RF Venue's New CP Stage Antennas Bring Clear Sound to The Villages' Outdoor Venues in Florida

	RF Venue's IP-rated and circularly-polarized CP Stage antenna is shown deployed on a mic stand on the stage at The Villages' Spanish Springs Town Square "in-the-round" venue before a planned relocation to the ceiling above the stage.

At The Villages, one of the nation's largest active retirement communities, located in Central Florida, amenities like recreation centers and shopping districts, daily live entertainment, live music, and outdoor performances are staples for residents. The community hosts live music in its unique town square configurations, often with multiple performances happening simultaneously. Frequent wireless in-ear monitor system reception and audio dropout issues began interrupting the groove at three key venues, despite use of OEM transmitter combiners and some external antennas.

"We were regularly taking RF hits and getting audio dropouts, which was distracting to the musicians and the listeners," says Gregory Lynch, assistant technical manager at The Villages. "Some racks even used chassis-mounted whips or mismatched omni antennas, and we had long runs of old lossy coax cable -- obviously this was not ideal."

Following a consultation with RF Venue's Adam Brass, the team installed two compact, circularly-polarized RF Venue CP Stage antennas, along with lower-loss LMR400 cable -- a setup that proved transformational. "We reached out to RF Venue to explain our situation and were guided toward the CP Stage antenna as a solution," says Lynch. "The directionality and gain of the antenna immediately solved the dropouts, whisps, and RF hits. Our usable range improved dramatically."

The first low-profile CP Stage antenna was ceiling-mounted above the outdoor stage at The Villages' Sawgrass Grove venue, connected via 100' of LMR400 cable with the CP Stage's rugged IP-rated housing enshrouded in a vinyl drawstring bag. The second was installed in an outdoor venue at Spanish Springs, an "in-the-round" city-square style venue, where it's currently mounted on a mic stand with plans to move it to the ceiling. The three outdoor venues have fixed racks housing four Shure PSM300 in-ear monitor transmitters. Two portable IEM racks, each with two transmitters, allow up to eight channels of wireless IEM monitoring per venue. Each venue uses Shure PA411 IEM transmitter combiners to feed the CP Stage antennas. "The musicians noticed the difference right away, as previously they took RF hits and had regular audio dropouts," states Lynch. "The RF performance is solid, and the dropouts are gone. They're happy, and so are we."

While this marks The Villages' first deployment of RF Venue products, it's unlikely to be the last. "RF Venue's technical support was second to none with Adam Brass listening to my situation, and he guided us to a solution that suited us perfectly. The bottom line is they listened to our needs and delivered a perfect-fit solution," Lynch adds. "We're thrilled with the results."

For more information, visit CP Stage antenna.