Ben B

So far i've only been doing test at home. I did some walk test from my building with my girlfriend wearing one A20 mini on one ankle and one SMQv (100mW) on the other. I chose ankle because that's a placement i use a lot on drama and i think it's also one of the worst placement RF wise. Setup was the A20 mini into the nexus and the SMQv into an SRC in ratio mode connected to the cascade out of the nexus and nexus connected to 2 LFA antenna with 4dB of gain at the antenna. I was on the first floor with antenna through the window. Clean and coordinated frequencies for both Tx. I had the A20 on 2mW to start, but quickly had to increase to 10mW (as soon as we had a couple walls between us), and then 20mW when she got further away. The SMQv dropped out first and i pushed the a20 mini to 40mW and got more range. I had line of sight pretty much all the way. About 100-120 meters away (still had range on the A20mini) she got around a corner of a building. The range dropped significantly but still had clean audio and when she got on the other side of the building i had heavy drop outs. There i still had connection to Nexlink. I did all the changes on the A20 mini while she was walking away and they took effect very fast. So pretty much as advertised by SD. I am pretty impressed of the range of the A20 mini. I know my SMQv pretty well and they always got me enough range to do 99% of the jobs so it was a good surprise to see the a 20 mini go further. But that test wasn't on set with all the RF crap we have spraying around. I can see the 2mW being useful when the cart can be pretty close to talents and otherwise use the 20mW to cover 90% of the situations. But that is yet to be proven on set. The nexus performs flawlessly so far beside a bug on the antenna control when using the cascade out. The bug has been reported to SD and they should be working on it i guess. I'm using the combination of Nexus and SRc only for that film, i'll transition fully to A20min and A10Tx for the next film this year. I will start my first feature with that setup on Monday so i'll report back after the 6 weeks of shooting. We'll shoot indoor, outdoor, city, mountains, cars and all that so it will give me a good array of different situations. I'll report back then.

It seems the fix might already be here on version 1.30!

i see. i'll put 4dB of gain on my LFA and will get back to reading the manual then.

Will do. My goal is to primarily use the A20 mini. I kept 4 channel of Lectro as fall back solution that i know very well and for the occasional higher channel count scene. The 3.5 dB loss would affect only the 2 SRc plugged into the cascade out, am i right? My setup will be LFA into Nexus, cascade out into a RF Multi then into the 2 SRc. So far in the testing i did at home i have good range. I'll try a walk test this weekend.

I will be using the cascade out for that film. But if it‘s just affecting the remote control functions of the LFA it‘s a problem i can live with for this film. If the system works well on this project i‘ll be fully switching to the A20 so won‘t be using the cascade out anymore. i‘ll be happy to report after a few weeks of using the Nexus, A10 Tx and A20 mini.

Thanks for your review. I will be using the A20 Nexus for the first time in a real world situation next month and i also have the LFA antenna. In the test i did at home i didn't notice anything. Would you care sharing what your experience was?

Hi, I am reviving this thread as i just purchased a couple A10Tx for my booms. I also noticed the raised noise floor when using in combination with Schoeps CCM4 and CCM8. I am using the Audio Limited (Sound Devices) cable. Before i start taking that expensive cable apart, you say that bridging the ground to the XLR shell did the trick? Also the length of the cable, so a shorter one or a longer and having to keep it straight? Thanks! Ben

I had the same thing happen to 2 of my SMQv. You need to add some silver paste to the thumb screw of the battery lid. That paste helps making a good electrical connection from the batteries to the unit and helps the Tx to read higher voltage, thus giving you a more accurate battery life reading (https://www.lectrosonics.com/phocadownload/silverpaste_instructions.pdf). You can get that silver paste if you call Lectro or you local reseller.

I had the chance to play with a Nexus and a A20 mini today at my local reseller. I tried everything i could try with the unit in stand alone mode and one transmitter and i must say i am very impressed! The pairing was done very quickly, the A20 mini reacts very fast to the commands you give it through the Nexus. Even when you made changes with the bluetooth app, the changes were instantly reflected on the Nexus and vice versa. The RTSA works perfectly and i can totally see it become a very useful tool on a set for me in the future. The speed the Nexus makes the transmitter change frequencies as well as turning on and off is very impressive. I couldn't really test the range of the A20 mini and Nexlink but from within an office through a couple room the Nexus kept a perfect Nexlink as well as RF, but that was to be expected. The user interface is very user friendly and the learning curve is very fast. I got the hang of it within 10 minutes. The screens and very bright, although i didn't test them in direct sunlight and the touch screen is very reactive (pretty much like a smartphone or better a smart watch which i think the screen come from). I would definitely put a glass protector on them even if the screens are made of gorilla glass, it's always easier to replace a screen protector than a screen itself. I wish i could have tried to dock it to a 8 serie but unfortunately i could only try it in stand alone mode. Overall very impressed by it. I could totally see the whole system integrate on my cart and bag setup.

It looks cool but expensive! for me it would mean switching my whole Rx/Tx 12 channels cart rig and 8 channel bag rig system which would mean a huge investment but i must admit that all the bells and whistles are looking good. If what they say about the nexlink range is true it would solve the issue i had with the battery life of the A20 mini. I am disappointed though that the dc out are disabled when the nexus is plugged onto a 8 serie. I like to be able to switch the while rig on and off with one power switch and have the batterie in the back of the recorder as backup and hot swap solution… EDIT: After watching the video from SD i have to correct myself. Yes the 2 Hirose in the back do exactly that.

That's great info! Thanks. I read in the specs that the Hyperflex 7 handle bends down to 68mm in radius. My drum has a 100mm radius at the base so i guess i'm good to go. I put everything together last week. I put 3 Cables in a sleeve around the drum and it fits nicely!

Hi Marco I ended up getting 25m of it and i put it on a drum. I thought it was flexibel enough not damage it on a drum. I'll try it in november, i guess i'll see if i was wrong with the flexibility...

So the Ultraflex 7 flexibel enough to put it on drums! Interessant! I'll look into it! thanks!

I'm interested to know about the result! I'm looking for a 5m version for my cart and a 20-30 m version to remote my antenna mast. Do you mean the Ultraflex 7?

Good to know about the noise floor. I didn't think about that. That's exactly why i posted this question here. I also did some test with the bag rig have (the other rig with the Wisycom antenna would be for my cart rig). The bag rig is also an SL2 with the same PWS filters but going into either whips or the Betso Bowtie depending on what kind of job i do. Obviously the Tx is pretty close to the whips as it's all in a small bag. During my test i found out that bypassing the PWS filters and going with the whips directly on the SL2 would overload the SL2 RF input with the cam hop TX. when putting the PWS filters between the whips and the SL2, it would stop the overloading. So i guess they do help somewhat to filter out the cam hop frequencies. I guess it's an either this or either that situation where none of them is a perfect solution.