Beta

WSB Documentation

Wireless System Builder 3 · public beta For applications engineers — how it works, where the numbers come from, and what it will not tell a customer

What it is

and what it is not

The third Wireless System Builder, public at wirelesssystembuilder.com since 10 October 2026 and still marked beta. Its idea is that the rack plan becomes the results page — a customer types where they are and what they use, and what comes back is a document they could hand to an installer, not a list of recommendations.

It replaced the previous Wireless System Builder (a separate Meteor application) on that address. Links to old results pages land on the new builder with a note.

The frequencies and the television occupancy are real. They come from SoundBase’s calculator and its TVScout station data, for the customer’s actual address. Nothing on the sheet is sample data.

The three steps

what happens, in order

1 · Location: An address, venue name, city or ZIP. It is geocoded through Google, and the suggestions that appear as you type are Google Places — so “Fenway Park” resolves to its street address. The coordinates decide everything downstream.
2 · Equipment: First, what the plan is for: Mics, In-ears, Wireless PA, or any mix; the list offers only those types. Then receivers, IEM transmitters and RF PA transmitters, by model and band. The list is scored against the FCC's TV station listings for that location before it is shown: each band says how much of it is Clear of local TV (Much, Some, Little or None), and the clearest sort to the top. It is a forecast for comparing bands, not a measurement — TV the venue never receives, and wireless systems the listings do not carry, only show up in a scan. When a chosen band has little or no clear spectrum here, the line says so and names a band with room — the same model first, then the same maker — with a button that switches it. Gear marked Have is left alone: what is already bought is a job for a scan. Mounting — portable or installed — is chosen here too.
3 · Build: One call coordinates every channel as a single set, mics, in-ears and wireless PA together, then the sheet is drawn: overview, a signal chain for each kind of equipment, rack elevation, frequency plan, equipment list. If a model cannot place every channel, the plan names a band with room once the rest of the plan's channels are counted, and Switch and rebuild does both in one click. Where no band of that kind has room, it offers nothing rather than a switch that would also come up short. Advanced, on the frequency plan, locks channels and recalculates the rest one at a time, every other channel held where it is; each change is a new plan. Advanced also lists the TV channels at this address with each station’s signal, measured for an antenna 4 m up outdoors; a user may choose to use one they know is usable at their venue, and the plan says so, on screen and in print.

Where the numbers come from

every figure on the sheet has a source

Frequencies: SoundBase calculator, the same service the live app uses. Mics and in-ears are solved as one set, which is what a shared RF space requires — coordinating them separately is how two systems end up on top of each other.
TV occupancy: TVScout (SoundBase), every TV station within 50 miles of the address, each judged receivable there or not from the FCC's published coverage and a terrain model (Longley‑Rice), low-power stations and public-safety (land mobile) channels included. SoundBase rebuilt it in October 2026, and WSB uses the new data from 15 October: a typical address now shows about seven more TV channels in use than before, because the earlier data left out stations that reach it — in one case a full-power station three miles away. This is why the answer changes between cities, and why a band that suited one venue may have no room at another.
Equipment catalogue: Wireless System Builder's own model data — about 230 model and band combinations across Shure, Sennheiser, Audio‑Technica, Audix and MIPRO, carrying tuning ranges, step size, channel count and the manufacturer's minimum channel spacing.
RF Venue products: The dealer price list, document 70125, priced 1 April 2026 — 123 SKUs with model names, UPCs, product URLs and the verbatim IN THE BOX contents. MAP only; dealer cost is deliberately not carried in this tool.
Physical specs: Rack units, port counts and connector types are not in any of the above, so they are hand-maintained. The Diversity Architectural and CP Architectural antennas are drawn from RF Venue engineering drawings 210‑00014 and 110‑00004; most other products are still marked unverified internally.

How the RF Venue hardware is chosen

sizing, mounting, and the ceiling

Smallest pack that covers the count

Sizing counts antenna connections, not channels. A four-channel receiver is one connection pair, so sixteen channels of quad receivers is four connections — which is why a big channel count often lands on a small distro.

Connections	Receive	Transmit mixes	Transmit
1–4	DISTRO4	1–4	COMBINE4
5	DISTRO5 HDR	5–6	COMBINE6 HDR
6–9	DISTRO9 HDR	7–8	COMBINE8
10–17	two DISTRO9 HDR, cascaded	—	—

Why seventeen and not eighteen

A DISTRO9 HDR has nine output pairs. Cascading a second unit costs the first one a pair to feed it, so two units carry 17 connections. The drawing shows that pair being spent rather than quietly renumbering. Past 17 the sheet stops drawing the rack and says why, and keeps the frequency plan, because the coordination is still real.

Portable or installed

One choice, both legs. Portable specifies the Diversity Fin IPX and the CP Stage, stand-mounted. Installed specifies the Diversity Architectural and the CP Architectural, wall or ceiling mounted in matte white. It changes the bill of materials, not just the picture: the pack part numbers change with it.

Wireless PA

The RF PA Extension Kit sends audio from the mixer to remote powered speakers. Each rack transmitter sends two analog frequencies, and each is coordinated with the mics and in-ears in the same plan. Each frequency leaves its own BNC on the rear panel for its own stock half-wave dipole: there is no combiner, and the transmitter takes no in-ear combiner input. Receivers take no spectrum and any number can listen to a frequency, so the plan does not count them. It lists one RF-PA-KIT per transmitter (one transmitter, two receivers and the stock antennas), and more receivers come singly (RF-PA-RX) or eight at a time (RF-PA-8PACK). The kit tunes 470–506 MHz, a narrow band, so in a crowded city a plan may place fewer frequencies than asked and says so.

