pkautzsch

You *can* create a cardioid that way, yes. The more common way, however, is to have one capsule that has an acoustic "delay line" built in a way that sound from the front hits the diaphragm's rear later than its front (large pressure gradient --> large diaphragm motion), and sound from behind reaches both sides at the same time and with same polarity (no pressure gradient --> no diaphragm motion - same as 90° on a fig-8) Without the acoustic delay line you'd get a fig-8, with a closed back you get an omni.

It's exactly the other way round. The cardioids' fronts make up the front and rear lobe of the fig-8, and the sides of the cardioids cancel each other out. Sound that hits both cardioids from 90° is equally loud in both, but one of them has polarity reversed and thus the sound will cancel itself out. Mixing the two cardioids at different levels enables you to continuously vary the pattern from cardioid to fig-8 - or from cardioid to omni if you don't reverse one cardioid's polarity. This is how the MKH 800 TWIN basically works. Switchable (dual-diaphragm) multipattern mics, like TLM 170, create their patterns not by mixing the signals in different ways, but by different polarization voltages for each diaphragm.

Hair on this guy could be difficult (depending on how much that forelock is supposed to move) but over his ear should work fine, hiding behind the beard. Not the greatest solution soundwise, but rather have it rustle free and rely on post EQ than have rustle all the time. We don't know about the back of his head, though, regarding hiding of mic cable, and about how he's gonna move / if cam will see his back at all.

Usually, cotton undershirts are helpful, as they make any chest hair a non-issue. That is, if the undershirt is really tight. I rather suspect the shirt itself being noisy when moving. Often the biggest (audible) noise comes from the sides when arms are moving. Nothing to be done about this since taping down would look strange and inhibit the actor from moving. Stickystuffing the button area (more than just around the mic) might help against noise from that part of the shirt - which is the only part where stiffer areas rub against each other. Beard, yes, always a PITA, but well, nothing you can do about it, can you.

CCM = one trick pony, but compact. Bought a CCM 41 for booming in low ceiling locations, but it gets used whenever a 41 is the right mic. Boom ops love its low weight. CMC = versatile in theory, but in practice I have 6 MKs that stay on 6 CMCs. When small size isn't required, this is the same sound for less money. Suspensions: standard INV models work well for us. No handling noise issues. I only wish there was a right angle Lemo connector for the CCM, since the length of connector and cable "bow" makes the whole setup nearly as long as a KM150 with right-angle XLR. I don't use a fig-8 on its own often for booming. Usually too much noise getting into the rear lobe.

Yes, "Auto Mute Output" functionality would be great. Even if it applies to only, say, Output 1. PLEEEASE... A more sophisticated option: having two different output sources available, like "Input 1" in STOP and "Tracks LR" in REC - similar to the HP source that can switch on PLAY. You could have the boom in the comteks during rehearsal so they don't complain it wasn't working, but they wouldn't hear any lavs. You could even feed music to an input not routed to any recording tracks.

With larger casts I sometimes let Mix Assist assist me in mixing. Great help if dialog goes back and forth (and around) quickly, I can leave some faders open for short bits and so on. Still it's me who decides how far up the fader goes. Also it's a nice helper when the 788T is in the trunk (I'm not. Never.) in "really driving" car scenes. Setting input levels carefully is essential.

Hi Herbert, usually the SD machines create a new file seamlessly and automaticalls when a file size limit is reached. The size limit can be set in the menu, I'd go for 2 GB since this is what almost any computer can still handle. Of course, use a card that's large enough. Would renting another Cantar and linking it with yours be an option?

Mike, yes that would preserve TC metadata, but not all the other nice stuff in the BWF chunk, like comments, scene-take, circled takes, and so on. Of course, It Depends on the shoot if these metadata actually are being entered. Constantin, why do you lose the ability to change balance? You can convert MS to LR and back easily. If they want less S, audio (!!!) post can simply pan the LR channels a bit inward. Pan both channels to center, and voilà, you have the clean M signal. If they want "more stereo", there are many MS encoding/decoding plug-ins on the market. I would not rely on a picture editor (or low-budget documentary style all-in-one editor) to know how to decode MS. Also, listening to LR instead of MS on location is way better to judge if what you do is workable for post.

Free Run: you set the TC independently from system time. You will need to do so when the machine has been switched off and disconnected from power for a certain time, but normally it will hold fine during battery changes during the day. 24 hr run: recorder on startup jams TC to its system time. As it does this on a reboot too, and system time isn't as accurate as the Ambient TC chip, you might get offsets when you don't re-jam the other devices. I prefer 24hr because it saves me setting a TC value, and I leave the 788 on external power and internal backup battery all day.

Sorry, but again reading the manual would have been helpful. Input Linking. No need to do the converting in PT. PT won't preserve metadata since it writes a new file.

The manuals are all readily downloadable on the manufacturers' sites. I'd expect at least the Lockit manual to explain precisely your setup (sound recorder, camera, lockit box) as this is the very basic standard scenario. Probably it's in the 744 manual somewhere too. In short: 744 is master on 24h run. Sync ACL from 744, set cam to external TC, leave ACL connected to cam all the time. Edit: you need to know what standard framerate they're shooting at, of course.

BMs Duo is quite tolerant and will show full picture breakup until the Teradek "searching" message appears. Also picture will be there way quicker than on most video village monitors. No blue at all - it's picture or black.

