The Right Audio System & Microphone for Fitness Instructors

De juiste microfoon en geluidsset voor fitness-instructeurs

We totally understand. You’re a fitness instructor, not a sound engineer, but because you’re often teaching a large group of people, it’s worth knowing how to amplify both the music and your voice, otherwise you’ll find yourself yelling just so the people at the back of the room can hear you and your class is forced to grunt through their crunches and lunges in stony silence. Since you need to keep both hands free, a wireless microphone headset is the ideal solution, but which model is best? What kind of speaker or system should you back it up with? And where do you start if you want to branch out and make YouTube videos and livestreams? In this blog we cover everything to help you make the right, tailor-made choice.

The Microphone

As we’ve already mentioned, any sports or yoga instructor needs to keep their hands free during the class, so a normal handheld microphone just isn’t an option. The best solution is either a clip-on lavalier microphone or a microphone headset. A headset offers some advantages here, since it doesn’t make contact with your clothing while you move, which can add some weird background noises to your instructions. For fitness and more intensive yoga or pilates instruction, we recommend using a microphone headset that’s actually designed for sports instructors. You’ll be able to recognise these models easily because they usually include ‘fitness’ in the name to make things nice and obvious.

Wireless Microphones

Because it removes any cables and gives you complete freedom of movement, it can be a great idea to go for a wireless microphone system. There are plenty of systems out there that operate over frequency bands that don’t require a permit, so you don’t need to worry too much about that. But, if you’re working in a gym where multiple instructors are giving classes at the same time (meaning that multiple wireless microphones are being used at the same time) then you’ll need to make sure that each microphone is tuned into a different frequency, otherwise they’ll interfere with each other. Cheaper systems only offer one frequency, in which case you can usually choose between four microphones that work on their own frequency. Just make sure that you purchase microphones with different frequencies. More expensive systems feature switchable frequencies (this will always be listed in the specifications). This means that you can just use two of the same microphone model and set each of them up with a different frequency.

Go straight to: Wireless Fitness Headsets (Licence-Free)

The Speaker

If you’re regularly giving classes in different locations and can’t depend on the sound system provided in each space (if there is one), then it can be a good idea to kit yourself out with your own active speaker. Unlike a passive speaker, active speakers feature a built-in amplifier. This means that setting up is simply a question of plugging your speaker into a power socket, hooking up your microphone and getting started. If you want to add music to the class as well, then you might need a mixer. This doesn’t need to be a massive mixing desk like the ones you see in recording studios. All you need to mix is your microphone and your audio player, so a compact little mixer will more than do the job. Fortunately, a lot of active speakers will come with a basic mixer built in, and these days, you can even get a real all-in-one system, which is usually made up of an active speaker that runs on a rechargeable battery, has a built-in mixer and already comes with a microphone. However, the included microphone is unlikely to be sweat-resistant, so might not be the best tool for the job.

How big does your speaker need to be and how much power should it have? Have a look at our Speaker Buyer’s Guide to get some help.

Possible Setups

To makes things a little clearer, we’ve put together two examples of possible systems:

Single Microphone Setup:

Notes:

Using the Devine MIC100/5 XLR cable, you can connect the fitness headset receiver to the Mic/Line input of the speaker.
The Devine VA7050 cable can be used to connect a smartphone to the Stereo Line In of the speaker.

De juiste microfoon en geluidsset voor fitness-instructeurs

Dual Microphone Setup:

Notes:

As you can see, the two microphones each have a different frequency: 863.125 MHz and 863.625 MHz, so there’s no chance of interference.
Using the Devine MIC100/3 XLR cable, the two Samson sets can be connected to the two Mic inputs of the mixer.
Using the Devine VA1013 cable, you can link the Main Out port of the mixer to the two XLR inputs of the speaker (an XLR port has three holes or pins). Set the switch on the speaker to Line and set the Level 1 and Level 2 controls to the same value.
The Devine VA7050 cable can be used to connect a smartphone to the Stereo Line In of the speaker.

What if You Want to Live Stream?

If you want to make video tutorials or a livestream, the camera that came built into your laptop is probably brilliant, but the built-in microphone is usually not that great – especially since you’ll probably be speaking from a reasonable distance, making it hard to understand what you’re saying.

Again, the best solution here is probably a wireless microphone headset. But how can you connect it to a laptop? Using an audio interface, you can actually link a wireless microphone directly to your laptop, and using a special adapter cable, you could even connect a smartphone or tablet to many audio interface models. However, the manufacturer can’t always guarantee that this will work, so it can be a question of just trying it out. Android users will need a USB-OTG cable (a USB-A to micro USB-B or USB-C, depending on the model of your phone or tablet), and iPad/iPhone users will need a Lightning to USB-A adapter.

De juiste microfoon en geluidsset voor fitness-instructeurs

Possible Setups

Notes:

Some Samson Airline systems come including a short, 1.5-metre-long 6.3mm jack cable, which is long enough for this setup because the audio interface can sit close to the microphone receiver. Here, the Samson receiver is connected to the Mic/Line in 1 port of the Devine Centro audio interface.
You can connect the Devine Centro audio interface up to your laptop using the USB cable that comes included.