Jeff Wexler

I haven't managed to thank everyone personally but the last few days have seen an amazing amount of support donations from our members. Maybe my birthday, April 18th, triggered this, I don't know, but it is so appreciated! We have such a great group of sound people here who participate regularly on site and so many of our veteran members have generously offered so much good advice and help to many of our newer members. It is amazing that we can keep this all going considering how much "competition" there is from so many social media websites. I am aware that the legacy forum format is showing its age a bit but it seems to be still working quite well. So pleased that there is room in your lives for JWSOUNDGRIOUP. Thank you, again, from the bottom of my heart for all the generous support donations.

Thanks for the encouragement! I am going to try and get out more but still mer fairly cautious when it comes to large gatherings of people indoors. I do know that most people have had Covid, many have gotten it several times. I am as fully vaccinated as anyone can be at this time but I still hope to avoid getting it at all.

Nice! How wonderful it was for me to actually be with people in the real world. I have been so overly cautious because of Covid I have missed so many events, so many people. It was great evening, I think one of the best Awards show we've done. 

23 minutes ago, Patrick Tresch said:

Their dual AD is also a well known trick dating back from the telecinema times in the 80's. Sonosax had it also implemented before them and Arri is also using it in their Alexas camera... nothing new.

 

Bright idea to patent the wheel...

 

Patrick

You are only partially correct on this. Zaxcom did not patent (and would not have been granted a patent) merely for the use of 2 A-D converters. What Zaxcom DID patent, this is my understanding, is Zaxcom's specific utilization of 2 A-D converters in a unique way. The patent would never have been granted if it were merely the use of 2 A-Ds  ---  you are right that this is not new and predates anything from Zaxcom, Lectrosonics, Audio, Ltd., etc. 

Zaxcom has introduced a new IFB device designed to be used primarily the way in which current IFB systems used. The sound quality is amazing, it seems to be a very rugged and hopefully indestructable unit, so important for a device that will be the hands of other crew, Director, Script, etc. It will be very easy to integrate this with almost everybody's existing systems since it is compatible with all of the Comtek transmitters. Gotham has done a really good video showcasing the VRX-1.

On 12/9/2023 at 9:13 PM, RadoStefanov said:

I just borrowed a PSC Eurocart Aluminum drawer and honestly it is very heavy. The aluminum plate that is made from is very thick. The steel drawers seam a lot lighter.

Something is not right here  ---  I cannot imagine an aluminum drawer being heavier than an all steel drawer. Oh, well, I think we've given the poster some choices and the answer to whether it has to be aluminum or  not is a personal one. For me, the difference, particularly in a follow cart as  Johnny K. has said, was night and day. I would never have wanted 4 or 5 steel drawers.

7 hours ago, RadoStefanov said:

Plenty of choices for 19” drawers out there. 

Actually, when I last checked there are very few choices for the style of drawer we're talking about in aluminum. I do know that people have used various other sorts of drawers, tool chest container types, plastic, etc., but for standard type drawer in aluminum, very few companies to choose from.

Until they went out of business, several of us relied on Rackman because they were the only one doing aluminum. The Star Case stuff eventually was done in aluminum but you are right that it was inconsistent and not very well made. I looked into the Penn Elcom drawers but when I first looked into those they did not have aluminum - --  that was a deal breaker for me as I was always striving for lighter weight stuff. That's what drove me to be one of the first to experiment with LiFe batteries for cart power (easily a 10th of the weight of the very common sealed lead acid batteries).

It ended evidently right up on one of the many deadlines the studios have been talking about  --  it ids hard to say what productions will actually ramp up quickly this year considering the holidays coming up. I think we are assured that the beginning of next year is going to get really busy (just in time as we start to look at I.A. contract negotiations).

Evan, not sure which piece of kit you are referring to, but thank you for directing me back to this interesting topic started quite some time ago. Primarily to show Bruce Bisenz's custom home made mixer and then moved into a discussion of Stellavox gear. I did get to see Bruce's mixer up close and personal as I had Bruce fill in for me on a few movies where I had to leave early. Never owned a Stellavox recorder or mixer but did have some working experience with both.

7 hours ago, traut said:

Bruce was a fan of Stellavox for doc work. I worked for John Glascock doing tape to film transfers and listened to hours of Bruce's recordings. He was a master.

I first saw the Stellavox at Bruce's house, I know he loved that machine. He was the only one I knew who owned one. I didl however, get to do one documentary with my friend Gerry Feil in New York he also owned a Stellavox. I remember before we went on location for the documentary, Gerry helped me build a "bloop light" from scratch to go with the Stellavox.  Some of you may know that Kudelski did the IS primarily so that he could say they had recorder comparable in size to the Stellavox. It was, of course, larger, and I believe it was not a big seller (though I'm sure it outsold Stellavox certainly in the US).

I loved my Nagra IS  ---   used it on many jobs when there was a lot of "over-the-shoulder" work. Also, nice to having with me as a backup (though my trusty Nagra 4.2 never failed me). I did not know many other Production Sound Mixers that owned an IS and everyone was always interested in seeing it on the jobs I was on.

