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Peshawar

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About Peshawar

  • Birthday 08/17/1976

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  • Location
    Northern Nevada
  • About
    Sound designer for video games
  • Interested in Sound for Picture
    Yes

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  1. Yes, I did do a lot of processing to get closer to the results I wanted. And I’ve used many of the mixpre recordings at my work (video game sounds for military themed project). But I ended up using multiple Tascam HSP82’s with both onboard and external preamps going in via line and AES to get closer to what I wanted. It ended up being an expensive, awkward, and power hungry mass of stuff. It worked pretty well, but in the end I realized that I just need to wait for the right recorder. I’m past the immediate need to record huge amounts of source material, and I’m downsizing the rig slowly. If I had it to do over again, I would have put serious consideration into a Cantar X3. In the end it would have been cheaper than chasing all the stuff the way I did. Live and learn. As for the mixpre limiters. They don’t sound “bad”. They just react in a way that didn’t work for my target material / subjective sound results. As has been mentioned, they do work nicely on speech, and slower attack sounds. Not having them selectable by channel was also a downside in my view, but again, it is almost entirely dependent on what you’re seeking to do. The preamps themselves sounded better to my ears than the 7xx series (which are still very good). Also mentioned above are the 442 limiters which are excellent. If SD could combine the 442 limiters (or an improvement upon them), the robustness and reliability of the 7xx series, and the overall preamp sound of the new mixpres it would have been perfect. For my needs, anyway. In the end I came away much poorer and disappointed. I didn’t crack the code for exactly what I wanted, and ran out of time. Maybe what I want exists, but I’m in the midst of a different stage of the project and it’ll have to wait before I can dive back in again. -P.
  2. I bought two mixpre-10’s to record sound effects. I had them locked together for bigger shoots. They do sound really nice, and were in general reliable machines. The thing that made me sell them was that the limiters were very slow to recover from loud transients. This may or may not be a problem for your needs. Now that their new firmware fixes the ultrasonic noise problem (pitching material at high sample rates WAY down would reveal this noise), the units are likely even better for use by sound designers. That said I’m waiting for something with limiters I like much more before buying another SD recorder. If they could take the 744’s limiters and put them in the mixpre series I’d be tempted. Again, they could be the perfect unit for you but it depends on the type of material you’re looking to record. Hope that helps, P.
  3. Resonate, Haha, yes the metadata is incorrect there. It’s two SAAM mics back to back. I was just experimenting so I didn’t really try to time align them this time. That take was just one of several where I was attempting different distances. As for the settings on the MIxpre, it was set to line in with gain at 0. The preamp on the SAAM was doing all the work. Another thing that’s cool about those mics is that you can monitor what it’s “hearing” even if your recorder is far away. Just plug in a set of headphones. It’s pretty cool in case your recording setup is not right next to you. -Stuart
  4. Sure, no problem. As luck would have it I just got my second SAAM mic a couple days ago and wanted to do some quad tests. I live in a busy suburb, so there's not much worth recording around here most of the time. But there's some construction going on behind my house so I just set the mics out an hour ago to see what it would sound like. Linked is a large quad (four channel L,R, Ls,Rs) wave file. It's big relatively big at nearly 350MB. It's not a great sound by any means, but it might give some insights into the mics. Still trying to determine the best way to place them for quad recording so that I don't get phasing when summing to stereo. Anyway, here's the link to the sound file. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1N8ZSpGXXLFqBnd6iADmoKJCxQMhQhILJ
  5. For those using these small recorders for ambience gathering, a recent purchase of mine might make a good pairing for some of you. I was looking at various stereo mic arrays for sfx use (in this case for ambience), then stumbled upon this Wildtronics SAAM mic. It’s sort of a hybrid between a Crown SASS and other stuff, like binaural and ortf. Or so the literature says. I believe it’s a couple of omni lavs with some cool baffling. Anyway, I’ve found that it sounds excellent for my uses and might for you too. It has an optional backplate to which you can mount a small recorder like a Zoom or a Sony D series. It makes the mic array and recorder into one piece, and is simple to mount to a tripod or just set someplace. The unit is quite lightweight. Upon opening the box I was disappointed because it didn’t scream “heavy use” to me, but after using it a couple months I’ve really grown to love it. The array was designed for nature recordists but it can be much more flexible than that. Super clean and quiet mics and preamp. With mine I also purchased the fabric cover that goes over it and of course the backplate. It’s pretty great, and given how nice it sounds (to my ears anyway) it’s quite a bargain. https://www.wildtronics.com/saam.html#.WflcWkplCEc Apologies if it seems like a thread detour, but since so many were talking about getting ambiences with a small recorder I thought I’d mention it. -Stuart
  6. Not really understanding why a product that perhaps you personally don’t need is “bullshit”. That like me saying jackhammers are “bullshit” because I don’t need to build roads. I am looking forward to my Mixpre-10t. It addresses the issues I had with the MP6, and should be perfect for lots of people.
  7. Trey, that's correct. They can set the threshold of the output limiter to whatever you like. I believe the threshold of the input limiter is fixed.
  8. In my opinion, they sound fantastic. Particularly clear in the midrange and highs, to my ears anyway. Nice limiters, hirose power input. With the direct output option you can have all three inputs output as unbalanced (pre and post fader) from a 7 pin xlr on the mixer. I purchased two identically configured mixers earlier this year for fx recording. They have both input and output limiters, similar to sound devices mixers like the 442 or 302. I might be willing to let one go because I'm pretty over budget on gear in 2017, but it would depend on the configuration you're looking for.
  9. Hi David, That very well might be possible. I have seen phantom blocking inline adapters before, but I didn't realize you could modify the cables to produce the same effect. Perhaps I should look into it! Thanks for the suggestion. But having a small bit of idiot proofing for people like myself on the recorder side would be best case scenario. Less stuff to buy and carry around. Thanks again, Stuart
  10. I submitted a feature request to SD yesterday. One thing I often do is use a front end preamp / mixer before a recorder. The CS 104 is my preferred tool for this, but it cannot withstand even a moment of phantom power being applied to it's direct outputs (according Evan at Vark Audio). While scrolling through the menus of the Mixpre-6, it would be pretty easy to accidentally touch the phantom power button on the touchscreen and potentially ruin my mixer. I'd imagine that other mixers or equipment have this vulnerability as well. Additionally, the folks using ribbon microphones might appreciate a little safety feature as well. So my suggestion was to create a "lock" for the phantom power settings in the MP6's menu. Like a two step verification that might have a little lock symbol to prevent people from accidentally ruining gear or mics with a small misplacement of the finger on a touchscreen.
  11. Peshawar