Also, some (picture) editors duplicate audio tracks to "make the sound louder" (and blame the soundie if the audio then starts to clip).

+1 to having to decide yourself. You might not just look for advantages of a certain mic, but rather try to rule out candidates. I would, for example, not recommend an 816 or other long gun for a "general purpose shotgun mic". The 816 is my go-to outdoor narrative mic, but you definitely have to know who's speaking next. Sometimes its long reach reminds me of a long lens where things that are much farther away appear nearly as close as the object of interest. You don't want to pick up that tourist group half a block away. Re the Schoeps humidity (non-) issue: I've never had a Schoeps exhibit any of the signs such threads describe. I've used CMIT, CMC6/MK41, and CCM41L in about any kind of weather you encounter in central Europe. Most reports of trouble refer to CMC/MK combos where the capsule was screwed on or off in humid conditions. Just don't.

Love the assignment for Track 8!

Thanks for the flowers! It's a 2.4 GHz system IIRC so works fine without line of sight, but of course with the usual 2.4 caveats. It runs on AAA rechargeables. The SK300 and trigger RX live in a pocket on a belt.

First pic shows the receiver that connects to the SK300's mute input. Actually it's a remote trigger system for photography. Second pic shows the remote trigger that we velcro to the boom. We taped down the hot shoe adaptor on the RC, and use an elastic velcro tie round the boom so we can adjust to different booms and arm spacings. As long as the button on the remote is pressed, the SK300 is unmuted and I can hear the headset mic in my headphones.

SK 300 has a 2.5" input for remote controlled mute or PTT function, which basically just opens or closes a switch. We trigger it (in PTT mode) from a remote photo trigger velcroed to the boom, so my boom op can trigger it even while holding a fully extended boom with an 816 on the other end. On my end, it's rather improvised right now, as an IEM 300 headphone output is passively summed with the 788T's headphone output. It goes only to the left channel, so I still hear my mix on the right ear. We have different antenna orientation for RX and TX to minimize RF hits on my end, and he wears his TX and RX on opposite sides. Read up about intermodulation and use a tool like Audio Ltd.'s "Winmod" or the big Sennheiser tool (which works without Sennheiser hardware too - just can't scan) to calculate matching frequencies. You can fit quite a lot of channels into a 24 MHz window, and the G3s are in .025 MHz steps.

Sound-wise it's, well, different flavors, but in most cases I wouldn't say one clearly wins over the other. Mic choice and mounting is way more important in real life. And that's where a smaller unit can, depending on costumes, make the difference between "invisible" and "clearly visible", and I wouldn't want to mount a TXP to a slender woman's ankle, for example, whereas an SMb fits just fine. As to range / RF strength: this strongly depends on frequency usage at the location. I would not generally say one has better range, and when you have time to tweak frequency settings you'll usually get about the same range out of both, at least in my experience. I've never had to deal with *really* crowded RF environments so can't comment on that.

I still like them, though TX size becomes more and more of an issue with some costumes, and with more actors being more used to smaller (SMb) transmitters. So on some shoots, I'll only use my SMb pair I added last year, and we do start to miss their dweedle tone functionality when whe use TXPs. The TXPs haven't needed any maintenance so far (one actor broke a battery door dropping the TX to a marble floor - you can replace the bottom yourself easily), but two DX2 units blew a fuse that was replaced free of charge. Big thumbs up to Audio Ltd.! My boom op has worked with the other plug-ons (Lectro, Sennheiser, Zax) too, and although he finds the PTX's screw-on locking mechanism a bit of a PITA, he says it's still better than quick-lock type mechanisms that sooner or later start to wear out. With actors seeming to speak softer and softer every year our usual PTX level setting has become 9 (max), and sometimes we wish for a 10, 11, or even 12 setting.

Mix to L, isos to A through H has become one of the standards. Generally, the 788 will not record a track that has nothing routed to. In the BWF meta chunk, tracks are not named L through X2 but simply numbered. Loading a poly wav file into WaveAgent will better show you what I mean than I can describe it. For example, if you record all 8 isos on A through H, and a mix on L, track L would show up as "interleave 1", A as "interleave 2", B as "3", and so on through H as "9". If you only use inputs 1 to A and 8 to H, and record a mix to L, track L would show up as "interleave 1", A as "2", and H as "3"! So it's absolutely essential to create a sound report sheet that has track info, either handwritten or as a CSV sheet in the daily folder. Make sure you carefully read the manual for the right firmware version.

185 outdoors needs very quiet surroundings. MKH 50 pattern is said to be a little tighter, so probably this would be the more universal choice, but is larger which might be an issue for narrow indoor sets. 8050 seems a good idea.

Disadvantages of a digital mic: Need that DMI for full control (would you even be able to control the gain from 633?) Can't use it with all gear (while about every halfway decent gear has analog mic inputs, not all have AES-42) Can't use it with a plug-on TX (as these AFAIK are all analog today), always need to go cabled Given the choice between an analog MKH 50 and a digital 185D, I'd clearly choose the 50 - mostly for compatibility reasons. Not so easy to choose between 50 and 185A (both analog, and both have their pros and cons).

Lots of threads about that question on JWS. For example, here: Do we still need a production sound mix track...? Back to topic...