nickreich

Easy answer is there's good Theatre Sound people in LA, maybe the venue can suggest someone (or provide them). However, as a Musical Theatre veteran who's learned a lot from Henchman's posts here and on other forums as I moved into Sound for Picture, here's a few ideas. A little 99 seat warehouse theatre space is probably the hardest place to pull off a Musical - too small for a PA, too big to not have a PA. Oddly, the Pantages would be easier! What you'll get away with is very dependant on the installed sound system in the venue, in particular the positioning of the speakers. I've done lots of 'boutique' musicals in spaces like that - with reinforced songs / un-amplified dialog as you are suggesting. The trick is to keep a lid on the songs so the jump back and forth isn't too jarring for the audience who are used to more dynamically-controlled entertainment. If the music is from an offstage live source (or playback), making the primary source of the music some speakers upstage of the action, rather than the speakers that are being used for Vocal reinforcement can help the audience with separation and intelligibility, which can be hard in the smaller spaces, as well as providing the cast with music foldback as in sub-200 seaters, they invariably want more music than the Audience needs. If the band's onstage, with a drum kit or Brass....good luck! Mounting the transmitters is just like the Film world - as they will probably be moving vigorously (if not dancing) Neopax-type belts are best, just using the belt clip on a pack onto the costume is guaranteed to end up with dangling transmitter syndrome. The technique for mounting the mics themselves in Theatre is wholly different to Film for very good reasons - Gain before Feedback, and the lack of Post! Chest mounting positions, over or under the costume, put the mic too far from the mouth for the direct level to have a good margin of safety over the level the mic hears from the PA. Once those two levels approach a 1:1 ratio - you have feedback. Secondly, in Post you can easily adjust EQ and Level to allow for head turns, in live mixing, not so much. For this reason, in Professional Theatre, the mics are almost always head-mounted. The choice is then between Headset-style mics (like the DPA Dfine series) or normal Lavs (like DPA 4061). The headset type gets the mic closer to the mouth, so can give a slight improvement in Gain before Feedback, and a little more forward sound. They are also dead easy for a performer to self-dress, if you can't afford a backstage sound person (the Theatre equivalent of a Boom Op - a vital crew member). The normal Lavs are best mounted through the hair, on the forehead - or if the actor is wearing hats ever, over the ear, where the sideburn would be on a male. They can be pretty discreet if mounted by someone who knows what they are doing, though there are simpler techniques used by the Education and Amateur community (search for 'Halo Mount'). If you can get someone experienced even for the first rehearsal to work out mic dressing separately from your FOH mixer (you??), it'll be money well spent. They can teach the Cast or a dresser what to do if required. The choice of Lav can also make life easier or harder. Lavs with a fixed high Boost (like Cos-11s) don't work as well in this application as the DPAs or Sennheiser MKE-1s (both without the high-boost optional cap). Especially if over the ear - don't be shocked by the amount of EQ you'll need on channels - probably more than you're used to in Film. Hope that helps - all the best for the show!

For Dialog I'd use QLab (or Show Cue System on Windows), however if you want to use ProTools I have a Keyboard Maestro shortcut set up to <stop and re-cue to the top of the next region> that achieves a similar result. I use it for multitrack music playbacks where a conductor has to 'cut and restart' through a vamp of unknown length. You need Keyboard Maestro, of course, though there are others like QuickKeys that'll do the same thing. The shortcut (assigned to a spare function key) is: - type <SPACE> (stops playback of previous clip) - type <TAB> (moves cursor to start of next region - Tab to Transient should be off and Insertion Follow Playback has to be on) - Mouseclick on Play Button position with <OPTN> modifier (Prime For Playback - gives you a faster start on large track counts) If there's a gap between clips, you need to have passed the end of the previous clip for this to work, otherwise you need to double-tap. You then press the Space Bar to play again. I have played with using Keyboard Maestro's ability to trigger macros from MIDI (coming off a Midi Track in the ProTools session) to automate this re-cueing, but it wasn't quick enough to react in half a bar of music or less reliably - might be fine for conversation sides though.

That's terrific Take, nice to see you're still working on it.

Ha! Filming Theatre shows is my core business. If it's a Musical, they might have the 30 wireless for the PA already, but if they can't afford an assistant for half a day, they certainly can't afford the Post sound editing & mixing on that! If it's a Play, you can get quite reasonable coverage from a few well-placed mics, but well-placed puts them in the shot or casting shadows, so you can't win. Sounds like they're unfamiliar with the subject matter.

Nate's right about the shelves in the top pictures - drawer runners with a perspex / polycarbonate sheet as the shelf.If you're talking about the bottom picture, the shelves in the black plastic rack, they are just 1 Rack-Unit Drawers mounted upside-down. In Australia, Elgee make them and Penn Fabrication and various others import them, quite easy to find.

