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Cedar DNS 2 Portable NR unit


Jason A

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using DNS2 on current project, it's a studio shoot that involves a lot of SFX noise makers, wind, vibrating sets etc. It's purely for editorial and onset benefit and subsequently a 2nd unit has been purchased for 2Uso they def find it useful. I use it for a 2nd noise reduced mix track and the second channel is routed to vid village / prod coms tho I leave that in bypass mode unless the set is really noisy, it's good for them to hear noises as they are as it helps in negotiating their use. I can see in future using the 8 channel version on projects like this so editorial has clean and NR versions of the iso tracks also, this is where a high track count rec like the deva 24 would be useful. For the most part the 2 channel unit will be all that's needed and I think will become common place on most drama carts and doco bags, and yes prod is paying extra for it.

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RJ and OS

 

I totally agree that on location we have far too many issues to manage and monitoring on headphones,

in the field is not the place to make fine judgements on bg noise or whatever.

Anyway we have to contend with locations that are chosen for camera shots and light, not noise.

An audio post studio with good staff in an air conditioned room with quiet, no chaos, coffee nearby

and thousands of dollars worth of monitor speakers is the place for fine tuning!

mike

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On 5/28/2017 at 11:45 AM, Michael Stahr said:

Light touch - absolutely.  It can be fun to 'show off' the Cedar capability - but I try to be careful not to remove a person from their environment.  As for Routing:  Flexibility is key.  Since I don’t use the Cedar for the whole mix, I get to choose which source will be sent to each of the Cedar’s two channels.  I use the very flexible routing of the Sound Devices 688.  Most of the time two mics are to feed to the Cedar.  The SD688 Aux Channels 3 & 4 are cabled to the Cedar.   The output of the Cedar is cabled back to mixer inputs 11 & 12.  To choose what is being fed TO the Cedar,  open Aux Output 3 and choose which channel to route.  Often I send the Boom (my channel 1).  It is always sent Pre Fader.  This means the Mixer Ch 1 trim pot is the adjustable input of the boom to Cedar.  Mixer channel 1 is ISO’d, unprocessed and could (but doesn’t have to be) added to the Mix.  Channel 11 (also ISO’d) is what I call "QT-Boom".  When only a single boom is being recorded, it is sent to BOTH Cedar channels.  You now have 3 boom tracks:  Clean, QT-light & QT-heavy.  Ok, ok this is giving post too many choices but remember Flexibility... 

If a Mix is required either ch 1 or ch 11 (never both) can be used to build the mix.  With single person interviews, split tracks of Ch 11 (QT-Boom) and Ch 12 (QT-Lav) are sent to camera.  "Quite Tracks" are always sent to Comtek and to Transcription. 

All this routing is done without moving a single cable.                             M*

Thanks for the tips on creative routing. +1.

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  • 3 months later...

So many routing options.

Matthias, do you send a stereo hop to camera providing split boom and lavs?

If not there is one channel of the cedar unused, or not? 

So how I understand it, Michael uses it as some kind of aux bus, dialing sources in and recording it back on iso's.

Matthias uses it as an insert in the mix bus. (here it is not clear to me if mono or stereo mix). Which means there is no iso of a NR'd boom?

 

I tought about the following setup:

Boom goes through aux to channel 1 of cedar and is recorded back to an iso, this way you have clean boom and NR'd Boom as isos. Then you make a monomix of Boom of your choice and all lav's and send it to cedar channel 2 which feeds camera hop and ifb. My bet, you would need to record this back from the cedar for editorial. This way you create a overall noise reduced feed for everyone listening.

 

What do you think? Am I missing one downside of this setup?

 

Veit

Edited by Veit Norek
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4 hours ago, Veit Norek said:

 

I tought about the following setup:

Boom goes through aux to channel 1 of cedar and is recorded back to an iso, this way you have clean boom and NR'd Boom as isos. Then you make a monomix of Boom of your choice and all lav's and send it to cedar channel 2 which feeds camera hop and ifb. This way you create a overall noise reduced feed for everyone listening.

 

What do you think? Am I missing one downside of this setup?

 

Veit

 

I generally run 1 x mono mix track for editorial to work with, but keep a second available for those times when A and B camera are looking at different things. Iroute my 1(2) mix trax to the Cedar, and deliver as trax 1(and sometimes 2). I record clean mix trax to 3(and sometimes 4). I do not send the Cedar track to the headphones and all the people listening, I dont want them to think that anything I am recording is any 'better' than what they are hearing on the set/in the room. If editorial like the Cedar version then they can choose to use it. They all have Cedar or similar in post so they can do a better job than I can on set.

 

Have fun, sb

 

 

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I still deliver a split track (listen to both in mono as it were a mono-track).

The Cedar's 2 inputs will get those feeds from the mixer and get recorded as Mix Boom and Mix RMs.

Yes there is no Cedar-ISO Boom. But in my experience Sound Postpro will go for the untouched Isos anyway.

Its all for the Comteks, editorial and MY ears.

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 I find that I cant mix whilst listening to the Cedar track, I would rather work with the dirty stuff, and flick across to the Cedar to amaze myself ;-)  sb

 

11 hours ago, Matthias Richter said:

I still deliver a split track (listen to both in mono as it were a mono-track).

The Cedar's 2 inputs will get those feeds from the mixer and get recorded as Mix Boom and Mix RMs.

