Philip Perkins

I guess I'm assuming you don't want to pay SD's service fee? The 302 is a tight sandwich and its really easy to break stuff in taking it apart if you don't really know how it works. I had bad luck trying to fix an old MixPre many years ago for the same reason, they were made the same way. It ended up visiting SD....

I have gotten away with normal XLR mic cable or even 75 ohm video cables (with BNCs) for really short jumps. For an upcoming show where I need runs from 10-20 ft I'm going to use 110 ohm XLR cables spec'ed for AES audio use.

Waste Management are gangsters. Go Urban Ore!!!!

If you work in any DAW other than ProTools ever AAT is an absolutely mission-critical app.

They all sound fine. But this isn't the way to judge them. In any case these instruments are show pieces, made to impress and be looked at, not intended for continuous playing by professionals. I'll take a plain old Fazioli in a great hall, thanks, not an office building lobby.

Shame is your only weapon unless you want to hire a lawyer in their country. Did you meet their client or funders? Get any names etc? Letting them know that your client has some very shady business practices has worked for me in the past in this sort of situation. Also showing up at their place helped too, if any of them are close by.

Some edit systems now only make AAFs (Avid, Resolve, X2Pro w/ FCPX), so you have to kind of live with them. In recent times OMFs (non-embedded) seemed to work the most reliably with Premiere, but AAFs have been ok too. As always since the beginning of exports, the quality of the result has a lot to do with the skill and housekeeping of the editor. A good tool to have around is AATranslator, which can work with problematic exports that no DAW incl PT can open.

FET does good work. They helped with my DATs as well as many DTRS machines back in the day. Glad they/he is still around. PS he would work on ADAT machines too.

I would say that if you are mindful of sound while you are shooting (ie with headphones) you will get some useable audio. But going into a maelstrom like Carnival is a fraught thing, in my work as a location recordist in these kinds of situations part of my job was to watch the shooter's back and be their eyes all around. This was not only for dangers, but also for shot opportunities that they aren't seeing through the camera. Yes, I could also do much more detailed sound recording than you can get with just a camera mic: wireless lavs on people being followed, my boom mic following action that was both on and off camera, wireless feeds from a music stage sound board and so on. But really consider at least getting SOMEONE to be with you to spot you: you are very vulnerable when your vision is limited to the viewfinder.

That is a bummer and will eventually bite you if you use the different polarity mics in the same scene, and the actors end up speaking close together. Is it possible to change the polarity of the DPAs?

You are pretty much doing what you can if you are in that mosh alone. The 416 is big and heavy but very reliable and moisture and RF resistant, and pretty hard to overload. I can't say the same for your recorder (the camera). In post the main issue I find with shooting this way is that the mic only hears what's in front of the camera--ok most of the time but not great at picking up the whole sonic picture in a whirlwind like Carnival. I don't think your dynamic mics etc will help you much, if you could get someone to follow you around with the Zoom H6 and its stereo mics you might get some more usable music etc sequences with those mics not moving so much and giving you a stereo recording. This situation is tough even the most experienced crews! For your rig--wear headphones and move slowly, so the audio you are recording transitions gradually.

I've done it various ways, including regular in-ears (which are very visible on camera), tiny induction etc in-ear wireless bugs (low-fi) that are mostly invisible, but most of the time the monitor feed just gets balanced against the mic feed and we do the best we can. Best of course is having NO monitors or PA, just the voice and the sound of the instruments, with the players balancing themselves against the voice. Vocal mics come in all shapes and type, and is a choice made by the artist and engineer.

The handle + grid look like old Lightwave, like 1980s.

NYC duplex gap question update for NYC sound folks: any advice on this freq zone for the area around Lincoln Center? This is for a couple of G3/G4 type handhelds and the small battery powered receivers (no ext ants), for rehearsal use within about 70ft of range, inside a building. I know it's a dicey idea but I may be forced to go this way. thanks

Great. I hope you have a really on-it, intuitive, attentive boom-op for the non-lead voices who can anticipate and feather-on and feather-off. If so this will sound great.

For the audio aspects, Dugan is your friend--nothing beats it in this kind of situation. For the content: as was said, you give your warnings to the director (while dispelling any fantasies about the fact that the talent is individually lav-miced and on on their own channel making much of a diff when they are sitting close together, esp. in a lively discussion) and hope for the best. Often these sorts of scenes are "led" by one or two people who know the agenda, the time frame and keep order in terms of responses (you see this on TV all the time). A truly free-form discussion with a lot of folks can quickly become uncuttable.

I recall that theatre folks often paint B3s to match hair and wardrobe, I'd search a theatre sound forum re: this. I've used markers too, with only partial success. I'm pretty sure that the analine dye in Sharpies isn't great for the cables used on lavs.

There are some sync issues in PT with using Clear as a "live" plugin, since the latency of the plug is so high. Using it in Audiosuite seems to be preferable.

Downtown (Market St etc) there is just RF everywhere a la NYC. It's really hard to get a totally clean chunk of spectrum due to lots of tech, construction, law enforcement etc activity I guess. The dance co I work for uses a bunch of A1 for teacher headset mics and get away with it mostly since the range needed is so short. But with the TX off their RX show scans of solid crap.

"Something happen"ing is not worth the risk to a pro recordist. Get the correct media for your machine. Rehearse in your mind what you would say to a producer if there was a problem with your recording media on a job?

Just so you know there is no way to continue union health coverage by self paying. The fees have to come from employers.

The SD adapter thing is only for Hail Mary situations. It is far less reliable and failure prone.

And extra strain reliefed!!!

B3s if you want pretty good sound and think you might be able to use them on multiple projects. Otherwise whatever works that's cheap. I explain to producers than in doc work of any kind lav mics are an expendable, like batteries, tape, media etc: they are going to get broken and there is almost never any good way of fixing them in a manner that they are reliable again. The talent won't be even as careful of them as dramatic film actors (which is not very careful), so it is just a matter of time before they get damaged.

I've used my Neumann, A-T and Shure LDCs outdoors many times. You need wind protection for sure, but more for audio (low freq wind bumps) than protection. You don't want them rained on or in a dust storm but you wouldn't want that for any good mic.