Best wireless microphone choice for university classrooms

Did you know that a university is – fittingly – the biggest test any audio system can undergo?  

Impatient faculty, careless students, complex audio-visual ecosystems, hybrid demands, constant usage, assistive listening requirements, limiting architecture, and more – and that’s just one room. 

Now scale this across hundreds of spaces spread between a variety of campuses all managed by a handful of AV specialists, and you’re starting to get the picture – universities don't have room for equipment that needs babysitting. 

That’s why top universities from Florida to Perth are choosing Catchbox for their wireless microphone needs. And why we're back-to-back winners of Best Microphone at the Higher Ed AV Awards (2024, 2025) and iF Design Award recipients. 

Let’s walk through what the Catchbox Plus system actually is, why universities keep choosing it over alternatives, and how to test it in your environment.

What is the Catchbox Plus wireless system?

Catchbox Plus is a wireless microphone system designed for centrally managed university classrooms, combining easy-to-use microphones with reliable audio performance and seamless integration into existing AV environments.

The system consists of a set of wireless microphones and a 2-4 channel Hub for keeping everything connected and ready to go. What microphones exactly? That’s up to you and your specific classroom needs. 

You can mix and match three different Catchbox mics – the iconic Cube, the hands-free Clip, and the handy Stick – to meet your specific faculty and classroom needs. 

How is this different from other microphone systems? Here’s the short version of what gets universities hooked on Catchbox Plus:

➔ Faculty love the Clip and Stick – Enter the class, put on the mic, teach, put it back on the charger, leave. No nonsense, no wires. Easy charging stations ensure the microphones are always charged, and we’re repeatedly told that the Clip’s form factor is what everyone’s been waiting for since Revolabs’ untimely demise. 

➔ Students engage more with the Cube – It’s a throwable (and droppable) mic! Students are eager to get their hands on it, and it avoids all the demotivating shuffling about after handhelds or the noise pollution typical of ceiling mics. It really boosts classroom engagement.

➔ AV teams appreciate the tech – Reliable hardware mean fewer support visits, super easy integration into existing systems means fewer headaches, and remote management means more time to spend on value-added activities. 

“At the start of this year, we were like – where are the calls? With Catchbox, support tickets and general maintenance have gone way down,”

Jeffrey Levesque, Lead Information Technologist at University of Rhode Island

Let’s take a closer look at the 7 principal reasons why universities choose Catchbox, with some case studies to match. 

7 reasons why universities chose Catchbox Plus

There’s no single standard path to adopting Catchbox Plus. For some, it’s love at first sight after a demo at Integrated Systems Europe. For others, the growth is purely organic – a single Cube brought in for assistive listening catches the eye of a curious professor, and within a semester, the AV team is fielding requests from every department on campus.

Whether it starts as a niche solution or a larger rollout, the result is usually the same – a pilot program that quickly scales into hundreds of rooms – because of some mix of the following reasons. 

1. Clear audio in the room, for remote participants, and assisted hearing

Catchbox Plus microphones offer clear, crisp audio across the board, whether you are looking for a voice-lift, lecture capture, hybrid audio, or assistive listening solution. Since the Hub can handle up to 4 Plus microphones, you can mix and match the right tools for every room size:

➔ The Clip (Presenter mic): A compact, wearable powerhouse. It attaches effortlessly to clothing or can be worn on a magnetic lanyard. It’s the ultimate hands-free experience for professors who like to use their hands (or a whiteboard) while they speak.

➔ The Stick (Handheld mic): We’ve stripped away the intimidating, bulky design of traditional handhelds.The Stick – like all Catchbox wireless microphones – features a Focused Omni™ mic pattern, which captures broadcast-quality audio regardless of how the presenter is holding it – no more holding the mic too low or muffled sentences.

➔ The Cube (Audience mic): Stop passing around handhelds or relying on array mics that pick up more HVAC noise than student voices. The Cube travels across the room in seconds, capturing audio right at the source and boosting active participation.

Catchbox Plus is a whole room audio capture solution that just works for everyone. And when we say everyone, we really mean it: in-class voice lift so lecturers don’t have to shout, hybrid audio capture so remote participants can hear the questions of their classmates, and assistive listening solutions to make university truly accessible. 

To that last point, Plus makes this easy by allowing you to use a dedicated output (like RCA) specifically for assistive listening devices. You can configure the Hub to only output the presenter’s microphone to the ALD, ensuring maximum clarity for those who need it most without the chatter of the room interference.

2. Long battery life and best-in-class charging solution

Ask any AV manager and they’ll tell you the #1 support call they receive is about a microphone with a dead battery. Some traditional systems rely on swappable batteries that technicians have to tediously replace in all classrooms at the end of the day. Others – on finicky charging cables or specific alignments that faculty, in a rush between classes, often mess up or even break.

Plus solves this with our best-in-class magnetic charging stations. You don't need to plug it in – you just place the mic right where you picked it up from. For the Stick & Clip, the magnetic pins ensure the mics snap into place perfectly every time.

As Dean Rowland, AV Engineer at Aston University, puts it:

“You literally can almost throw the microphone at the base and it just goes on and starts charging.”

The Stick & Clip both offer 8 hours of battery life on a full charge. The charging stations can be daisy-chained (supporting up to six slots), allowing you to optimize power outlets in a crowded AV rack or podium. Whereas the Cube would be ready to pull an all-nighter with 22 hours of battery life on a full charge.

3. Intuitive design that requires little to no staff training

Typically, when teachers get assigned their classrooms and lecture halls at the start of the year, they'll get a breakdown of what technologies are available in the room and how to use them. Also typically, what follows next is months of support tickets as they get used to tech by trial and error. 

