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glenn

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About glenn

  • Birthday January 1

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    New Jersey
  • About
    Inventor, Electrical Engineer, Mechanical engineer, GUI designer, Artist, Comic
  • Interested in Sound for Picture
    Yes

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  1. The Nova is in use on many Sound Carts and is a very capable 16 track recorder. With multiple choices of control panels and many unique features that are not offered by our competition. For example fully integrated wireless microphone control and internal wireless receivers. Zaxcom is committed to the location sound market and we are always working on new products. For Recording, wireless and IFB.
  2. The VRX will go 17 Hours on Lithium if needed. 13 hours on a NiMh is a conservative number. With a high capacity battery 14 hours continuous reception is easy to get. I would not think of the Analog FM mode as a “stop gap”. It is a very respectable way to work. Slowly transitioning to a fleet of VRX allows the switch to digital with a very low cost. All anyone needs to do is start by switching to the VRX rather than purchasing new Comtek to replace lost or broken receivers.
  3. There is nothing I know of to suggest SD cards adaptors to CF card are not reliable. They are so inexpensive you can get a few in case anything should happen.
  4. Thanks Tim for your post. My original post example focused on distortion mostly not specifically noise. I do think an exact gain setting for a microphone is the best way to get the best results for noise and distortion rather than a fixed transmitter gain. This thread is directed toward the idea that 32bit floating point transmission somehow improves the results of audio quality when not adjusting the gain of the transmitter at the transmitter. The thread is not directed at any one company as multiple companies seem to be going this way. It is a commentary on the method as a whole and what I see as a poorer choice than transmitter gain adjustment as used by multiple companies as well.
  5. The purpose is to ask people to think about the tools they use. It does not matter how many A-Ds are used in the example as 2 A-Ds with no gain control is effectively like having an input gain control with only 2 settings low and high. If the level coming into an A-D is very low (around 48dB above the noise floor), there could easily be around 256 levels or less. I am sure it happens all the time. What happens to low level audio when it is adjusted later in the chain rather than at the pre-amp is the point to consider. There is a lot of 32 bit floating point information and mis-information on this group. Some companies have adjustable gain and others don't. What gear to use is a personal decision and people will choose what is best for them.
  6. So I was thinking, if anyone would use a wireless microphone with no input gain adjustment, and the audio was very low, lets say for example that only 8 bits of the A-D converter were being utilized. In this case the audio would be represented by no more than 256 discrete levels. This works out to a dynamic range of 48 dB. Since we can not change the mic gain on the transmitter we can not boost the signal to the A-D in the transmitter to get the proper transmitter A-D resolution of let say 96 dB. So we have lost about 48 dB of dynamic range. If we were to boost the audio signal at the receiver, recorder or at a mixer, we can add 48 dB of gain to come up with a signal that we can mix into other signals at a proper level. When we do this we are now utilizing about 64000 discrete levels. The fact is the audio will never actually have more than 256 discrete levels no matter how much gain is added down stream. All that happens is that the 256 levels are in this case multiplied by 256 to make the signal louder not better. In this example signal and noise are boosted at the same time and the distortion of only 8 bits of data representing the original audio remains at exactly 8 bits or 256 discrete levels. It makes no difference if the recording and or transmission is 24 bit fixed or 32 bit float. This is exactly why adjusting the mic preamp level to match a microphone to the proper level for a A-D converter is essential to achieve the best audio quality. Nothing will restore the audio quality that was lost by not having a transmitter with adjustable gain. Suggesting that 32 bit digital connections to devices that can add gain later in the chain to make up for the lost A-D dynamic range of the transmitter input gain mismatch is promotional sales nonsense and is no different than selling snake oil at a side show.
  7. glenn