Hi All, Bouke at VideoToolshed has written this app in a couple of days, and already has a demo 'beta' version up on his website if anyone wants to have a try of it. https://www.videotoolshed.com/product/bwfsequencer/ As it is, it solves my problem straight away. We want it to be widely useful for other people too, and as my workflow filming live music and theatre is a little unusual, it would be great for people with a more typical Narrative or Documentary workflow to have a look and give Bouke their feedback on it and what it could be used for. For example, it might be useful for the Doco people to join a session's recorder takes together into a few longer sequences, before putting them through his other app, "Make Transcriber Files" to make a mono mixed TC stamped MP3.

Hi Bouke - amazing - I'll PM you. nick

I've only had the briefest play with a TF1, but I own and use the Tio1608 Dante stage box (designed for the TF series - and using the same head amps that are onboard the TF consoles) with my 01v96 and SD970 recorders. Despite some disapproving comments in music forums online about the preamps vs. the older Rio stage boxes (which I also own), I find them to be perfectly useable and quiet for the purpose. Like most digitally controlled head amps, they do move in 1dB steps, so one should avoid adjusting mid-speech.

I think Michael was suggesting to the OP that his particular Tentacle might have been set to output mic level LTC from previously being used on a DSLR, thus being too low for his RED to read.

Hi JackHenry. Yep - I'd prefer a Mac solution. Thanks for the tip - Myriad has certainly come on from it's predecessor Sample Manager, which I have used for years. I just downloaded the demo. It CAN concatenate files into a new single file, but can't space them out using their original TC timestamps which would be required for the user to log timecoded notes in my application. I'll suggest it to them as a future 'action'.

an extra recorder is just another thing to distribute TC and Word Clock to, and to wrangle data from at the end of the day... most recently I've been using a laptop running Boom Recorder for that, but I'm always trying to streamline the setup. It's hard enough keeping up with four 970s and guide feeds / IFBs etc. Actually one consideration is the separate 'logging recorder' is capturing out-of-take audio for long periods. Sometimes there's rehearsal audio in there that can be confusing to the music supes. It also has concerned Orchestra Contractors in the past re what is and isn't counted as "recording" time. Combining the SD970 takes that I rolled with camera would have silence in those gaps, even though the overall duration would be the same when combined, so the TC is continuous. I've considered a mute box run off the Rec Tally from one of the 970s, like I do to create rec-run timecode for Movieslate.

When filming live music or theatre shows, I often have to provide the stereo mix track files (two tracks from the larger multi-track set of Mono time-stamped Broadcast WAVs created on Sound Devices 970s) to Music Supervisors or similar people for them to make edit notes from. This is similar to what many of you do for Transcribing - except I find they prefer the full BWAVs instead of timestamped MP3s as is usual for transcribers. More tech-savvy music types will spot all the takes onto the timeline of Logic or Pro Tools if they have the time, but for others, I set them up with the fantastic InqScribe transcribing player to do their notes. Often they get annoyed by having to load the files take-by-take rather than being able to work across a full shooting session as a single file. They are often having to make artistic judgements across takes. I've tried several methods of dealing with this in the past - a separate recorder that doesn't start/stop with takes, or importing them into Pro Tools myself, spotting them to the timeline, and consolidating them then exporting. These are all too time-consuming for the tempo we're working at nowadays, where we are lucky to get 15mins between cutting the last shot and having to be clear of the venue on a multi-day shoot. Has anyone come across an app that can be given a folder of TC stamped BWAVs, and can join (concatenate) them in a single file based on their timestamps (filling the gaps between takes with silence, of course). I suspect this might be of interest to those who do Doco's using rec-run timecode from camera, too - before converting to MP3s using the Video Toolshed software being discussed in another thread at the moment. Thanks, nick.

I'm wondering if this sort of job would be a good place for the various little body-pack recorders (without wireless) plus an upgrade to the on-camera mic. They are unlikely to really monitor wireless properly, and can sync the individual recorded Lavs (if they work out) with the guide track on camera manually or using Pluraleyes in post. Maybe set them up with a mic cable and decent boom stand for interview setups (the K&M overhead stand is a lot cheaper / simpler than a C-Stand/Boom Buddy/mic boom rig) to get the mic off the camera when appropriate.

I have the Ambient one too - I found a tiny neoprene belt pouch for generic digital cameras that fits it perfectly for a few dollars that I cable-tied to one side of a Rycote shock mount handle, with a Lectro SM pouch on the other side for a wireless boom. Feels about the same as a plug-on in a similar position.

