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Brian Liston

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Everything posted by Brian Liston

  1. No need for word clock, correct. Dante uses PTP to good effect, albeit the chattier V1. However, Dante devices don't like changing clocks, as they stay doing whatever they're told. But if you have word clock on some devices, they will auto-switch rates.
  2. After ordering one 6 months ago, I finally got it the other day. The Good: - Motorized faders are as quiet as any I've used. Certainly more quiet than my Avid S1. - Touch screen is fab - Software is superior to Behringer/Midas. - Boom recorder and it got along great The Bad - Only two tracks on the recorder? Come on! - Has a clock, and even a frame rate selector. No way to jam in or out. No 23.976! - Limited FX The Ugly - .500ms changeover from Primary to Secondary. All my other stuff is seamless
  3. I had a friend that had a stereo pair, and offered to sell them to me at a reasonable price. Well, compared to the retail price anyway. I got them to my studio, I couldn't get them to work at all. He said the they had broke before and got sent back to Neumann for repair, and he would do that again. That time, they charged him a lot of money to fix these mics that were never really used. When they came back, he asked me if I still wanted them. I said no. It was a very weird design, and very early on the digital mic game. I'm hoping that they are going to replace that model with an improved one. IMO here is a lot of potential for a digital mic, vs this modeling mic trend of which I have not been impressed with either.
  4. The 1/8" thing on the Rx ain't great. I use a RA jack, and tape it down with some gaff, but I feel that is a bit of a hack for such a lofty (price tag) piece of gear. The gain statin is weird. It *should* have very strong line level, it being a headphone amp and all. But it does not. I find I have to crank things on the unit and the camera to the point of a large noise floor. So I usually have to put the camera to mic level, and then I'm at the other side of turning things down farther than I would like, again not in the sweet spot for noise floor. The screen on the Rx is amazing! The screen on the Tx is appalling. I sure wish they would make a Tx that has a TA6 on it. And I hope that we can spit out AES, and they keep the nice large screen.
  5. I had a lovely conversation with the tech at Arri who worked on the camera. He agrees that there is not enough current from an audio device that could do any damage. The fault occurred from a short between the PSC port on the front, and the EXT port in the back. Neither port even has the type of connector that we ever use in the audio world. So yeah, zero percent chance. I think this guy was just looking to place the blame elsewhere. Of course I had the tech write up a note, and it was sent to the producer. Case closed.
  6. He says the audio stopped working the day I had the ERX plugged into it, and he sent it in a month later. So, I need to contact Arri I suppose to find out what they said. I would just love to hear a scenario where the ERX could fry a camera. The ERX doesn't even send +48V. And honestly, an ENG camera shouldn't get fried over that.
  7. I did a two day job with an Amira a little over a month ago. Suddenly, the camera owner is saying that I fried the audio board on it with my ERX-2. Is this even possible? I mean, even a short to put Timecode over there at full voltage shouldn't fry a board, right?
  8. Great, the faders thing has long frustrated me. Another bug that still lingers is on the QRX100. When changing from dual to single, or single to dual, the frequency will read the correct number, but will be not tuned all the way. A reboot later and everything is cool.
  9. The original firmware had this ability, but they took it out, citing its lack of actually saving any battery power. I was bit bummed by this as well.
  10. Also, 5.1 is in its autumnal years. I wouldn't put a ton of time and money into it. The new Immersive formats, Dolby Atmos, DTS-Z and the like, are the now and the future. The cool thing is doing an atmos mix can go out to 5.1, or stereo without a separate mix. But if you do the 5.1, make sure that you check the fold, or just work in the fold. If it is for home, TV youtube and the like, leave those back speakers alone. they will cause some problems on poorly configured playback systems. Which is 99% of home 5.1 systems.
  11. They are lowering renewals by 30% right now.
  12. Sadly most software is going subscription. Although I think Avid has been a bit...sluggish...of late, there have been some cool updates. Track folders, Atmos, etc There is supposed to be a release this month that work with Mojave. I'm trying to become a Reaper-capable person for pinch moments in the field. But oh boy, it is a learning curve. I'd rather pay the $400/yr to keep my PT Ultimate rocking.
  13. Oh, just looks at that specific model It is an analogue guy. I thought it was a digital board like the X-32 that I use (and love). Looks like there is a PFL mode that needs to be disabled, then it should return to mix mode.
