Beamworks Anchors its Wireless Rental Operations on Sennheiser Evolution Wireless Digital

Since 2003, Beamworks has been 100% Sennheiser: “Our customers want their performances to be perfect, so that’s the reason we went with Sennheiser from day one”

Tampa, FL, April 7, 2022 ​ – Beamworks Inc. started in 1999 as a local production and rental company, delivering high-quality services and production equipment to the greater Tampa metro area. Within a few years, the company honed its business model and began serving houses of worship, educational institutions, and theatre groups with its rental packages, since it became apparent that these organizations had a need to scale the quality of their productions – and at reasonable prices. In 2003, the company picked up its first sets of Sennheiser wireless microphones: the Sennheiser Evolution Wireless G1. Since then, Beamworks has offered each new generation of Evolution Wireless, including its latest innovation: Evolution Wireless Digital (EW-D).

“We’ve been through the entire evolution of the evolution series,” says Drew McMullian, Operations Manager of Beamworks. “Early on, we started with the G1s and got the G2s as soon as they were available. Then we were fully stocked on the G3s when we started shipping across the country.” Since then, with its inventory completely anchored on Sennheiser wireless, the company has moved onto the G4s before recently acquiring an arsenal of 170 new EW-D units.

Bringing superior wireless performance to community productions

As Beamworks scaled its operations and began serving multiple U.S. regions with high-quality, reliable rental packages, the company soon recognized they were filling an important market need in local community productions: “As we started looking more closely at our potential customers, we realized that there were organizations like churches, schools and local theatre groups that needed to run multiple quantities of wireless to support their productions, so we devised a department here where we could ship our products nationwide through wirelessmicrentals.com.” He says the idea resonated: “Our plan worked and it took off – now we carry well over 300 channels that are constantly going in and out.” Now, says McMullian, wireless mic sales account for more than 30 percent of Beamworks’ rental operations.

McMullian says that he’s had a solid partner in Sennheiser since the very beginning: “We dabbled with the idea of going with another wireless manufacturer early on, but we couldn’t even get anyone to talk to us. Sennheiser contacted us and offered an online ‘search by zip code’ frequency scan option, which really helped us navigate the different frequencies we had available to us across the country.” McMullian is enthusiastic about Sennheiser’s latest digital wireless options, particularly the EW-D. “Our customers are really excited about going digital, so they can cram multiple channels into a frequency range without signal degradation.”

Making space with Sennheiser EW-D

On hearing about the new Sennheiser EW-D, Beamworks immediately recognized the potential benefits to its customers – particularly as it relates to ease of use. “We got a demo unit from our Sennheiser representative, played with it and took it out on a show to try it out. We were impressed right off the bat, so we bought 20 of them and built a few racks in house.” McMullian’s team was particularly drawn to EW-D’s ability to lock in multiple channels in a given frequency range: “The biggest thing for us is how many channels you can get per spectrum, because the RF environment is getting harder and harder to deal with and traffic is becoming increasingly congested.” EW-D’s predictable performance in almost any scenario is reassuring, considering the volume of units the company is dispatching in various regions, says McMullian: “We are sending out multiple wireless units across the country, and using EW-D gives us a much higher chance of success.”

Once an EW-D set is deployed, maintaining longevity of performance is made easier given the battery life of up to 12 hours per charge using the separately available lithium-ion battery pack. “This an important factor not only because you don’t want anything dying on stage, but it represents a cost saving as well. In our case, if we are buying hundreds of batteries, maybe we are buying half as many now. Also, batteries rarely last through dress rehearsals all the way through final productions,” McMullian says.

One recent use case includes a deployment for a Tampa-based mega-church, which featured a performance by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Singers during one service. “For this performance, we used a mixture of Sennheiser’s Digital 6000 System and the EW-D – it was just incredible. We had 26 handhelds and 12 Sennheiser IEMs all in one space and working flawlessly together,” McMullian says.

Simplifying with the Sennheiser Smart Assist App

Aside from being confident that its wireless systems will work properly once they are dispatched, Beamworks also appreciates the role that Sennheiser’s EW-D Smart Assist app plays during set-up and operation: “It is so easy for a customer to use,” McMullian effuses. “People who are complete novices in this stuff can open up the Smart Assist app and figure it out very quickly.”

“For one thing, you can monitor your entire system on an app,” he continues. “So you can pull out a phone or an iPad, leave it next to your console, and constantly meter all of your mics. Most times, these mics are not physically located beside a sound engineer. But now by using the Smart Assist app, engineers can maintain full control from anywhere in the room as long as they have a Bluetooth signal.” Some of the things that can be adjusted using this powerful app include changing frequencies, gain structure and mutes as well as monitoring battery life. “Having eyes on these sorts of things and being able to adjust them on the fly gives users an enormous level of comfort and control if there is ever an issue,” says McMullian.

Anchoring reliability and great sound

Of course, with wireless performance, two considerations remain paramount: audio performance and reliability. “Our customers just want the wireless mics to work, and they depend on us to figure out what is best so they have a great experience,” says McMullian. “We now have had a chance to introduce the EW-D since we have already built that trust among our customer base. When we have the conversation about what EW-D does, our customers are all over it – they all want it. Now, we have them going out as soon as they come in.”

Whether it is the current EW-D, or legacy Sennheiser products, the performance has never let Beamworks down: “We still have many items in our inventory that have gone across the country many, many times and they still work flawlessly,” McMullian says. “The reliability and sustainability has been incredible.”

The images accompanying this press release can be downloaded here.