Izen Ears

Man I would love to see a well documented video of somebody wiring this crap. Those damn fibers and the fact that there are so few wires has made it utterly impossible for me to have any success. What is the purpose of those fibers anyway?

Welp, in my world that would lead to many broken lavs. Most people just don't understand how to be gentle. Just get a mixer who is trustworthy. This reminds of all those warning labels that didn't exist for decades and now are seen everywhere. Why? Because people have gotten a lot dumber.

All the places around me to stop taking batteries, so the only thing I can do is throw them in the trash. Kind of makes me sick. Two nine year old NPs just decided to completely die. Left on the chargers for hours and still zero lights. What a bummer.

Once you're done wearing the mask, you can harvest some wonderful twist ties! Dan Izen

FUCK THAT TOXIC SHIT. If customers can't contact a company directly, they are a bad company. Period.

Great article and amazing story about the cement mixer! Thanks for posting.

That reminds me of that hilarious job where I forgot a boom pole and had to boom with C stand arms. It was a big commercial in New York and I had to boom a dude singing around a fire and playing guitar. That thing was heavy! I was just starting out. When the crew looked at me sideways I simply told them that this was the executive model!

My best investments are the fancy boom mics, because I can use them for music! Dude, just coming here to ask shows your head is screwed on perfectly. Well done. I would add that working as a third, A3, A2 or whatever will be a great learning experience. You may have to go to Portland for that. Bend is a super cool town! I would love to move there.

Contact your local sound utilities and boom ops. Union folk wanting to step up. Those are the types who'll take everything. Some kids in film schools who really have the bug would also take the full package.

Thank you for taking the time to repost! Such a joy to read, like reading a real essay! Man this is a lot worse than I thought. I had assumed it was mumbling actors + over zealous sfx / ambience / music + ears that know the dialog, but all that compression and double mixing is horrifying. Where is the FCC?! I personally only use subtitles with foreign stuff (I hate dubbed anything), and for the occasional indecipherable phrase. Something else that may be a factor is that there is widespread hearing loss happening in the world. Loud machines and music are everywhere. Machines built with zero consideration for damaging sound levels abound, and it makes me so sad. Too much noise. A boom eight feet overhead?!!! It's almost inconceivable except I've seen it.

What value resistors? And how do you figure that out?!

Can't even read the article with all the ads popping up. Can someone post the text here?

Oh yes I will absolutely check it out, looks cool! Kinda like that show The Terror, which I found captivating.

That looks good! I think I'll check it out. I'm terrified of being stuck in the ocean. I don't understand the need to use 60s American songs. The show I'm on does it also (Winchesters). What happened to having a score? I don't mean a fake score but a real score by a real composer. Nowadays it's generic synth, I always picture some kid messing around on a Casio, or these classic vocal songs. My brain has trouble focusing on the image when there are vocals. The spaghetti western whistler is about the closest I can handle. It's so weird. Like the copyrights all expired or something. (I know that's not the case.)

What a story haha! Great lesson in there. I'm always very aware of who's on a lav on those shows, it's a dead giveaway.

A 1" diameter foam tube on a thigh rig?!!!!! That could easily be mistaken for... something else! I use PW helicals and hardly ever have problems, no amps. A conversation I had with Lectro Gordon years ago gave me two great tips: - Have the two receiving antennas on different planes; have one a foot or so higher than the other. - Use the hottest gain possible because stronger signals travel better. I had and have no reason to doubt these two tips, and I'll add yours to them! Except the foam tube thing, I just can't see that flying on any costume other than say a Friar's robe's backside. Thanks Glenn! Dan Izen

Mag mounts for all the tx + helicals mounted to the roof of your car = great range!

Here is the link to the podcast that I heard Brian House on. Awesome stuff!!! I mean it made me rethink a bunch of things I've taken for granted. The podcast is called Phantom Power, that was episode 3 or 4. The link I posted above is to Brian House's site. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/phantom-power/id1303643150?i=1000408519997 The subway went from completely quiet to super loud, but mostly it was quiet. We were way uptown, in the 180s or somewhere. There were hardly any people and it was late at night. I *LOVE* the sounds of subways, especially the loud shrieks and squeals. I find those sounds so narrative; I can easily visualize the straight wheels turning on a curved track. I picture some wheels being much louder than others, and then feeling superior because it made the loudest noise.

