Sound Devices’ Astral wireless system is built around the idea that professional RF tools should be powerful without becoming intimidating for the people who use them every week.
High-end wireless microphone systems have traditionally come with a tradeoff: exceptional performance paired with increased complexity. For churches navigating crowded RF environments, volunteer teams, and limited setup time, that complexity can quickly become a barrier rather than a benefit.
That’s what makes Sound Devices’ Astral wireless system worth a closer look.
As a sound engineer at Stonecreek Church (Milton, GA) and founder of Worship Sound Guy, Johnny Ragin evaluated Astral through the lens of both weekly church production and the training needs of real-world audio volunteers.
When Johnny Ragin evaluated the system at an off-site church event, he wasn’t working under controlled conditions. In fact, it was the opposite. “We didn’t get to go on-site ahead of time,” he says. “So we didn’t have any kind of wireless scan from the venue. We were just absolutely going in blind.”
High-end wireless performance with a noticeably lower learning curve
The event itself was relatively small, but it was a full production environment, with band, worship, and multiple wireless channels operating simultaneously. “I was a little bit hesitant, a little bit scared,” Ragin admits. “I just didn’t know exactly what I was going to be walking into regarding the potential for interference.”
The Sound Devices A20-Monarch antenna is designed to support the Astral system's wide tuning range, giving production teams more flexibility when coordinating wireless microphones in crowded RF environments.
That uncertainty is where Astral’s wideband design and automated coordination became immediately relevant. “If there’s a free wireless space somewhere, this thing’s going to find it—and it did. It was super easy,” he says. Even while operating alongside other wireless systems, including in-ear monitors, the Sound Devices system handled coordination without issue. “It navigated around everything. It plays nicely with other stuff.”
For Ragin, that ease of setup stands in contrast to how wireless is often perceived. “There’s a lot of mysticism around wireless frequency coordination—how difficult it can be,” he says. “The Astral stuff just kind of takes care of all that for you.”
At its core, Astral is positioned alongside flagship wireless systems like Shure Axient. But Ragin points to a key distinction—not in capability, but in usability. “I’ve gotten to use a lot of Axient stuff, and it’s great—but it’s pretty complicated,” he says. “You have to really dig into Wireless Workbench… set up a lot of extra pieces to get it to work for you.”
You can see everything—frequency, status, control—all in one place.
By comparison, Astral takes a different approach. “They’ve taken all those ideas and concepts and just really simplified it,” he says. “It’s got all that capability packed in, but it’s very simple to operate.” That philosophy shows up immediately in deployment, where the system’s auto-assign functionality scans available spectrum, determines optimal frequencies, and deploys them across all transmitters at once. “It’s mind-bogglingly fast,” Ragin says.
One of the more subtle—but significant—design decisions is Astral’s gain-forward architecture. Instead of adjusting gain at multiple points across the signal chain, the system removes gain control from the transmitter entirely. “There’s so many places to mess up your gain before you even get into the console,” Ragin explains.
Astral simplifies that approach. “They were like, ‘Why don’t we just have one place where you can set your gain?’ Just adjust it at the mixer like you would for a wired microphone.” For churches—especially those working with volunteer teams—that shift has practical implications. “I cannot tell you how many churches I’ve gone into where they’re like, ‘All our mics are sounding different,’ because their gain structure is all over the place,’” he says.
With support for 8, 12, or 16 channels, the Astral ARX16 gives production teams a scalable wireless receiver platform that can grow as their channel counts and workflow needs change.
Ragin evaluated the Sound Devices system using an Astral ARX16 receiver along with a mix of handheld transmitters and bodypacks. The ARX16 is a half-rack unit that offers eight channels of wireless, but is expandable to 12 or 16 channels.
Gain structure is reduced to a single control point at the console
One feature that stood out was the flexibility of the Astral HH handheld transmitters—specifically their ability to accommodate multiple capsule standards. Initially, the microphones appeared limited to a Sennheiser-style connection. “I was a little bit bummed,” he says.
That assumption didn’t hold for long. “You can actually flip the connector… and now it’s a Shure connector. That was incredibly impressive.” That flexibility allowed him to use both Shure and DPA capsules, including his church’s standard DPA 2028. “It sounded fantastic on it,” he says.
On the bodypack side, the system delivered equally practical advantages. “It’s super lightweight,” Ragin says. “Much lighter than a Shure or Sennheiser pack.” Battery performance was another highlight. It will operate on just one battery, but with three, you get something like 12 hours.
Control is handled through a combination of onboard touchscreen displays and a web-based interface accessible from any device on the network. “You can see the frequency spectrum… the status of all your microphones… turn them on and off remotely,” he says. The system also introduces an “always listening” concept, allowing remote control of transmitters even when they appear to be powered down, along with displays that remain visible at all times.
Looking ahead, deeper integration is already emerging—particularly with Digico consoles. “You can see all the information about your mics straight on the console and control them from there,” Ragin notes. “That’s very cool.”
For churches that regularly scale up production for major events, Astral’s licensing model introduces another layer of flexibility. “You can rent additional channels for something like Christmas or Easter,” he says. Instead of permanently expanding a system, churches can scale capacity as needed.
That approach reflects a broader design philosophy—one that prioritizes long-term flexibility and ongoing development. “I’ve not seen meaningful post-release innovation from other manufacturers’ wireless products,” Ragin says. Sound Devices positions Astral as a long-term investment, with meaningful capability upgrades over the life of the product delivered through firmware updates.
Astral isn’t positioned as an entry-level solution, and Ragin is quick to acknowledge that. “It’s definitely not for everybody,” he says. But for churches operating at a higher level—or those dealing with particularly challenging RF environments—it represents a different way of thinking about wireless systems.
“If you’re considering Axient… after using this, I’d be leaning toward this,” he says.
Not because it does less, but because it simplifies what has traditionally been complex. “For someone to come in and say, ‘Here’s an advanced option for wireless, and it’s pretty easy to use,’” Ragin says, “that’s very nice.”
