For any production-oriented house of worship, an intercom system can quickly prove to be an invaluable tool of the trade. Where once your team may have been moving around the booth trying to communicate about an issue and hoping that no one can hear them and completely unable to communicate with anyone up front, an intercom enables clear communications with little more than a whisper-level voice. And when you get to doing multi-camera shoots of your service, an intercom system is a must for the video director to talk to the technical director at the switcher and the cameramen.
Intercom systems have also been rather expensive for what they deliver, making churches think twice about installing them. Pro Intercom, however, provides a cost-effective alternative to some of the other players in the field, as we're taking a look at just such a system today.
With Spiritual Twist Productions (a Christian theater group in Raleigh where I volunteer some of my time) putting on a play a few months ago, this was an ideal situation to test drive a system in a real environment. Pro Intercom provided a MS301 master station, four BP1 belt packs, two SMH310 single-muff headsets, and two SMH210 single-muff headsets. We provided the fifth needed headset and cabling.
The Equipment
The core of the system is the master station, providing all power to the system and access to three channels of intercom. The MS301 is a 1 RU (rack unit) package in a sturdy aluminum chassis. Three channels of ‘com gives you the ability to sub-section off your people into groups that need to talk amongst themselves, but not necessarily with other groups. In our test situation, the lighting director used the base station, and we had our two spotlight operators on channel A, and our two stage hands on channel B. The stage hands could talk to each other and the lighting director without the spotlight operators hearing them, and the lighting director could cue the spotlights without interrupting communications between the stage hands. If there was a need for the stage hands to talk to the spotlight people directly, a switch on the front panel can join com A and B to act as one com channel, or join A, B and C to act as one com channel. As the lighting director would sometimes need to be the go-between the stage hands and the audio engineer to deal with a mic issue, it was great to be able to partition off the spotlight team on a separate com channel.
And if more channels were needed, a MSM301 three-circuit add-on could be added and interconnected with the first via a single cable at the back of the unit.
The MS301 also provides a program input connector, so you can take your front-of-house feed and put it into the intercom system so the tech crew isn't completely cut off from room sound (especially in the case of double-muff headsets). And a paging output lets you connect the MS301 to an input channel on your PA system, enabling the person using the base station to talk to the room (or wherever you choose to route the signal to) with a press of the Page button. As another example, it could go to a small room PA system in your green room to let the worship team know when they need to come onto the stage or other needed information.
Each channel on the MS301 has a knob for adjusting the level in your headset; a talk button that is momentary contact if you press and hold, or latches on/off if you tap quickly; a signal button that lights up the call signal lights on the units attached to that channel; a program switch that selects between no program audio being fed into that channel, program being constantly fed to that channel, or program being fed unless the talk button for that channel on the MS301 is activated; and finally a recessed screw potentiometer for adjusting the program level for that channel. There is also a call signal LED light, and a five-segment LED level meter for the program output.
Additionally, the MS301 has a built-in speaker with an on-off switch and level control. A headset can be connected to the MS301, or a gooseneck mic for use when the speaker option is selected. A recessed potentiometer provides a way to adjust the amount of your own microphone being fed to the headset or speaker on the master station.
The BP1 belt pack is fairly simple. There is a level control for the volume of the earpiece of the headset; a call button; a talk button; and a recessed potentiometer for adjusting the amount of your own mic being feed into your headset. A red LED indicates the call circuit being active. Unlike the master station, the talk button is a press-on, press-off switch. The switch turns green when the mic is turned on.
The headsets are pretty self-explanatory, with the difference between them being the SMH210 mic boom being more fixed in place (but is able to bend a bit), and the SMH310 having a more flexible boom and rotates where connected to the headset muff.
Operation
The intercom was quite simple to set up, using standard XLR mic cable to interconnect the system. And a nice bonus of the Pro Intercom system is that it's fully compatible with Clear-Com's party line intercom systems, so not only can you build a complete system using Pro Intercom's units, you can also augment or replace an existing Clear-Com party line system using Pro Intercom gear.
