jhharvest

As I said, I haven't done nature recordings which is why I hoped someone with more experience would chip in. I've used the Sennheiser 30/40 MS setup (but for music recordings), and Earthworks omnis on choirs in AB. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend either, when paired with good pre-amps. I've also used AKG 414 pairs for MS (music, again) but I don't think it's useful for this application. The other thought I had is, if you want to compare F4 and some Sound Devices recorder, why not just hire both for a day and a matched pair of some mics? That way you should have the opportunity to compare apples to apples, identical recordings et al. It sounds like you've got a fairly good grasp on what you want anyway, might give you that final confirmation to your ideas? What, so he gets mugged even before he sets foot outside UK?

For this kind of a project I would 100% bring some kind of a MS setup. It will give you the option of stereo but also gives you a very clean mono track. Easier setup than AB omnis. But how distant is "distant sounds"? As far as I know, at some point your only options are a parabolic (with the associated phase and frequency issues) or a binaural recording like Jecklin disk and some Earthworks omnis. Maybe someone else has more experience with pure nature recordings and would care to chip in on the topic.

They do use lavs on the James Corden gag, at least occasionally.

Cheers!

In your mixer route your talkback mic to your boom op, not to the recorder channels. Should be possible on most integrated mixer/recorders as well.

Anyone based on Java? Easy-ish 3 day shoot in Surakarta towards end of April.

If you are running TC and smart slates, be aware that the Tascam DR70 doesn't have a TC option at all. The DR701 does, and it works okay but you'll need to feed it sync constantly or it'll drift horribly. The DR701 has a few ease of use features which make it overall nicer to work with though, but of course it does cost like twice as much. This is where you may have trouble: your location will have a lot more reflections / reverb or background noise than you anticipated the reason why cardioids are usually preferred to interference tube designs (shotguns) indoors is because reflections can sound pretty harsh since you are not used to booming, you'll either be too conservative with the frame line (and get too little presence), or too close and dip into the frame this comes with experience, work with camera crew (or focus puller especially on smaller shoots), buy them beers, make friends. related to that: ceilings and hanging light fixtures having the right shock mounting options helps here, express your concerns if you can't make the moves you need to capture the scene, maybe you can nudge it a few feet also know when to scoop (boom from below) and when not to you'll be late tracking between actors delivering their lines lavs can save you here in post, wider pickup pattern mics can also help since you aren't running lavs for backup, wide shots may be an issue if the director doesn't do half your work for you you need to make sure that either there is no visual sync cues and you can ADR, or dialogue doesn't get used from those shots where you can't record it; ADR with talent who aren't used to it can be challenging not enough room tone / forgotten room tone, or not taking location sfx or capturing the sfx so it doesn't work in the post I'm not an expert like some of the guys here though, so take it with a pinch of salt. These are just some issues I've seen. I hope someone else can give you a better idea.

As a followup on this: Sennheiser replaced my unit for a newer one (with the black band) free of charge.

+1 to keeping a 416 as a backup. My 8060 is with Sennheiser techs as we speak.

I don't really care about Rode vs Schoeps. I'd much rather have Rode in the right place than a Schoeps in the wrong place. If there's sound issues, I'll discuss it with the director. "We can't get anything except a sync track here, if we stay at this location we'll need to do ADR. Ok or move?" If I have an outburst, I've already failed at my job. This is something that was never an issue in my 9-to-5 broadcast job (we had good directors who understood what matters for the production) but it's something I've really been trying to learn as a freelancer.

I don't know if it's relevant to you but I have one older Rode blimp that I replaced the O-ring suspension with Rycote lyres. I can't remember it being particularly difficult, although I did have to put in some spacers for whatever reason.

MS is a very nice stereo option, yes. 702 (and all 7 series recorders, afaik) have MS monitoring, so you can record MS as discrete channels. That'll give you the option of /just/ using the mid channel. The mono compatibility with MS is better than XY or AB anyway. Want stereo? Bam, you got stereo. Want mono? Bam, you got mono. Want slightly narrower stereo image? Bam, got it. All in post, with the push of a button.

