unlike the really expensive versions, your system won’t retune itself to a free frequency.