12 hours ago, tourtelot said:

Gotta disagree Jeff.  This is on-going and clearly advertising and marketing specifically NOT ALLOWED in these threads.  Just my opinion of course, just like almost everything else on this blog.  

 

But I will probably speak out whenever it occurs.

 

Oh and BTW, Larry's posts are much less blatant and do more serve to provide informantion and not so much to sell goods.  Again, just my opinion.  I'm outie.

 

D.

I don't entirely disagree with you ...  Glenn's post was certainly borderline as regarding advertising or not. At the very least a bit opportunistic, I will give you that. For me personally, I was pleased to see this widespread misconception about Zaxcom that you have to go ALL Zaxcom to use any of Zaxcom's gear. What does still remain to be true is that if you are all Zaxcom you will have the best integration of wireless, recording, remote control, IFB, an extremely high level of integration and functionality difficult or impossible utilizing gear from several different companies.

5 hours ago, tourtelot said:

Come on man.  Take the advertising to Manufacturers and Dealers.  Bad behavior.

 

D.

Doug, your post is bad behavior. I think Glenn was totally within the guidelines of the site and was in direct response to Joe's original post and specifically to the comment from Joe: "Zaxcom clearly answers my needs but sticking with SD for now. 888 user." Glenn was merely pointing out information to help Joe in making decisions by correcting the overall general impression that if you want to go Zaxcom you have to go all Zaxcom. Now if Glenn had done what some other manufacturers have done by claiming "we have the best range" this would not be appropriate. Letting Joe know that there are lots of sound mixers using recorders other than from Zaxcom very successful with Zaxcom wireless equipment.

Individuals who are connected to companies that manufacture gear are not relegated to only post in the Manufacturer and Dealers section. For example, Larry Fisher from Lectrosonics has made many posts on the site, some may feel that this was to promote sales, but I always found his posts to be helpful and informative, in the same manner as Glenn's post. 

Additionally, if someone in an effort to help Joe had said that Sound Devices wireless only works well with Sound Devices recorders, I would welcome comments from Aaton Cantar to sort the record straight.

I'm not sure if Gordon spends any time on JWSOUND but I wanted to re-post his formal announcement here for our members. Congratulations Gordon!

To Shane Munro, I think you were out of line calling out Glenn Sanders clarifying statements regarding transmitters and battery run time. If you have spent any amount of time on this site, you know that we often have topics that evolve, meander and discuss things that re not specifically tied to the main topic heading. As for moderating, as you also may know, I moderate with a very light hand, allowing our members to speak freely. I always hope that when there is incorrect information, mis-information, these things will be corrected by our members. Regarding paid advertising, yes,  Zaxcom has continued to pay for an ad banner (many other companies in the past have also utilized the ad banner) and it does not afford any special rights or privileges. What is not tolerated is the abuse that some of the companies that paid in the past for ad banner decided they could ute this site for full page graphic intensive advertising promotion. This is not allowed and will not be tolerated.

Thank you so much, Rado, for posting this! Senator has kept such a low profile we have all been worried about him. I hope he's doing okay and I respect his desire to stay off social media (but I do miss him!).

I will weigh in on this but I'm not able to recommend brands or specific gear other than what I used to use. I will say, personally, having done these sorts of scenes many, many times, I always had really good results using my Zaxcom gear. Whenever we did car to car stuff, I would go wireless from the picture car to a follow van where I would be with all my equipment along with usually the Director, Script, etc. Never felt the need to do the "bag drop" routine since I had rock solid backup recording in the transmitters. For IFB, usually it was just my usual Comteks for other people in the follow van. I do remember once having to have 2 follow vans, and in these cases I had to have IFB to 2 vans (which I did usually with additional wireless). One thing I would recommend highly when doing any of these sorts of scene is to work out a way to have all receiving and transmitting antennas positioned outside the vehicles  ---  this makes a bog difference. For the talent wireless in the picture car I would remote the transmitting antennas for wireless plants and on the follow van, remote the shark fins outside the follow van.

Beautiful!  Loved his music. He will be missed.

Thank you for posting. A truly great human being I was fortunate to meet as he was a friend of my father's  ---  used to sing along with the records and I know Pop was involved in several of the social and political activities that were so much a part of Belafonte's life.

2 hours ago, Derek H said:

That thing is a chunk fest!!

Agreed. I would never want to put that amount of gack on the mic end of the fish pole. My boom operator would never do that.

Looks great!! It's true your website needed some updating --  the new site is certainly welcome and will help to get the word out about your beautiful creations. Everyone, take a look!

Thank you Jim Feeley! I'm going to give it a listen. Every time I get to hear anyone talking about working on "Almost Famous" it is pretty amazing  --  Billy Crudup and actually everyone in the cast and crew were so happy to be on the set, everyone gave it 100%. It is a credit to Cameron as a Director that everyone washable to do some of the best work of their careers.

I feel blessed to have worked on a movie that has become my favorite of all time  ---  this scene specifically, my favorite sing-along scene that I have ever done. Thank you Cameron Crowe for the joy of working with you.

Glenn Sanders let me know that the Zaxcom Facebook group is down and they're working with Facebook to get it back up and running. In the meantime, feel free to use JWSOUNDGROUP for your discussions. Hopefully the regular Zaxcom Facebook group will be back soon.