The majority of the cams are Steadycams or on some sort of shoulder rig and the camera ops whine enough about the Lockits. They seem to accept a mic as a 'normal' part of the camera, even if a 416 in a foam windsock is a similar weight to a Comtek or the IEM packs I use as hops.

I totally need something like a little line-level out battery powered mic for this purpose as well. One of my major clients shoots multi-camera, often with 6 or more Alexas and wants a Lockit and a 'top mic' only on the cams - no audio hop. Even a Papi-sized box is more than they want if it's an extra thing to mount as well as a mic, but a similar size with a mic built in and a hotshoe/rod clamp fixing would probably be acceptable. Cams are wireless linked to a multi-view recorder which gets the 'real' guide audio. When shooting on Red Epics they use little electrets mounted in minijacks. Amiras use short Rode shotguns. There's absolutely no intention of the camera mic audio being used downstream, it's just a sync backup really.

If a new version did basic timecode logging (enter a text note at the TC point - with the ability to export it as a CSV or something) as well as the original functionality, I'd happily pay considerably more, but even the basic version is valuable to me - it would be great to have it back.

the way I do it is a DIY button box with Rec and Stop buttons. Each button is double-pole single throw momentary, one pole of each switch wired to the GPIO socket on the back of each 970. I don't like having a backup grouped via ethernet to a main recorder for transport, it seems to me to reduce the redundancy somewhat. that said, have had some issues in a recent situation running four 970s, where two machines made up the 128 channel "Main" recorder and another pair were the "Backup". I had my GPIO button box connected to the first unit of each pair and used ethernet transport control (on two separate groups) to roll their respective paired machines. I encountered some issues with take numbers getting out of sync between machines that Sound Devices Tech support said was a known issue with using a GPIO trigger on one of a networked set of recorders, so make sure to thoroughly test such a setup. cheers, nick.

Hi Richard, I use a Yamaha TIO 1608 with both my 01V96 and direct into a Sound Devices 970. They work great, and while they are cheaper than the 'premium series' RIO dante boxes from Yamaha, I've not had any concerns over Audio quality, and the fan is a lot quieter than the equivalent RIO box. The 01V96 is too old to be able to control the head amps from the surface, and of course the SD970 can't either, but Yamaha have a nice free mac/win remote control software called R-Remote available for download that you can run on whatever computer you are running Dante Controller on and controls multiple TIO and RIO stageboxes. I have it on a little cheap netbook from a second-hand store.. There's no hardware control from the box itself unfortunately... The gain controls are stepped in 1dB increments so not really adjustable mid-sentence when recording, pretty much all digital head amps are like that though. Theres a pad that switches out/in when you move gain between -17 and -18 and if you have P48 on that channel you'll get a noticeable click - just be aware. It's great to be able to take full line level in on any channel though... With your 01V96 you'll use Dante Controller to set routings but with current Yamaha consoles it has a fixed auto-setup mode for layman users, be sure to switch that off.

A local Camera Rental shop who's gear I encounter every so often supplies Ambient ACL-203 Red Lockits with their packages, and send out an old Aaton Origin-C+ timecode generator for the AC's to walk around with to jam the Lockits on camera. On my jobs, the Audio Recorder is the TC Master, and I usually run out a cable for jamming instead - but I'm wondering if I can just jam the Origin C+ from my SD970 and use that? I have the one-page Aaton user guide for the device but it's unclear about jamming to an external source (as opposed to Comparing an external source to it's manually-set internal generator). Can any one shed any light on this? Of course I can manually set the Aaton and jam my 970s from it, but it seems like a backward step! Cheers, nick

Eela are a current (though apparently long-established) manufacturer of Radio and TV station broadcast gear, from the Netherlands, I think. Similar market to Glensound in the UK. The old four channel mixers that paired with a Nagra were Sela brand AFAIK.

It seems to take 48v Phantom power via a 3.5mm TRS plug (with supplied cable) - so it's a perfect match for a Red Epic!

It just needed a Brick Wall limiter (paid for by the Mexicans).

In my experience the same DPA capsule mound centre forehead will usually sound better than the equivalent headset version (some head shapes can be problematic). Headset mounts are a bit better for gain-before-feedback in the PA world, and easier to put on - hence their popularity, but in your case a headband is acceptable visually, so forehead is easy. The DPA 4060/4061 which is inherently flat rather than with a top-end peak assuming it's going to be mounted under clothes, works best for this.

Most everyone I know get them from No Hype Audio in Belgium. My understanding is that Roger at Line Audio would prefer JP Gerard at NoHype did the international sales. He's brilliant to deal with and has all the international shipping down to a fine art.