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Who in LA wants to test SD788 automix?


RPSharman

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Hey,

Looking for about 6 people who are interested testing out the automix function on the SD788T. Who's in? Sunday or Tuesday?

I have all the gear, but am keen to wire up 6 people and test out a few things while I have some control. We can all take turns with the gear.

I'm in Santa Clarita.

Robert

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I would Robert, but I'm out of town.... Please share your findings... I would really like a good test on it too... When I questioned the nice folks at SD, they said it worked AWESOME!!! 

  Not for everyday use, but there are times when it would be a good tool...  A dear friend of mine used it on a big show....  a few times, and said it worked great....

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I would Robert, but I'm out of town.... Please share your findings... I would really like a good test on it too... When I questioned the nice folks at SD, they said it worked AWESOME!!!

Not for everyday use, but there are times when it would be a good tool... A dear friend of mine used it on a big show.... a few times, and said it worked great....

It'd be great to have you there. Bummer. Perhaps the same person I know who has used it, is also the person you know. I'll never admit to it "openly" either if I use it :-)

As a way to potentially "improve" the mix on ad-lib or unscripted situations, where too many open mics in an adverse environment can make for messy dailies, what I'm trying to do is have auto mix of chosen prefader inputs 3-8, plus boom always open (input 2) going to track L. My mix (input 1) always open going to track R. Or maybe the other way around depending on how reliable automix is. Then boom and wires going to tracks A-G for ISOs.

That way there's a "mix", an "alternate mix", and all ISOs being recorded.

Thoughts?

Robert

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In other words .... have a crack at it on your own and a back up mix....  ISOs too.....

 

  Funny, but we have all spoke of it here ..... I always thought more options was a better way to provide data to the editors... But I find more and more, there are so many "Green" folks in edit that I think your better off simply providing what YOU think is the right mix... Too much only confuses them.. 

 

  I had to explain Isos on a job last week.... Hero Talent Left  (an Iso too) and a working mix only for the editor to hear what was said by background people  (improv) (4) Right -  Then all the Isos...... I explained it for a day.....

 

My thoughts....  Test it,   if it works, go for it for your mix....  then give them the ISOs too....  Unless you have a good working relationship with smart folks in edit.... then I would say unleash your duel mix plan...

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Last year I worked on a flick called Zero Charisma that had a wide shot of 5 talkers around a table playing D&D and while the shot was pretty scripted, the pace was speedy. Boom was impossible, so I engaged automix on all actors, had a Sanken not set to auto dangling in an overhead light for ambience to mask the automix gating and went for it. The end result was really solid. I still had isos in case it didn't work out.

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 Not for everyday use, but there are times when it would be a good tool...  A dear friend of mine used it on a big show....  a few times, and said it worked great....

+1

I use it sometimes. Most of the times it sounds great, not always. In very reverberant halls sometimes it sounds ....too clean, I have to put automix off for one mic  to keep a little amount of reverberation.

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Frank & Atheistic (I forgot your real name - sorry),

Unless we get at least 2 more, I'm going to cancel.

Hoping for 3pm Sunday, if we have more interested parties.

Robert

No worries, Robert.

Picked up two days of post this weekend, so will have to withdraw my candidacy.

Hope more join in and you have a successful test.

best regards,

tristan

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I'm surprised some Nomad owners don't offer to participate.  Both systems could be tested and even compared.

 

If I still lived in LA I would love to.  I've been testing the Nomad Automix whenever I have an opportunity, I'd love to try the 788 version.

Robert, hopefully more people show up and you can let us know what you find.

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I've used the 788 in this kind of automix situation before, and it can work pretty effectively. The trick is to avoid the influx of noise when the gate opens up, and also the issue of crosstalk leakage from one person into another person's lav. But for certain kinds of situations, it works very well. 

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Robert, if you had to cancel, I wouldn't mind being a part of your experiment. As it happens, I did a pilot a few months ago with about six people around a table discussing hollywood gossip, and it was of course all improv. With that many people all going at once, it got a little tricky, especially since they would at times get very loud and overlap each other a lot. But when they were behaving and not interrupting each other, speaking one at a time, I found that it worked very well. The key is to try to have all of your setting as close to each other as possible for each channel. That includes gain structure, and mic placement. In my experience, out of the bunch I worked with, if a female was wearing a wardrobe that gave you no other option than to mic her cleavage, she tended to have a higher noise floor in order to get her to the same volume as the others to make the mix assist work correctly. That was a rather extreme case.

 

I first tried it when mix assist was introduced to the firmware on a one on one interview, and it worked flawlessly. I have since then used it mainly for IFB purposes on an all improv ghost hunter type reality show I do for a few months out of the year. It works well enough for monitoring, but it starts making less sense when the case move away from each other and are doing selfie OTFs, haha

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In my experience, out of the bunch I worked with, if a female was wearing a wardrobe that gave you no other option than to mic her cleavage, she tended to have a higher noise floor in order to get her to the same volume as the others to make the mix assist work correctly. That was a rather extreme case.

 

Yeah, hearing the background noise rise when the gate opens is no fun. I think all you can do in an interview session is make sure one mic is up all the time and hope this can be cleaned up later. This is one of the flaws of improv and live events in general.

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