We're planning on micing (sp?) a sax quartet for our marching show this fall.  The trouble is our board is full (no available channels).  My marimbas all have two mics, and I know of a way to condense them into one channel if necessary, but what I don't know is this:

Is it possible to have four wireless mics one one receiver and therefore one channel?  If so, what kind of cost are we looking at?

Thanks in advance.

In theory, it seems like you could use a small four channel mixer to receive the four wireless signals. From there you could mix the signals as you liked, then send the entire feed as one ";instrument"; to the board.

At my old church, we used to mic our drums that way, then send the signal to the already taxed sound board. There were some obvious advantages, like getting the ";sub-mix"; (probably not an actual term!) for the drums just the way we wanted so that the sound guy only had to worry about the volume of the overall mix.

That's in theory. Perhaps someone who's way more experienced in this can chime in and give a thumbs up or down.

Thanks Eric.

Most wireless mic receivers are designed to receive a signal from a single transmitting microphone only. This makes them much more reliable and much less susceptible to unwanted interference. So, you probably can't have the 4-transmitter / 1-receiver arrangement that you are thinking of.

Putting an auxiliary mixer into the chain is certainly possible, and it is in fact technically correct to refer to this as a sub-mix. Take a look at the Mackie ProFX8 or the Yamaha MG12/4 or MG12/4FX for reliable small-format analogue mixers.