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Zaxcom Nomad - operating questions, plus tips & shortcuts


Jack Norflus

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John, Thank you for the reply. Yes, I have checked out the description; I have, (I think!) a reasonable understanding of Neverclip, particularly how it relates to the Nomad. The iso track attenuation is a godsend for prefader tracks. My bafflement is with the transmitters (TRXLA2, for example) where there is a gain setting in the dynamics subsection as well as a gain setting in the main menu, and how these would translate both across the 24db transmission range to the Nomad, and also to the recording level on the internal card of the transmitter. 

I'm testing them every which way I can think of. I note Jeff Wexler's comment on this site–that he doesn't use any of the dynamics settings–to be a very helpful clue! I'm currently testing what happens when the only changes I make are to the main menu gain control. If this is all I need to focus on, then I'm good to go.

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On 1/7/2016 at 7:53 PM, aff said:

John, Thank you for the reply. Yes, I have checked out the description; I have, (I think!) a reasonable understanding of Neverclip, particularly how it relates to the Nomad. The iso track attenuation is a godsend for prefader tracks. My bafflement is with the transmitters (TRXLA2, for example) where there is a gain setting in the dynamics subsection as well as a gain setting in the main menu, and how these would translate both across the 24db transmission range to the Nomad, and also to the recording level on the internal card of the transmitter. 

I'm testing them every which way I can think of. I note Jeff Wexler's comment on this site–that he doesn't use any of the dynamics settings–to be a very helpful clue! I'm currently testing what happens when the only changes I make are to the main menu gain control. If this is all I need to focus on, then I'm good to go.

The gain setting in the dynamics menu is make up gain in the compressor, not related to neverclip.  The main menu is the input gain.  There is an attenuation level in the factory menu, but if I remember correctly they don't recommend messing with it much, and it doesn't have the same range as the nomad.

If I can suggest, don't worry as much about the neverclip in the transmitter, it's there to give you better dynamic range at the input and it should pretty much work in the background with out user interaction.

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Thank you both for the feedback; I came to a similar conclusion about the transmitter settings. I've done a few shoots recently in which the actors go from whisper to shout quite unpredictably and I'm trying to find the sweet spot.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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21 hours ago, aff said:

Thank you both for the feedback; I came to a similar conclusion about the transmitter settings. I've done a few shoots recently in which the actors go from whisper to shout quite unpredictably and I'm trying to find the sweet spot.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I deal with whisper to car or motorcycle engine on  regular basis. Zaxnet gain change is the best workflow to deal with this and one of the main reason why I chose Zaxcom wireless and recorder.

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20 hours ago, RadoStefanov said:

I deal with whisper to car or motorcycle engine on an regular basis. Zaxnet gain change is the best workflow to deal with this and one of the main reason why I chose Zaxcom wireless and recorder.

'Neverclip' is never clip for the input only, and what the transmitter has to do to contain and transmit the signal is compress the dynamic range, as the input can deliver too much range for the transmitter to deal with, as with all transmitter systems?

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  • 4 months later...

As i learn just from a facebook thread , that we can use non regargable lithium batery , i tried yesterday with some i had laying around for a while, i did a quick test in the evening by just recording for 5 min or so ..seems vey fine..everything stayed cold..

So i went working yesterday , at about 16H when my NP1 went down , i remembered i had the lithium in there so i jtouched the battery door to check the temp..and it was hot! i put the battery sled out and battery where kind hot too..not burning fingers stuff but hot! The nomad boot screen said 107/104 F° ...is this normal? i never really cared about my nomad temp  before..

20160522_173432.jpg

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I'm puzzled as to why you want people to criticize you, but perhaps it fulfills some inner need.

I guess you can consider this response as complying with your request.

IMO, what you refer to as zero gain should be about optimizing the operating parameters of each amplifier stage in the signal chain.  If, therefore, you're setting a trim, it depends in part on the gain characteristics of whatever device is feeding the input.  If you're operating at line level, there is greater latitude as to the noise floor, so therefore, the primary consideration is the amount of allowable headroom as there's little compromise between headroom and noise floor.

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7 hours ago, John Blankenship said:

I'm puzzled as to why you want people to criticize you, but perhaps it fulfills some inner need.

I guess you can consider this response as complying with your request.

IMO, what you refer to as zero gain should be about optimizing the operating parameters of each amplifier stage in the signal chain.  If, therefore, you're setting a trim, it depends in part on the gain characteristics of whatever device is feeding the input.  If you're operating at line level, there is greater latitude as to the noise floor, so therefore, the primary consideration is the amount of allowable headroom as there's little compromise between headroom and noise floor.

I wasn't wanting people to criticise me, it was just expected.

What I am referring to is zero gain on the trim of the Nomad. In my opinion, zero is a much better place to be, than say 25 db gain on the trim, followed by a 20 something db reduction on the fader. Especially if the original 25 db gain on the trim was because the output of the transmitter was 25 db too low. Did I say something there that doesn't work for some reason?

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  • 4 months later...
On 12.12.2015 at 0:48 AM, Wandering Ear said:

It simply updates the recorded file creation date of the file you run the command on.  It doesn't change any behavior of any application.  I'm sure it'd be possible to write a script to read the csv sound report tc values and apply it to the file creation date for every file in a folder using the above command.

I tried it now. I typed into mac terminal: touch -t %Year%Month%Day%Hour%Minute.%Seconds (( and the real/Path/To/File ))

Doing this I get the the message: touch: out of range or illegal time specification: [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS]

What am I doing wrong?

Btw: the creation date on the files that the TRXLA2 writes is always 11/16/2000 8:59. - for all files.

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23 minutes ago, jhharvest said:

Presumably your variables are set wrong. Try echo %Year%Month%Day%Hour%Minute.%Seconds and see what it tells you. If you just want to set them to the TRXLA2 basic, try touch -t 200011160859.00 /path/to/filename

Thanks jhharvest. With echo %Year%Month%Day%Hour%Minute.%Seconds I get the exact same line as output as the input. I wouldn't want to set it to the TRXLA2 basic.

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Right, right. Yeah, I just read back to what Wandering Ear said on the previous page. So what he was suggesting was that you write a script that takes the actual TC values from the sound report CSV and then apply those to the file creation dates with touch -t ... It's a bit more involved than just one command, unfortunately.

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You need to replace the variables with actual values. 

Touch -t 1610250944 ./my file.wav

would set the date to 10/25/2016 at 9:44am.  You can also use touch -d which attempts to read the time and date from most any format (like 10/25/2016 9:44am), but that may prove to be less reliable depending on how the input is formatted.

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