Been watching the demo vids about audiofusion and it does sound interesting, but I'm not sure it's a game changer.
Few gotcha's that I found
- It ONLY runs on apple devices.
- Requires an apple laptop or computer as the "transmitter".
- It broadcasts over wifi to your phone - so, yet MORE clutter in the 2.4G band.
- Has THREE different apps required to make it work.. the sending unit (soundcaster), the FOH mix control (director) and your iPhone mix app (Performer).
- Soundcaster software mixing appears superfluous, and is really an audio interface where the levels for each channel would be a single set and forget affair.
- If you don't have a USB-B port on your mixer, there's additional interface equipment to purchase to "talk" to your macbook and get the audio into it.
True - it DOES reduce the overall expense of a wireless IEM system at $99 per user, for a full band - assuming you have a mac book lying around and everyone in the band has an iPhone
For me - who's NOT a pro musician, but has averaged 85+ gigs a year as a weekend warrior for each of the last 5 yrs.. I want my hookup(s) to be a simple as possible. With my G3 xmitter permanently connected to our X32R IEM console, we power it up and go.
I pop batteries into my receiver (with a built-in limiter) and adjust volume to taste. I "mix" my IEM's onstage via my tablet app (connected to an external router via 5G - to avoid the 2.4G clutter). ONE piece of software, one receiver.
Plus, I have a choice of MANY frequencies (from what I can tell, audiofusion is limited to the 12 in the 2.4G band) to avoid interference.
Based on video's it SURE looks interesting.. not sure how well it will work in the real world.
For me.. the 2 big negatives are
1. too many pieces required
2. wifi based
PS: FULL CREDIT to them for looking at alternatives to our existing wireless interfaces and the associated challenges in that domain