QWM 1960 Review HH V2 - Matt Sol

To start this review, let’s address the elephant in the room. Are these KAM mics or not? Well, yes and no. Unless you have been asleep at the decks for the last few months, you will have heard of KAM's sad demise. This presented an opportunity that the team behind Q Audio have jumped on, and they have taken over the design rights to the KAM range of microphones. Q Audio is a brand-new company, but these are the popular KAM mic system designs with a few tweaks here and there. Q Audio will be using these designs as a jump-off point for future product development, so going forward we can expect to see more additions to the existing line up.

If you were at BPM this year you will probably have seen the Q Audio stand. If you were unlucky enough to be around on Monday afternoon you may also have caught my impromptu karaoke performance, which was my first hands-on experience with the QWM 1960HH. I was suitably impressed, and was keen to get hold of a set to try out thoroughly.

So, what is in the box? On opening it, the first thing you see is the receiver unit and the first thing that jumps out is the huge display screen. On the back of the unit you have the usual complement of twin antenna connections, a pair of balanced XLR outputs, a ¼-inch jack mixed unbalanced output and a PSU input. Up front there is a power switch and either side of the display are Up, Set and Down buttons to control each mic. The unit is fully rackmountable with both single receiver 1U and twin receiver 1U rack kits, as well as a 1U antenna plate, available separately from your local dealer.

Moving onto the lower layer of the box, you’ll find your actual microphones, a pair of antennas, a ¼” jack cable, 4 x AA batteries and a power supply. KAM power supplies were always awful, and notoriously fragile, which explains the pile of universal power supplies sat in my cable box! Fortunately, this is something Q Audio have been able to address and the one supplied with this set is far superior.

The microphones themselves have all-metal bodies, which at first I was unsure of, as my experience with metal mics over the years is that they tend to get slippery in hand with prolonged use. I’ll come back to this point later, but straight away I found that they feel good in the hand with a decent weight and nice balance to them with the batteries installed.

Now, the big question, just how well do they hold up to use? To test these mics I have taken them out as a DJ, a karaoke host and speed quizmaster. But first let’s take a general look at how they work.

Turning on the receiver confirmed my initial impression, the display is amazing. I honestly have never seen such a clear mic display of this size; you can read it easily from a few feet away! It’s split in two, as you would expect, with a section for each microphone. Along the top you have the handset signal level and below that the actual input level from the mic. Off to the side is an antenna symbol with a letter A or B next to it, so you know which antenna the mic is currently using. What is unusual for mics in this price bracket is to have this functionality at all! It’s called True Diversity, which means the receiver automatically, and seamlessly, switches antenna to whichever is receiving the best signal from the mic. The result should be a rock solid signal as the mic is moved around a venue.

Under this you will find the channel and frequency information, which is nice and clear and easy to read. Finally, on the bottom row of the display there is an IR signal icon (that looks like a mute symbol) which switches to a battery meter when you turn the mic on, a padlock that shows the unit is locked so you don’t accidentally knock it off-channel, a hi/lo power indicator and a volume indicator. As you can see, it is very comprehensive! I especially like the battery level indicator, as it’s all too easy to hand a singer a near dead mic! Now, with the QWM 1960HH, it’s easy to check the battery level with a quick glance at the display.

To use the mics you first have to lock them to a frequency with the IR feature, which – if I am honest – I wasn't looking forward to, as I own the original version of the KAM 1960 and know what an absolute faff it is to set. However, on this updated Q Audio V2 version, it is child’s play! Firstly, the IR sensor is on the front of the mic, not buried in the battery compartment. Secondly, the procedure is extremely simple, you just have to press ‘set’ until the padlock goes out, choose a channel and then hold ‘set’ until the IR indicator flashes. With the mic turned on, you then hold its front near the IR sensor on the receiver and it will lock-on. The padlock turns back on, the signal bar lights up, and the mic’s battery meter appears. The mic’s display also then shows the channel, frequency and battery level.

I was quite disappointed to discover the lack of a mute function, especially as the mic can take a second or two to lock-on when you power it up and this can catch you on the hop if you’re not careful. On the upside, it takes a few second press of the button to turn it off. A constant bugbear of the V1 system was singers switching the mics off accidentally, but that is now no longer an issue.

My first test venue was a typical sleepy village pub for a speed quiz night hosted by my wife. The venue is small and compact with a low roof. We host on a single FBT J12 active speaker run through a notepad Behringer 302 USB mixer. Our first impressions of the QWM 1960HH V2 were excellent. There was very little handling noise and the mic tone was nicely balanced, with very little of the typical popping you tend to get on cheaper mics. Wireless operation throughout the venue was perfect; the signal remained on full for the entire quiz and following an hour and a half of use the battery level remained on full. My wife was initially unsure of the mics, as they have a flat top as opposed to the domed mics she is used to, but was suitably impressed and now wants to steal them!

Now the acid test; for karaoke these needed to perform very well, as I insist a mic must be good enough for me to sing on before I will let my singers near it. The gig was in a student-filled rock venue with a long bar, tightly-packed tables and lots of bodies. If the mics were going to drop, this was the place it would happen as there was so much stuff between my rig and the singers. My equipment for the night was a pair of FBT CS1000 speakers fed from a Behringer XENYX 1222 mixer and Pioneer DJ SB2 with VDJ8. I’ve got to admit, I was a bit nervous handing the mic over to the first singer, John, not least because he was debuting a song he had written and recorded himself that I had never heard before!