Not with Catchbox Plus. 

Jeffrey Levesque at the University of Rhode Island sums it up perfectly:

“I don't just need crisp clear audio. I also need it to be simple for my instructors to use. The simpler I can make it for them, the better.”

With Catchbox Plus, the training is simply picking it up.

➔ Pick-up-and-talk: All microphones feature automatic functionality – they unmute the moment they are removed from the charger and mute the second they go back.

➔ The Mute button: The Clip and Stick have easy-access side mute buttons.

➔ The Range Alarm: We’ve all had a professor accidentally walk out of the building still wearing a lavalier mic. Catchbox mics feature a built-in range alarm that alerts the user once they get out of the Hub’s range of 100m/330ft. 

Plus, the range alarm saves more than just nerves – it saves the hardware itself. 

“Great job on the loud proximity alarm. Our previous mics had a nearly silent one and so one of the devices somehow ended up in Germany. Thankfully, we've had no such problems with Catchbox and I don't think we will,”

– Scott Pritchett, Manager of multimedia services at the University of Central Florida

4. Operates on DETC frequency for the best wireless performance

Rather than competing for spectrum with every other wireless device on campus, Catchbox Plus runs on DECT – a protocol built from the ground up for reliable, interference-resistant communication.

Here's why that matters in practice:

➔ License-free operation: No frequency coordination fees. DECT is accessible, cost-effective, and ready to deploy out of the box.

➔ Secure, high-quality transmission: DECT was designed for voice. The result is clean, reliable audio that doesn't degrade in dense RF environments like lecture theatres, student unions, or multi-room conference centres.

➔ Automatic channel scanning: The Hub automatically identifies available radio spectrum and allocates transmission slots without manual intervention. In a campus environment where dozens of systems are competing for airspace, this is a genuine game-changer – and a significant reduction in ongoing maintenance effort.

One important note: DECT frequencies vary by region, and Catchbox devices are programmed separately to ensure full compliance with local standards.

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5. Built-in DSP capabilities for better audio management

How many boxes are currently sitting in your AV rack doing jobs the Hub can handle on its own?

The Catchbox Hub is more than just a wireless receiver – it features an integrated DSP with automixer and audio processing capabilities all rolled into one unit. For many universities, it replaces separate DSP hardware entirely, which means fewer failure points, simpler racks, and far less to go wrong at 8am on a Monday morning.

The Hub gives you precise control over what signal goes where. Whether you need to feed loudspeakers, an assistive listening loop, a video conferencing platform, or a full Dante network, there's a dedicated output path for it. 

The Hub tracks all active microphones in real time, automatically prioritising the person speaking while pulling down the level of inactive mics. This eliminates the background noise and room echo that can make recordings and hybrid calls feel unprofessional. You set it up once, and it handles the rest – even when a professor forgets to mute themselves while a student is answering a question.

6. Ease of integration

New AV equipment is only as good as its ability to fit into what you already have. Catchbox Plus was built with this in mind and offers easy integrations with the most popular systems, as well as an API for those in need of something custom. 

For universities already running a networked audio infrastructure, the Hub DSP receiver with the optional Dante Networking module slots straight in. With 4×4 audio in and out over the Network/PoE port, you can route Catchbox microphones – and other non-Plus system mics) across your Dante network like any other source. Power over Ethernet support means one cable handles both data and power to the Hub, simplifying installation in rooms where conduit access is limited.

For campuses running Q-SYS, Catchbox Plus offers a certified out-of-the-box plugin available directly through the Q-SYS Asset Manager. Once installed, your AV team gets full visibility and control of every Catchbox system on the network from a single interface – from real-time battery levels to remote muting/unmuting, and more. 

Not running Q-SYS? No problem. Catchbox Plus offers an open API so you can integrate Plus systems into whatever management infrastructure you're already using – Crestron, AMX, proprietary systems, or custom dashboards your own team has built. 

7. Customization options to match room, campus, or branding needs

This one often comes as a surprise to AV teams evaluating Catchbox for the first time: every microphone in the Plus range is fully customisable.

You can print room numbers directly onto the Clip and Stick Jackets, as well as the Cube Covers – a simple but effective way to keep track of which unit belongs where and discourage the casual borrowing that sees microphones slowly migrate across departments. More visibly, you can apply university logos, colours, and branding, turning the microphones from generic AV equipment into something that actually represents the institution.

For universities that host high-profile events, this matters more than it might seem.

“At UCF, we host a lot of world-class guest speakers, companies, and lecturers. Seeing them on stage sporting uni-branded gear is immensely valuable and makes for unique photo ops. Plus, it works the other way around, too – our people can travel with a Catchbox kit and wear branded microphones at other events, ensuring audiences always know that this person represents UCF,” – Scott Pritchett, Manager of Multimedia Services at the University of Central Florida.

Customisation is handled directly through Catchbox, with no minimum order requirements. It's a small detail that consistently delights the marketing and events teams who didn't know they needed it – and gives AV managers one more reason to get buy-in from stakeholders across campus.

Your first Plus system

You probably already have a microphone solution, an AV ecosystem, and a favorite manufacturer – everyone does. We get it. So we recommend starting by reaching out to us with any questions you have. Does something seem too good to be true? Want to see the microphones in action? How would Catchbox Plus fit into your set-up? We’d love to answer, demonstrate, and share our experience with similar cases. 

You can also meet us and our tech at various industry events all over the world. If the next event is too far away, and you want to get your hands on a system for a test run, we’re happy to organize a physical demo. Reach out to us to get a free trial unit for your university.