Yes there is no Cedar-ISO Boom. But in my experience Sound Postpro will go for the untouched Isos anyway.

Its all for the Comteks, editorial and MY ears.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

To date I have avoided applying Cedar to more than one source at a time.  I am interested in those who have used it on a 'Mix' of multiple sources.  Normally I only feed a single microphone and leave the LEARN function on to dynamically focus on one set of background sounds and focus on a single voice on a single microphone.   Seems to work quite nicely when needed.  I then loop back the Cedar and either mix the clean Cedar or the 'dirty' mic as needed (never both).  This is possible because I send the PreFade of the chosen microphone to the Cedar and leave the mix pot all the way down.  Both the dirty and NR tracks are ISOd so post has their pick. 

How does the Cedar DNS II work on a 'Mix', where multiple mics, voices and a complex background is being worked on?   Sounds pretty challenging for a single pass (live) processor.

 

M*

 

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  • 1 year later...
On 9/14/2017 at 5:03 PM, Michael Stahr said:

To date I have avoided applying Cedar to more than one source at a time.  I am interested in those who have used it on a 'Mix' of multiple sources.  Normally I only feed a single microphone and leave the LEARN function on to dynamically focus on one set of background sounds and focus on a single voice on a single microphone. 

 

[...]

 

How does the Cedar DNS II work on a 'Mix', where multiple mics, voices and a complex background is being worked on?   Sounds pretty challenging for a single pass (live) processor.

 

I've used the Cedar DNS 2 for conference sound, sending a head mic mix to channel 1 and a mix of lectern/table mics to channel 2 - and it has worked wonders, both to the PA sound but also to the recorded sound.

I prefer to not have the Learn-function enabled because I think it creates some kind of "movement" in the ambience which makes it sound a little bit artificial. I press the Learn-button each morning and let the process tune in on the ambience noise of the venure, then I disable it again.

Doing 4dB of noise reduction on the head mics, and 5dB noise reduction on the lectern mics really brings the voices more into fokus - makes me look good as a sound engineer and easily gives me more than 6dB of gain-to-feedback headroom. 🙂

 

I'm sure the Learn-function works great if you have non-static background noises like cars driving by etc, but I prefer to keep it off.

 

The only complaint I have so far, is the fact that it doesn't remember its last learnt "noise print" when fired up. In a conference situation, that would have been preferable.

 

It's really a fire-and-forget kind of processing and it works great.

 

 

Cheers

Fred

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  • 10 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...
32 minutes ago, Ty Ford said:

 You stated "Our final thought was that in the right hands and in the right situations, the CEDAR DNS 2 would be a winner, even if it was in post. In the wrong hands with the wrong ears, not so much."

 

Oh!! So true!!

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I like many of us here, like gadgets.  My take is just what Ty said it's a tool, could be useful in some situations.  The real issue is who pays for this wonderful little box?  For a lot less money I can buy a very nice suite of software tools for handling similar needs.

Personally I would like to have one.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have since my last post in this thread a year ago, bought a Cedar DNS2.

 

I use if for every conference gig I do, no matter the size (100 to 3500+ people), and it work wonders.

 

I now leave the [Learn]-button in and do 5dB noise-reduction on a group channel containing all the head mics, and use the other channel containing a group of lectern mics getting 6dB of noise-reduction.

 

The way it helps my everyday work in conference sound is just mind-bogging.

 

If I have a crappy sound system, it helps to keep the sound intact, even when I'm pushing the levels.

 

But most of the time, I use large line-arrays from Lacoustic, d&b and Meyer, and Cedar helps giving the audience a tight, clean and controlled speech sound.

 

The leakage from the PA simply isn't an issue anymore, at all.

 

Soft-talkers, welcome to my stage! 😄

 

I haven't found much use for it in my sound bag yet, because I mostly work with commercials that will get proper sound editing. But I wound not hesitate to bring it along for run and gun situations where I know that not much sound editing will be done in post - video guy and a bunch of plug-ins on default settings.

 

For conference sound, it really makes me look good.

 

It is a pricey unit, but the Cedar DNS2 will leave my dead hands.

 

 

Cheers

Fred

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I currently use the DNS2 for live transmissions in Davos where we have to work in a very noisy environment.

I use it on interviews with 3 to 4 people splitting the anchor and the guests. 

3 to 6 dB attenuation works well on ventilation and general background. 

 

But had weird results today while Trump’s helicopters were passing by.

 

Such low end rumble was giving awful monkey noises. 

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On 1/22/2020 at 9:57 PM, henrimic said:

But had weird results today while Trump’s helicopters were passing by.

 

Such low end rumble was giving awful monkey noises. 

 

thats my findings too. Low end noise opens and closes the gate which leads to this monkey business. The DNS2 works perfect on noisy fans from cameras, ballasts, Sky panels etc 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Funny enough, I used the CEDAR at an actual Trump Rally this past week.  No matter how hard I tried to adjust the CEDAR, it could not SUPPRESS his BIAS. 😜

I've had really great results with CEDAR in various scenarios over the last year or so, this was the fist time using in an "event" with high SPL levels.

It did a good job of cutting through the event noise floor during our reporters live shot using a Sennheiser MD 42. 

I experienced some strange CEDAR noise gate/pumping with a DPA lav on the reporter in the same spot, same attenuation, etc.

 

 

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