The Master Station worked great, and was easy to adjust all the levels. One odd thing about the unit, though, is the page output jack was a female XLR/female TRS combo connector instead of a male XLR. Normally audio sources have a male jack. So, if you wanted to run the page output of the MS301 to an input on your audio console, you'd need a male-to-male cable or a gender changer. (Can you say “gender changer” in a church-oriented magazine? Hmmm…..) However, it's trivial to swap out an end on a cable, or make a TRS male to XLR male cable, so not a problem—just unusual. Pro Intercom states that they chose this to provide flexibility in using either a TRS cable or XLR, but may consider changing this in the future to be a male XLR jack due to the customer feedback they have received. Volume was more than sufficient, and we heard no cross-talk between channels.
The BP1 belt pack was also easy to operate. It's a tad clunky, so if you were going to actually wear it on your belt, you might want to look into the BP.15 belt pack which has the profile of a deck of cards. Our spotlight people and stage hands tend to just clip the belt pack to the music stand they use for their notes, so it wasn't a concern at all for us. It would be nice if the talk buttons on the BP1 were also momentary if you pressed and held them instead of having to remember to push the talk button again when you're done speaking. However, Pro Intercom reports that you can easily modify the talk switch to be momentary contact by gently removing the metal clips that causes the latching operation. In fact, the call switch and the mic switch are identical—the call switch just has this piece of metal removed already. And no, removing this piece of metal will not void your warranty. Hang onto it, though, in case you want to make it latching again in the future. I did this with one of the BP1s, and it took me about five minutes the first time, and it was quite simple and obvious what to do.
If you're using the program feed in the mode where the program feed cuts off when the talk button is pressed, it's worth noting that this only happens when the talk button on the master station is pressed. If the talk button on the belt pack is pressed, the program audio continues. This could be a problem if someone on a belt pack needs to talk during an especially loud part of the program, as they might not be able to be heard clearly over the program audio.
Both headsets worked well, with the SMH310 being a little easier to adjust with the pivoting boom and more of a gooseneck-type boom, and also was a little less expensive ($90 vs $145 MSRP). The SMH210's boom mic was a little harder to adjust, but Pro Intercom states that it is the more rugged headset, lasting probably twice as long as the SMH310 due to the pivot joint where the boom meets the muff on intercom headsets in general like the SMH310 is the most frequent point of failure. The company also says the cable on the SMH210 contains strands of steel wire along with the regular copper conductors, making the cable almost impossible to break. Both operated well from a sound quality perspective.
The Bottom Line
Pro Intercom has had a long history of producing excellent equipment for a reasonable price. All the parts of the system we tested were of excellent construction quality, rugged, and I'd expect many years of service from them. Jane Alexander, rental manager at Atlas Stageworks Lighting in Raleigh, NC, commented that they have had Pro Intercom components in their rental stock for many years and they've performed excellently, holding up to the rigors of the rental market well. And Elaine Horvath, volunteer lighting tech for this particular production, reports that “the intercom worked very well, and the SMH310 headset that I was using was very comfortable and easy to adjust. The option of having two intercom channels was great, and everyone appreciated having the stage crew off on a separate channel from the spotlight crew.”
I was very pleased with the system. It would be nice if the program feed was interrupted whenever any talk button on a given channel is pressed. But given the party line wiring standard being used, I can see why that can't happen.
While the master station is really nice, if one wants an even more cost-effective system, you can implement a complete system with a PS301 power supply instead of the master station and use all belt pack units, saving you a significant amount of money. Pro Intercom also has a number of other accessories and belt pack options, so visit their website to see all the options.
The system we evaluated (adding in a fifth SMH310 headset to make it complete) has an MSRP of just over $3,000 (see inset for pricing details), an excellent value for a robust three-channel intercom system. Pro Intercom is well worth looking at for either building a complete intercom system or augmenting an existing party-line system.
MSRP
MS301 Master station: $1,425
BP1 Headset Station: $240
SMH310 Single Muff Headset: $90
SMH210 Single Muff Headset: $145
The ability of your tech team being able to communicate: Priceless!