Ah ha! That's incredible. I believe I was 13 when I saw Bon Jovi at the Blaisdell Arena, no earplugs, ears rang for days. Yes it was not worth it. Oh dude that is an amazing story! Thanks for sharing it. I bet you have pretty good pitch too? What a great dad! My dad played bluegrass banjo so being quiet was never in the cards at my house. He also played slack key so I guess that was much quieter. Brian House did this and made some cool sounds! That's how the podcast began. Here's his site. The sounds are wild! https://brianhouse.net/works/urban_intonation/ When I lived in Jersey I worked on a short called Underground, and it was a narrative about the "moles" that lived in the subways. So we spent a lot of time down there and I saw some MONSTER rats, easily bigger than little dogs. I was into it! I'm also a water rat (May 1972) so I guess I have rats on the soul. The same night I saw that huge rat, we were suddenly surrounded by a squad of vice cops! They just wanted to know what we were doing, but they came out of nowhere. One of the other crew people was this woman whose father had worked for the NYC transit, and he used to just take her in the tunnels between stations as a regular means of travel! How zany is that?!! I love that we both went way off topic!

I could read stuff like this all day! Thanks for posting, fascinating stuff to me!

HOLY SHIT dude! 23k?!!! Insane. How old were you? And I guess you never listened to loud music?!! DAMN. I was just listening to a podcast that mentioned how rats auditory systems just can't hear the human voice! And we can only hear their distress cries, and none of the other cool sounds they make like playing and parenting. Thanks for the awesome discussion! What great info about audiologists, and it makes total sense. They are there as a medical resource to help modern humans survive, which means being able to hear voices. Which is a real shame because they SHOULD be focused on restoring all freqs. My heart and soul goes out to deaf people, in my opinion they got screwed by life so hard, much harder than blind folks. It's never once been a question - I would 100% rather be blind than deaf.

The human voice has harmonics! Duh! That doctor didn't know what he was talking about! I don't get this comment about psychoacoustics though, would you care to elaborate? My understanding is pretty small, and only relates to that Fletcher-Munson curve stuff. I LOVE learning about that stuff though. I'd love to go back to school for audiology or acoustician pursuits.

I went to an audiologist for a hearing test and we started talking. He said the highest frequency that can come from a human vocal structure is 6.5k, which is a young female child hissing through their front teeth. I was stunned. What about all those other freqs?!!! Given this information, why would our lav mics ever want to go above 6.5k? Then I had a conversation with a pal who does lots of music recording. He said the kick drum always gets a 2k, 4k, and between 10k - 12k boosts. But the kick drum can't possibly be putting out 12k? He said when he boosts the 10k - 12k it opens up the drum. Could the same be said for dialog? And what exactly is being boosted at those freqs? All we could come up with is, air. The air "sound" opens everything up. But how? By adding ambience or something? Harmonics from room reflections? I was more confused at the end of the conversation than before haha! And now I'm really curious. It all began when I started to think about what causes a mic to sound buried. Thick clothing kills the high freqs but allows the bass freqs to pass through. Do reflections act the same way? If a loud noise that has a full freq range slaps off a wall, is it only the upper freqs that are reflected because the bass freqs went right through? Can post later just dig up those missing high freqs and "unbury" dialog? I guess if the high freqs are not passing through the clothing, they won't reach the mic and can't be recorded. This led to thoughts about what makes dialog sound open, and how that could be achieved by allowing freqs far above what a voice can produce?!! Any thoughts will be appreciated. Dan Izen

I use the same gear, and the red band B6s are prone to overloading / distorting / clipping at the mic. It's maddening because the blue bands don't clip but are super noisy at regular talking levels. Conversely, red band Sankens don't seem to have that pronounced noise floor, they just don't clip. I had a scene with Tim Heidecker on a recent gig, and he was presenting to a big group of people from a stage. We were allowed to place the mic exposed, yay! But the damn red band clipped on the loudest shouts. We had to rewire after the first take, used a COS-11, and had no further problems. These days I only use the red band B6s when it's the only thing that'll work. I did use a blue band B6 today for a 70s gas guzzler tailpipe and that sounded awesome. DPAs also don't clip like red band B6s do. Last thing - gain level of 5 on a red band for shouting is right about where I put em, often going down to 0. I have no idea how folks are using a gain of 25 or 30 for shouting! 6060s are hotter than B6s or COSs so often regular dialog is set at 14 or so, which puts the prefade peaks right between -8 and 0. Dan Izen

Dammit. And, derrr. No wonder I just got a new fitting and set haha!