LD Systems MEI 100 G2

Our friends in Brussels recently did something useful for musicians in the EU. We now have some new frequencies we can legally use for our IEMs and wireless mics all over Europe - the EU has forced our governments to clear out channel 65 and 66 (also known as duplex gap or G2) for "wireless audio programme making and special events equipment"

This is in addition to channel 70 frequencies.

I was holding back on buying IEMs because I already have instruments on channel 70 and you can only realistically fit 3 or 4 transmitters on there. I use the new shure 2.4ghz transmitters for mics, but they don't make IEMs with that technology yet, so that means having to buy a licence if you wanted to use wireless IEMs.

Thanks to LDs early adoption of the G2 frequencies, you don't have to buy a licence now in Europe. This model and its big brother the 1000 has plenty of licence free channels including the existing channel 70 and the new 65/66 allocations.

So as far as build is concerned, the belt receiver and transmitter are very high quality build, made to last.

Sound wise the system is functional. The receiver is loud enough, but doesn't have any extra kick so you are not going to go deaf using it.

As it is FM technology, the sound quality suffers at the low end, if you are a bass player it probably won't cut it as the bass is distorted and the lowest end is not present. Also the top end isn't that great, it lacks the sparkle and clarity if you A/B the wireless version compared to the monitor out of the mixer through the same ear buds. So it's not the ear phones that are letting it down. I would compare the sound to a lower end FM car transmitter. I know it's possible to get great FM transmission these days, some of the high end in car FM transmitters are absolutely brilliant with deep bass and great signal to noise ratio, it's a shame LD didn't choose a more up to date encoder chipset, or include some sort of compander technology like HDX like you find on the Sennheisers. It is however functional enough and the additional free channels make it worthwhile and good value for money.

The transmitter range is good enough, I can get 25 meters outside with clear stereo reception.

I think I'll have to vote to stay in the EU now, if we drop out, the British government might want those channels back :)

As I have been playing on small and midrange stages for the last years, the monitoring has often been very bad. So I decided to get an in ear system, so I can make my own monitoring mix on stage. At the beginning I thought of a tethered in ear system (I am a keyboarder), because I can't move that much on stage, and because of many wireless systems, that make use of frequencies in the LTE band, which is unusable after the year 2015. That changed after I met the guys of LD Systems on their booth on the Musikmesse 2013, who showed me the G2 Version of their in ear system MEI 100. It simply uses other frequencies, that are free to use for the next time. The street price of around 199€ convinced me to test this system. As i got it from Thomann, I tested it at home first with a computer playing music as a source. And I have been very surprised of the quality of the stereo signal. I expected less. For shure, it ain't the sound, which you will get out of your professional monitor speakers in the studio, but it's quite good (especially for live situations, where you are often surrounded by lots of different noises). In live situations I don't use the stereo mode. I get a signal from the person who does the monitor mix. The signal contains everything except my keyboard sounds. The second signal is a monitoring signal from my keyboard submixer, that I also use on stage. With the MEI 100 G2 you can use the mono-mode to mix two signals. So I can adjust the bandvolume and the volume of my keyboards as I like, and I'm not depending on the monitor mix of someone else. The in ear headphones are ok. They reduce the environmental noise as much as my Elacin ear protection with 25db filters. All in all the monitoring situation is much better than it has been before. And that counts!

Item itself is made well, with good features. Both the receiver and transmitter seem sturdy and from experience can withstand a blow.
We bought four of these to use in a stage monitoring system.
Visually they look good but that is about it.
We encountered problems that, when being as far apart from each other as possible in the free frequency range they would still interfere with each other. This means random high pitch noises, drop outs, quality drops.
Good for beginners but in the long run I would suggest investing a bit more in to this kind of product.