    Rode mics

    32 bit recording and it’s promotion as a better way to go over 24 bit recording is plain and simple horse shit. While some of the you tube videos message is confused by talking about 8 bit recording, the basic message that 24 bit recording with its 144 db dynamic range and 16.7 million levels is more than capable of capturing the output of any A-D converter without any loss of dynamic range. As others have pointed out if your mic input is clipped or not adjusted correctly to provide enough signal to the A-D, 32 bit floating recording will only do a great job of getting bad sound from point A to point B. Adjusting the mic preamp to the correct level is mandatory to get the best recording. Any mic input that can not be adjusted provides sub par audio that can never be improved further down the signal chain by changing the gain in a mixer or recorder. Not even 64 bits will fix that. Maybe that’s the next big thing in snake oil advertising and promotion.
  8. You can either convert the cards one at a time or Viviana has a multi card converter that I think can do 4 cards at a time speeding up the process. Either way the audio on the cards will need to be converted. This can be done in post as the files are loaded into the edit system. Glenn
  9. Codyman: Since the original poster specifically said he was looking for digital transmission wireless I think that makes how many people have companded fm analog wireless from Lectro a non factor. In terms of digital wireless Zaxcom had been selling it for over 20 years. So I know there is a lot of it out there all over the US. In LA Trew audio and Audio department have rental stock. I do not see who has sold the most as a deciding factor. If you have seen some of the polls on Doc’s Strictly Sound group Zaxcom is a leader in Sales of Digital wireless. We are also big in sports as we have gear in every NFL game.
  10. Hi Joe: There are many customers that use Zaxcom wireless with Sound Devices and other manufacturers recorders so I would hope you would be open to consider the big picture of the sound bag and your work. A RX8 with CL5 camera link is a great way to get into the system with a non Zaxcom recorder. Transmitter size, battery life, transmission reliability when used in reflective environments (Like in cars, brick walls or around metal objects), cost, transmitter pre-amp gain control, recording transmitters, continuous tuning receiver front end agility, transmitter wireless replay and re-record to name a few things that are highlights of our system. There are a few choices out there and many factors to consider. If you were to consider Nova then you only need the Nova, MRX414 receivers and transmitters. This would still be a great value for a sound bag that would be half the size, weight, power consumption and cost of competitive products. I get the fact that the integration with Nova is a big advantage of our system. Using it with a non-Zaxcom recorder does not negate the bulk of the systems advantages. It is important to think about the flexibility of 4 channel plug in receivers that are easily used in the Nova RX8, RX4 or RX12 in terms of return on investment and not keeping all your eggs in one basket.
  11. Jointed antennas cause dropouts with digital wireless unless the joints are tight. Avoid if possible.
  12. Thank You so much DSG for a very detailed comparison. I have to comment on "Best Range in the Market" sales promotion by SD as brought up in this thread. This kind of claim is to be blunt false promotional nonsense. There are so many factors that effect range , testing can be difficult to quantify. While Zaxcom has great range it excels at maintaining signal lock with a number of interfering signals, has great reception in the presence of RF overload and is superior in its ability to receive in a reflective RF environment. Real world comparisons against our competitors with sound community participants have shown us that our signal remains locked far better in the presence of obstacles that cause RF reflections on set. The result of this is not only excellent transmission over long distances but far more consistent drop out free operation on set where reflections and non line of sight operation can cause dropouts at any distance. We will never claim we have best range as that kind of thing is impossible to prove as there are too many variables to make a credible determination. What we do claim is industry leading superior transmission reliability and great overall range. We are willing to do a shootout any time any where.
  13. The post I responded to had a specific Zaxcom reference. Transmitter run time became a topic of conversation in this thread and Zaxcom was commented on by Documentary sound guy. I wanted to clarify what was being brought up about our product. It is important for people to have an understanding of our transmitter run time in terms of full power continuous transmission of 16 Hours. We rate our transmitters in terms of minimum run time with rechargeable batteries. That is an important distinction vs 12 hours maximum with Lithium in this case. It would be nice if all manufactures could rate run time as a minimum so that comparisons could be made apples to apples.
  14. ZMT4-X is a 16 hour battery life at full RF power, internal recording and transmission at the same time, Mono or stereo transmission, Zaxnet remote control with RF time code. Plain and simple. Glenn
  15. It is good to see him. I hope he reads this and knows we miss him.
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