  14. Using the iPad or computer software makes setup and routing much easier.
  15. It used to be, then they updated the firmware in the Amira and it is now the same there as well.
  16. Regen then preset is sadly the only way to make it work. The Jam mode doesn't work. If you leave it on REGEN, then an orange warning flash will happen in the monitor, driving the camera Op crazy.
  17. A touch over half a frame. Hmmmm. Not sure if this is a deal breaker. The Zaxcom ZMT transmitters are what, like 8ms? By the time everything happens through the digital mixer that would put things nearly a whole frame behind. Hmmmm. The ERXs are 8ms also I believe, but the range is not awesome. Hmmm.
  18. The room at 1176 (!!) Blvd in LA is pretty useful, but some caution is always needed in doing any shoot out. First off, you shouldn't use your own voice. All of that skull vibration going on when making sound is really misleading. I always use a third party to do the sound making. Secondly, balancing out the perceived volume is key. Different voices will peak differently mic to mic, so there is no way to calibrate it. I insist on having someone tweak the inputs to normalize them when doing an eval. The LA store has an antelope interface last I was there, and twisting those knobs made a world of difference. VK will record the session for you to take home and judge more. I have found the VK staff to be very cool about helping with all of this.
  19. +1 on this. I have done some informal tests, so having some better empirical evidence would be great. I'm wondering if the artifacts you refer to are caused by the decode on the Rx side of things. When the range is stretched, I can sometimes hear the digital stretching. So comparing what is recorded on the card in side the Tx, Vs what is on the other side of the Rx would be interesting. I'm going to listen to season 7 of Homeland on my Barefoots now to see if I can hear the ZMT. Thanks for calling out a specific real-world example Constantin. Dänke!
  20. +1. I would use this almost every day if it worked. Roll now, ask question later. Its the new way.
  21. DSIs new Prophet X is a marvel. One of the deepest monsters I've ever played. One shall be mine before year's end. I've largely been able to avoid the Behringer stuff. But I do have an X-32. (Don't tell anyone)
  22. Sure would be great if those Lads and Ladies from New Jersey could figure this out. This issue brings the number to three industry-standard brands that do not work properly with Zaxcom gear: Arri, Tentacle and Deneke. Could we get the Zaxcom stuff fixed to work with the other industry-standard gear? Like maybe some compatibility mode? If Arri doesn't work with the ERX, then make the ERX work with the Arri? A Denecke mode for the TS-C slate would be great. I miss setting my TS-C to auto jam, and not fishing for the tweaker and magnifying glass to change that dial. And really, to get a RED camera to sync, I have to turn the voltage up pretty far so I get some audible bleed in the audio feed to camera from an ERX. Maybe if us users ask real rice-like, we can make our case for better compatibility from our Zaxcom equipment.
  23. Yeah, I used Ultimates. Such stupid name conventions (super-mega-awesome-to-the-max). I changed the listing, and spelled out that it is a single battery.
  24. I ran a little test with the stuff I use in the field, configured as such. Basically none of the batteries can really get me to lunch or from lunch to wrap. On paper the SMV can, but if things run just a bit long, as they often do, that's where the Tx would die. IOW the worst possible time to die. The interesting thing was the closeness of the battery meter on the ZMT3s. They looked the same until just past the halfway point. The Watson dropped like a rock. Only flashing for less than two minutes before shutdown. I think that's why I haven't thought of the batteries as being that different. I rarely let things wind down that far. Now this next point has no science behind it. I feel like the ZMT3s loose some range at the lower end of the battery life. Several times I have experienced some dropout, when I don't think there should be. Then, a battery refresh clears it up. I also tested the drift of the Nomad Vs my Denecke Slate. It drifted by 1 frame over the 5 hours. The nomad display and the slate were always one frame off, it drifted an additional frame over that time. Naturally the slate said "Sync error 24" as it always does jamming from the Nomad (gross). It is set manually to mode "23" as it will not read the correct frame rate in auto. My quasi-scientific results are: Zaxcom ZMT3 - 75mW NP-50 Watson 800mAh 3:49 in use 2:31 to recharge Zaxcom TRXLT - 125mW AA Li Ultimate SIngle Batt 4:02 in use Zaxcom ZMT3 - 75mW NP-50 Lectrosonics 1K mWh 5:05 in use 3:05 to charge Zaxcom Nomad 12 IDX NP-1 5:23 in use 3:10 to charge Lectrosonics SMV - 100mW AA Li Ultimate single batt 6:30 in use Sound Devices Mix Pre-3 Anker Powercore+ 26800 over 12Hrs, less than 20. 10:30 to charge via 2.4A 5V supply
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