Sound Devices Astral Wireless

The most capable – and best sounding – handheld microphone that money can buy. Unlike other devices, the Astral Handheld shrugs off the notorious “death grip,” maintaining full RF strength no matter how it’s held. Whether it’s a packed house on opening night or a long tour on the open road, you can always find open frequencies, because it can tune to more spectrum than any other handheld.

Its fast setup saves time, and its rugged durability is built for the rigors of touring, yet the Astral HH microphone is easy to decorate, changing aesthetics for concerts, live events, theater, houses of worship, cruises, corporate events, and beyond. You’ll want to get your hands on this handheld.

SpectraBand™ gives the Sound Devices Astral® series of wireless products an unmatched tuning range, compared to that of any competitors: 169 MHz – 1525 MHz. The advantages of SpectraBand to sound professionals are many:

- More wide-open operating frequencies are available in a given location, alleviating the problem of no open spectrum to operate wireless mics.
- Money is saved by purchasing only one piece of gear, which can be used anywhere around the world, rather than special hardware variants of kit used for different locations.
- Worldwide travel is easier, as the Sound Devices Astral products can access all legal frequency bands within their tuning range in any given country.
- The SpectraBand hardware includes exceptional filtering that improves immunity from strong interfering signals (for example, local DTV transmitters) or other transmitters close to the receiver (IFBs, 2-way radios, camera hops).

NexLink is a proprietary, extremely long-distance protocol for remote-controlling wireless mics developed by Sound Devices.

There are many wireless protocols from which to choose for controlling transmitters remotely, such as Zigbee, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi. All of these are excellent technologies for many applications but are not ideally suited for wireless transmitter control. Either the operating range is too short, the power draw is too much, or the link reliability is not solid enough. Of particular interest for sound professionals is a protocol that works reliably, has excellent range, and is legal worldwide. The perfect protocol did not exist, until now. Enter NexLink.

NexLink was written from the ground up by Sound Devices with wireless microphone systems in mind, and achieves what hasn’t been done before: a remote-control protocol which outperforms the range of the audio RF signal by a wide margin without the use of cumbersome repeater devices. You can use NexLink with confidence, knowing that you’ll always be able to control the wireless transmitters from the receiver, no matter how far away the transmitter is from the receiver.

No more stopping the action on set. No more adjusting the transmitter gain on the talent. You can set your levels and make adjustments at your receiver and not at the transmitter with GainForward. 

Time-saving feature that automatically scans tuning bands for clean frequencies and assigns them to multiple channels. The frequencies are then automatically pushed to NexLinked transmitters seamlessly. It takes just seconds to assign multiple wireless transmitters.