Which is precisely the attitude that's got you in the pickle you are in. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38114558 I try not to have opinions about the American political system. But looking at it from the outside it seems bonkers to me. In Finland if an election was as close as the American elections always are, there would be a re-vote. If no candidate on the list gets more than 50% of the popular vote, there is a re-vote. But even beyond that the president doesn't have anywhere near the power that the US president has - it seems to me completely alien to have any one person dictate national policy that strongly. Also, why on earth do you guys have just two political parties? In Finland there hasn't been a dominant political party for as long as I remember, there is always a coalition government these days because people just have different opinions and you need different parties representing those opinions. And why are there blue states and red states - why do people vote who their parents voted for? Why are the elections about personalities, rather than issues? All of it just boggles my mind. Sorry, I'll get my coat. :-D

I think it's extremely unlikely anything will be found with a recount. If there are any disparities, it will be in the counties with only electronic voting with no paper trail to check. https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_state "Hey, let's have these black boxes provided by individual private suppliers, that no one is allowed to check or audit, that tally up people's votes. What a great idea!" :-D

The mix on TG episode 1 sucked though. Weird cancellation during the studio (ahem) tent segments and tinny gutless sound in the car segments.

Hi nch, Yes, lavalier mics are miniature condenser mics so they require external power to operate. The voltage range is typically low, such as the 1.2V on the OST TL-40. With the TL-40 you have the option of getting an XLR 48 volt phantom power supply module hardwired to the mic. If you do, then you won't be able to use the mic with your wireless transmitters, as those generally speaking don't supply 48V phantom power. The application for this setup is when you want to run the miniature mic directly to your mixer, when a wireless hop isn't required. If you want to know if the TL-40 plays nice with your G3, you could just contact the mic manufacturer directly. In this business companies will generally be very happy to answer your questions. Something like "Hello, I'm interested in purchasing your OST TL-40 to use with Sennheiser G3 transmitters. The G3 transmitter SK100 lists the nominal voltage as 2.4V, do you think the OST TL-40 would play nice with it? Best regards, ..." and you'll probably get a nice reply back.

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.

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

I've edited a bunch of personal stuff on Resolve. Works great if all you need is basic editing capabilities. I used Prores LT / Proxy workflow when the footage was big and my iMac wasn't up to snuff.

The Applied Science guy used it on his most recent video. Looked very cool.

Hehe, that stack of Tascams looks wild. I used a Joeco, Yamaha digi desk and 3 Audient preamps to do much the same thing when I needed 24 channels of concert recording. Took about the same space but I think much less things to go wrong, with not needing to start multiple recorders or name a bunch of files.

Yep, you can adjust stereo width in post. Especially if you end up doing MS, you can alter the pickup pattern entirely electronically in the decoding. ORTF does sound more natural than MS but gives you less flexibility after the fact. Having that (omni) AB pair would let you widen the image and add more space if you should need it though. Depends on how large the choirs are as well and the acoustics of the space, of course. It's hard for me to give you a suggestion on the mix without knowing the material - but probably if it was me I'd just try a normal stereo image on both choirs first, with fade ins and outs and test out if they sound distinct enough, without using this kind of stereo trickery to separate them. I don't think I've ever heard a recording with long pieces mixed off to the side, even in the beginning of stereo recording when people experimented a lot more. Either way, sounds like a cool project. Hope you have a great time!

Is the 'chatter' from the other choir part of the narrative? When I lived in Tanzania the maasai had these callbacks, little quips they kept making about the other boys and if I had been filming it I definitely would have recorded that as part of the whole experience. But if it's just chat about what they had for lunch, then maybe not. I usually use MS + wide AB for a lightweight choir setup, the mid mic from the prior can often be used to patch the soloist (assuming they are in the centre). If you plan on mixing left-centre, centre-right for the two choirs I would also suggest taking a long strip of quiet room tone, although I feel like that kind of stereo imaging might be distracting especially if the pieces are long.

Do you run 96kHz (or even higher) for those shots?

"Real" negative delay on a recorder, if implemented, should also offset the TC appropriately.