    Deleted topic

    I do like the sound of the Cooper preamps quite a lot. But getting too deep into the other areas doesn't serve the interests of the OP of this thread. Maybe a different thread would be a better place to talk about the other stuff. My apologies if my comments were a distraction.
  12. Peshawar

    Deleted topic

    Sure, no problem. The limiters in the MP6 have a relatively long recovery time. So for the things that I'm typically recording (guns and other sharp transient sound effects) the gain reduction recovery takes too long. That said, for dialog they are timed quite well, in my opinion. I think that for the majority of users the limiters may even be ideal for things that most folks typically record. When I try to talk to people about recording guns and the reliance on limiters, I get the "Man, just turn it down and compress it in post." response. That doesn't work. I require a significant (and subjectively good sounding) amount of limiting at the time of recording to get the results I want. So, it's a game of trying to find the "best sounding" form of distortion. Hope that helps.
  13. Peshawar

    Deleted topic

    I had a Mixpre-6 for a couple months. It's a great sounding recorder. Just replaced it with two F8's. Reasons were, 1) needed more professional powering options, using USB batteries or having to buy an expensive English dummy battery sled just didn't seem wise to me 2) Needed the extra tracks (was about to purchase a Jensen line converter box to get true +4 line level inputs into 5-6 on the Mixpre, and it just seemed like I should have to do that to get 6 tracks 3) No redundant recording to a mirror card (going to do a big shoot in December and didn't like the idea of handing over the ONLY memory card to a producer and not having a backup in case human error occurs during transfer, thus losing the day's material). 4) I didn't like the MP6 limiters for my uses. All in all, it's been a small downgrade in the sound quality to go to the F8. The MP6 had a more pleasing representation of the low mids and lows to my ears. The F8 is not bad sounding, and I actually think I may prefer it in the upper midrange and highs. I'm feeding the F8 from external field mixers, and it's a little bit of a pain to use the xlr-trs cables, but overall I'm happy I switched. I could certainly see the upsides and downsides to both boxes now, however.
  14. The Mixpre is a good option for me, at least for now. I can use external preamps if I have to to get the sound I want. Would I like a Sonosax sx-62r or a Cantar Mini? Yes I would. But there's a large cost difference and even if SD doesn't change a thing I can make it work. I was just putting some feedback out there in the hopes that improvements might be possible. But if nothing happens I'm good with that too.
  15. The things I'm hoping SD adds to the Mixpres are : 1. Using the hdmi ports to sync up two of them, hopefully with some sort of tod tc and sample clock or at the very least sample clock. Along with transport commands, of course. That way you could have two Mixpres that would stay in properly clocked sync for long files, along with transport commands. Even if the tc wasn't there, simply having transport and sample rate lock would be a big help for my needs (once the multichannel files are brought into Pro Tools and synced they will stay in sync). 2. Better options with the limiters. As it stands the limiters aren't good for very loud sfx. The release time is way too long. So things with loud transients tend to get sucked away in a fashion I find to be unusable. Hoping for at least a "fast" setting on the release times. Also, being able to separate the limiters (input limiters functioning independently from the mix limiter) so that you could make a loud mix track by goosing up the iso's with fader volume, and still have iso's with full dynamic range. 3. Probably a pipe dream, but some sort of phase alignment tool for multiple mics. Delays with .1 ms resolution. If I have a bunch of microphones up for recording guns for instance, having a utility besides my ears to help get the different angles in phase would be amazing. Of course, I also want this available at 192k. Like I said, pipe dream. [emoji4]
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