Reading the sheet

what each section is for

System overview: Antenna, rack and antenna in one picture. Cable lands on the box it actually connects to — the distro takes the two receive feeds, the combiner drives the transmit antenna.
Signal chains: One per leg, with every run labeled and every port accounted for: used, free, and spent on a cascade.
Rack elevation: Front view in rack units, RF Venue hardware highlighted, spare space shown rather than implied.
Frequency plan: Every assignment with its TV channel, plus an occupancy chart for the location. A model that placed nothing still appears, headed 0 of 4 placed, carrying the reason — that is the whole argument for a document over a recommender.
Spectrum scan: Optional. A customer can drop a two-column CSV, frequency and level, and see their own measurement above the occupancy chart on the same frequency scale.
Equipment list: What to buy, with the IN THE BOX contents for each RF Venue pack so nobody orders a cable they already have.

What it will not tell a customer

the questions you are most likely to get

It is United States only, for now. The band rules are the FCC’s and the chart covers 470–608 MHz, RF channels 14 to 36, so an address outside the US is turned away with a note to contact RF Venue. Canada and the UK are next: the TV data already covers them; the band rules for each country are the work.

“28 MHz open” is spectrum, not a channel count. It is how much of that model's tuning range is clear of television here. It is a screen, not an answer: measured against the calculator, a ULXD4Q fits 16 channels in a clean 10 MHz window where the arithmetic suggests 28, and a SLXD4D fits 10. Channels per MHz falls as the window grows, because every channel added creates more intermodulation products for the next one to dodge.

The threshold decides what in a scan counts. Anything above the dashed line is treated as in use. Too few frequencies placed: drag it up. A visible signal not avoided: drag it down. The first scan a browser loads explains this beside the control, once.

A scan changes the plan only when you ask it to. Dropped onto the chart, a scan file is read in the browser and drawn over the TV picture. Coordinate with this scan sends its readings above the threshold with the build, the frequencies are placed clear of them, and the plan keeps that scan. A scan is one moment at one spot; the threshold decides what counts as occupied.

Plans are kept, but not editable in place. There are no accounts. Every build gets a link that opens the same plan later, and the browser keeps a draft of the steps. Editing a plan builds a new one with its own link; the old link still opens the old plan. Channel names typed on the sheet are kept with the link and print with it.

A device that is not in the list cannot be added. Not yet. The calculator itself would accept one — that has been tested — but a custom device needs an intermodulation profile it cannot get from a spec sheet, so borrowing one from a similar product is a decision nobody has signed off on.

Rack units and port counts are unverified for most products. The two architectural antennas come from engineering drawings. The rest are hand-entered and flagged as such internally. Do not quote a depth or a connector type off a drawing here without checking.

When someone asks anyway

the escape hatch, by design

The foot of every sheet carries Talk to RF Venue. It opens an email carrying the location, mounting, channel counts, rack size, RF Venue hardware, equipment and coordination summary — so whoever answers can start with the answer rather than asking what the customer has.

It goes to a person today and will point at a HubSpot form once sales and support want it in the CRM. The promise printed beside it is same working day, always within 24 hours; that is an operational commitment, not a feature, and it is worth knowing it is being made on the page.

Where it lives

Live: wirelesssystembuilder.com — public, no login. The admin page is at /admin, for rfvenue.com Google accounts.
Source: RFvenue/WSB3-PoC. Deployment and the current state of play are in DEPLOY.md and HANDOFF.md.
This page: Written for applications engineers, deliberately short of code detail. If something here disagrees with the app, the app is right and this needs updating.

Terms of use

Wireless System Builder is a free planning aid from RF Venue, Inc., provided as is.

A plan is a recommendation, not a guarantee. Frequencies are coordinated from public TV-station data and the published specifications of the equipment you choose. Conditions at a venue change, so scan the room before you rely on a plan for a show. RF Venue does not warrant that a plan is free of interference.
You are responsible for operating lawfully. That includes FCC rules for wireless microphones and in-ear monitors and any licence your equipment or use requires. The builder never places a frequency in spectrum closed to wireless microphones (TV channel 37 and the 600 MHz band), but it does not check licensing.
United States only. Coordination uses US TV-station data and US band rules.
Prices shown for RF Venue products are minimum advertised prices and may change; buy from an authorized RF Venue dealer. Other product names and trademarks belong to their owners.
RF Venue may change or withdraw the builder, or anything on it, at any time.

Privacy

No account, and no contact details asked for. What you type in — the venue address, the names in Prepared for and Prepared by, a company name or logo — is saved with your plan.
Every plan has its own link, and anyone with the link can open the plan, including that address, those names and that logo. Links are hard to guess but they are not secret: share them as you would the PDF. To have a plan deleted, contact RF Venue.
How the builder is used is recorded, to improve it: the steps a visit takes and the plans built, a random identifier your browser keeps for the site (not a cookie), your IP address and the organization it is registered to, and the state or country of a plan’s venue. It is not sold.
Feedback you send goes by email to people at RF Venue. Add your name or email only if you would like a reply.
The site uses RF Venue’s HubSpot analytics, which sets cookies, as rfvenue.com does. See RF Venue’s privacy policy.