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Philip Perkins

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  • 3 weeks later...

hey Phil,

can you tell us what's in the rack/s?  are you using a motu traveller for i/o with your mac? 

i'm looking into building a laptop based rig and have been curious about the motu.

thanks,

-greg-

Sure.  On the top: Grace 8 ch preamp M801.  The rack is all MOTU, 8Pre and Traveler (mk2), plus a hot-rodded Chinese preamp to get mics into the Traveler's line inputs (5-8).  702T on the bottom (clock, TC, 2 more preamps into the Traveler via AES.) 8Pre talks to the Traveler on ADAT so no device aggregation going on.  Drives (2) are elsewhere on the cart. I use MOTU's CueMix for monitoring (soloing, submixes etc.) and Metacorder for recording.  MacBook (white plastic 2.16 GHz duo Intel), on the other cart I still use a G4 1k Powerbook (up to 8 tracks only).  Pretty simple, pretty cheap (except for the Grace pre).  There are a lot of ways to improve this kind of system if you have more money to spend, but this rig has worked for me (esp w/ fancy outboard pres) for a whole lot of live shows, videos and CDs.  There are real limitations to how much you can safely load up the FW400 bus, device aggro or no, so strategies and testing for track counts beyond 22 or so with this type of gear using your exact package are very important.  External clocking really helps, both audio-wise and for sync stability.

Philip Perkins

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Yesterday morning the phone rang, it was a filmmaker who has been making the film I've been working on occasionally about the Scottish fiddle colossus Alasdair Fraser.  They had been told by Alasdair that morning (now yesterday) that he wanted her to shoot and record, multicam, the whole show at the opening night of the new Freight and Salvage in Berkeley, THAT NIGHT  (as in 10 hours from then).  No advance, no warning, no contact with the hall--I would be the first to ask (tell) them etc..  The filmmaker lives in 2+ hours away, and needed to scare up 3 camera ops etc..  I needed to get down to the Freight fast and be Real Friendly.  Which I did.  The audio that was possible to do for this gig (board feed +house stereo mics) wasn't very complex (and didn't sound very good, but that's the usual issue with using PA mixes for films) but the diplomatic challenges were considerable.  I did a lot of Submissive Waiting, Conspicuous Standing Around While Looking Alert and Cooperative, Helping With Small Tasks (chairs) while Visibly Not Leaving;  I wanted that damn feed and I REALLY wanted a hall pair mounted up on the stage-back, not to mention positions for 4 cameras, a place for me to set up and another spot for a case-dump and download station (card-cams).  The Freight people were having all sorts of issues, the whole place is brand new and the press, their board, their donors, God and everyone was showing up; they were oversold and offering people with seat-tickets tickets to any two later shows AND the ability to stand for that night's show if they gave up their seats.  When I walked in the large new digital console and all the audio panels on the stage were open, and the PA was buzzing like a hornet mosh.  The coffee machine wasn't working.  The doors were leaking lubricant.  AND, the guy I was there to make a film about had just emailed them a 21-person guest list, now making them at least 60 seats oversold.  The Fire Marshal had promised to attend.  I set-up and cabled up only to be moved 3 times, with ongoing negotiations....

Perseverance furthered, eventually.    And when in the very first number Alasdair Fraser called for the audience to hum a drone that he played over, I looked up at the audience mic pair I had finally been allowed to hang and smiled....

Here's a pic of the much relieved house sound crew around their new console, having finally gotten it working and the show sound checked just as the Berkeley Folkerati began to flood into the house.  My tiny rig is in the lower right corner--I sat on a small case all evening and practiced Inconspicuity whenever the management walked by.

Philip Perkins

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  • 3 weeks later...

This is from a few years ago.  I was recording feeds from the stage and two translators for the teachings.  And then RnG at the public talk and various audiences.

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And more recently a big venue that despite many emails was not prepared for our arrival, the board they rented had no direct outs and well didn't work at all so two boards later they actually got one that was functional with enough ways to cheat.  I was recording 10 -12 feeds including two translators and doing crash down mixes of the three versions (English, Chinese, and Spanish).

I'm actually backing up in the shot (Chronosync)

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Those are Tanks not a fleet of Priora. That's the plural word for a Prius.

OK, I followed the link and read the piece. It seems to me they are dancing around, trying to force the word into a neuter gender.

Explain why it couldn't just be Fourth Declension. That would yield:  singular - Prius, plural - Prius.

My Latin is more than a little rusty so I would defer to an authentic scholar.

David

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