Sennheiser EW 100 G4 Review: True Diversity at a Church Price

Radio waves in a building do not travel in one path. They bounce off steel, glass and masonry and arrive at the receiver by several routes at once, and where two paths arrive out of phase they cancel. These nulls are physical locations in the room, and a transmitter carried through one loses signal completely for as long as it takes to walk out again. This is why a wireless system that is perfect in an empty room fails during a service, and why the failure always seems to happen in the same spot.

A true diversity receiver has two antennas separated in space and two receiver sections, continuously selecting whichever is receiving better. Because the two antennas are in different places, they are almost never in the same null at the same time. That is the entire mechanism, and it is worth more in a difficult building than any other single specification. It is also the thing the cheapest systems leave out, including the BLX reviewed at the BLX24/SM58 review.

The second feature that earns its place is the scan function. The receiver surveys its tuning range, finds the quietest frequencies, and the transmitter takes the setting over an infrared link. That removes the part of coordination that volunteers find hardest, though it does not remove the need to think about intermodulation once you are running several systems. The method is in the coordination guide.

Two lines here do not appear on cheaper systems at all: diversity, and a tuning range wide enough to move.

Analog wireless cannot transmit the full dynamic range of a voice over a radio link without noise becoming obvious, so every analog system compresses the signal before transmission and expands it afterwards. That circuit is the compander, and it is the reason analog wireless is usable at all. It is also not perfect. On sustained quiet material with a low noise floor, the expansion is audible as a faint breathing or pumping behind the voice as the circuit tracks the level.

In a congregation at 88 dBA with a band playing, no one will ever hear it. On a recorded sermon played back through headphones, or on a livestream where the vocal sits alone over quiet music, it is there. A church that records its services and cares about the archive should weigh that against the diversity advantage, and the honest answer for many is to go digital instead: the EW-D 835-S at $699.00 has no compander at all and is cheaper.

The second cost is battery life. About 8 hours from the G4 transmitter is meaningfully less than the 14 hours a BLX returns from the same two AA cells, which changes the recurring cost of running the system. Work out what that means annually with the wireless battery calculator before assuming alkaline cells are the cheap option.

Published owner reviews are strikingly consistent about reliability. Owners describe G4 systems running weekly for years without a dropout in rooms where cheaper systems failed, which is exactly what true diversity predicts. The scan and sync workflow is the second most praised feature, and the transmitter mute switch is mentioned repeatedly by churches because it lets a speaker silence their own microphone without a trip to the console.

The recurring criticisms are battery life, price relative to entry systems, and, from owners who record, the analog noise floor and companding compared with digital alternatives. A fourth theme is that owners buying today question whether to buy into an analog generation at all when digital sits at a similar price, which is a fair question and the honest answer depends on whether your building or your archive is the harder problem.

Digital alternative, because it costs less and removes the compander: the EW-D 835-S at $699.00 gives a wider 56 MHz range and no gain to set, and is the better buy for a church whose main problem is volunteers rather than radio nulls. Reviewed at the EW-D 835-S review.

Rival platform, because two channels per rack unit changes the arithmetic: the Shure SLXD24D at $1,649.00 is the system to compare against once you are running six or more channels and rack space is the binding constraint.

Budget pick, because most rooms are not difficult: the XSW 1-825 Dual at $649.00 puts two Sennheiser channels in one receiver for less than one G4 system, which is the right call when the building is small and the problem is channel count rather than dropouts.

Buy it if you have dropouts you cannot fix by moving a receiver, if the room is long or the platform is wide, or if the speaker moves through the congregation. Buy it if you want a system whose owner base is large enough that spares and used bodypacks are easy to find. Compare the two manufacturers head to head at Shure versus Sennheiser wireless.

Do not buy it if your recordings are the priority, because digital is cleaner for less money. Do not buy it as a first wireless in a 150 seat room, where a cheaper system will be indistinguishable in service and the difference buys a headworn capsule that genuinely changes the sound. The field is in handheld wireless microphones for worship.