Wireless guitar systems and interference. How much of an issue is it - at home and at gigs?

Question

I am aware of this previous question Wireless Guitar Systems. However it is nearly ten years old. The technology has probably changed and the emphasis of my question is different.

---

Background

I am taking up guitar again after a long absence. Currently I'm playing mostly at home to get my skills back up to speed. I occasionally play at a social get-together. I would like to try wireless technology both at home and at the occasional gig away from home.

Problem

In reviews I see that some wireless systems can be sensitive to home broadband WiFi and produce annoying pinging noises constantly. Given that WiFi is so prevalent now (and that I also have it in my home), I wonder if Wifi interference is a regular problem these days.

Question

Does anyone here have experience in this area and, if so, is it only the cheaper systems that have the problem? Does it make sense for me to start cheap and work my way up or will interference plague me no matter how much I spend?

Note

I don't anticipate getting further than about 15 feet (4.5 m) from the receiver. At home my broadband WiFi and guitar equipment will all be in close proximity - within a radius of about 8 feet.

Answer 1

I have 3 generations of wireless kit for gigging, and the oldest is very much analogue, from back in the early 90's. Then I have an early 802.11b kit (on 2.4GHz), and a much more modern Line 6 Relay G55 (also on 2.4GHz) from about 7 years ago.

The earliest one suffers from interference any time anything is broadcasting on a channel close to its frequency - nothing I can do about it. It has no interference protection.

The 802.11b kit copes well even when there are multiple devices on 2.4GHz - it only ever had problems in venues where I might want to move far away from the receiver, and had columns/people in between. It didn't cope well with that, but never suffered from interference, just low signal.

And the G55 works everywhere - doesn't suffer from interference from large numbers of devices on 2.4GHz, copes with multiple routing paths in weird venues.

Your XVive is possibly not quite as robust at seeking out channels that are free of interference as the Line 6, but for your purposes it will cope perfectly well. There is actually a lot of space in the 2.4GHz band as you will have noticed if you have kids and they bring their friends round - and everybody has a phone connecting to your wifi :-)