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Matthew Steel

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    Live sound and recording for higher education
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  1. We use our HM and HMa transmitters in live settings, so not the same as you're asking. But we have done some unusual things with them that might help give perspective. One thing we do is to fasten the trasnmitter under a wooden lectern with a cable running up through it to a gooseneck mic on top. We have also done things like putting a Crown (AKG) PCC160 with its TA3->XLR cable into a plug on. Perhaps more like what you're asking, I have had press at an event ask me to give them a feed using their plug-on. Once or twice I've plugged one straight into a press mult box without even a cable on it. I don't remember ever having range problems with any of these scenarios, with distances ranging from 50-150 feet from the receiving antennas. I presume that you are asking because you don't already have a plug on, but if you can manage to borrow, rent, or buy one with the opportunity to return it if it doesn't meet your expectations, then I'd suggest testing it in a scenario that matches your intended use as closely as possible. This next part is likely not the way you would go, but since cost is a concern, I'll mention that we regularly use a Sennheiser IEM G3 transmitter to transmit to LSP500 wireless speakers. With a Lectro SNA600 I can get up to 300 feet at the transmitter's 50mW high power setting. If I don't need that much range I use a whip on the back. To go to Lectro your receivers would have to have compatibility modes. I have not gone SennheiserTx -> LectroRx, but I have gone LectroTx -> SennheiserRx using mode 3 and Mode 6 compatibility. Those modes are for other transmitters, so there is definitely a quality loss. But for IFB it might be an option.
  2. Some of them appear to expire next year, others do not. Here is a sample: Patent 8,385,814 B2 appears to have an anticipated expiration date of 2025-07-14. (Google patents). Patent 9,336,307 B2 appears to have an adjusted expiration date of 2025-07-31. (Google patents). Patent 7,929,902 B2 appears to have an adjusted expiration date of 2028-08-22. (Google patents).
  3. Since we are talking theoretical, an audio recorder that is receiving timecode (not just getting word clock that is derived from timecode) could actually know where the frame boundaries are. In that case such a recorder could pad the recording (using a prerecord buffer if necessary) to always begin every recording on a frame boundary.
  4. I do a lot of different types of work as a staff engineer. Part of that is live, including musical theatre. Absolutely the second mic is for redundancy. And as others have said, it is almost never the RF side of things (if your coordination is good), but the mics getting sweated out and the cables getting intermittent or being ripped out of connectors. We are not a big time venue, but some of the shows we do have very large casts (I have had a couple where we have 48 channels of wireless for the show). And we often bring in a few top artists for principal roles. It was one of these that I had my most memorable experience with a principal sweating out a mic. I had to cheat off other actors where I could for a scene or two until he went off stage long enough for the backstage tech to swap his mic. Since then I have doubled up mics when the situation called for it (like, a character that barely left the stage the entire show) and I had the equipment so that could.
  5. A while back we had one or two VHF systems repaired by JayCee. No complaints. Anyone that can manufacture a new clone RF board for a UM400a deserves recognition I bet Rio Rancho can fix most boards unless they are burned/cracked/corroded or similarly damaged. It's just that for some repairs, the time it would take to diagnose might be cost prohibitive. I bet JayCee can handle any reasonable repair too. And might be willing to undertake some that the factory wouldn't care to.
  6. Fastest way to get official word is to call when they open up in a few hours. My prediction is that they will still do any repair if they have the parts. But some repairs are only cost-effective by replacing the entire circuit board, and they cannot legally replace an RF circuit board on the UM400a because its FCC certification does not comply with the new ETSI mask requirements that took effect October 2018.
  7. There is a thread on here somewhere in the last few months with internal pictures of a Lithium pack. Personally I have opened a Sennheiser Lithium pack for LSP500 Pro that stopped working correctly. Its plastic case was glued together, so it took some care to not destroy it. Expect glue even if there are also screws. On the Sennheiser battery the cells were spot welded into a series string of parallel pairs. Conventional wisdom is that soldering directly to the end of lithium cells is risky business; replacement cells with tabs already attached seem to be recommended. The pack I opened up had only about 50 cycles on it and it appeared that all the cells were still good, but the protection circuitry was tripping for some reason and I gave up.
  8. In the live side of my work I use Allen and Heath dLive and it has "Dugan style" gain sharing automix built in. I have never had the need to automix that many channels but I think it has the capabiity. I think the Avantis line has the same/similar capabilities. Where some other mixers are limited to 8 channels, etc.
  9. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that Lectrosonics manufactures the product inside the USA, and therefore the patent applies to the manufacture. Whereas, if another company might be able to manufacture outside the geographic scope of the patent, in which case only sales are restricted by the patent. I have not heard one way or the other whether the hardware has the capability to do both simultaneously. Personally I suspect it can and is limited only by the firmware. If I remember correctly, the SMWB firmware package contains at least two separate programs, one for record mode and another for transmit mode; based on the chosen functionality, the appropriate code gets loaded into memory and executed.
  10. AES is specified to use 110 ohm cable, but in my experience normal mic cable will work just fine for shorter runs. For example, I've used a 12 foot Canare star quad mic cable in a pinch on multiple occasions. I have also used regular XLR to RCA adapters to go between AES and SPDIF because the specifications are close enough.
  11. I don't have any photos, sorry. The ones I had weren't "broken" but were no longer useful to us. Our DPA mics tended to fail at the microdot connector and when that happened I hardwired them to TA5F. Also the adapters we had were DAD-6012. This was supposed to be the correct model for use with VHF transmitters, but it does not actually work for that application because it shorts the connector shell to pin 1 (the VHF transmitters use the audio shield as the VHF transmit antenna so the adapter shorts out the antenna). The reason I opened them up was to attempt to rewire them as DAD-3056. As I write this I am not 100% sure I ever tested them. They were purchased many years ago so I can't say for sure where we bought them but I believe that they are genuine DPA.
  12. The ones I have actually can unscrew. They have threads between the two sections of metal, which had a sealant/adhesive on them so they are quire stiff. If I remember I had to put one end into a vise and twist the other with pliers. I probably used a buffer of some sort of softer material to prevent/reduce scratches. The inside portion of the microdot connector was a sort of pin socket into which one of the component leads fit. This allowed the two pieces of shell to twist when threading. I suppose this is where a failure of these adapters is most likely.
  13. The The cable I used was original cable from MKE-2 microphones. The version that comes without a connector is so long that I always cut it shorter. I had saved a lot of these cut-off ends, so I had a good supply of original cable.
  14. Does the "Original Timestamp" match the "User Timestamp" for the clip you are exporting? I haven't looked for documentation about what is supposed to happen but I have wondered if the User Timestamp may be the one that gets written into the WAV file when exporting. The User Timestamp can be edited, I think it shows up in the same dialog used to rename a clip.
  15. In terms of "horror stories" I have had a few struggles. Most of these are things that are related to to the fact that my devices are on a large general purpose network which I do not control. We have our own VLAN, but there can still be effects from interactions between other equipment and traffic types: * Late packets when there is heavy non-Dante traffic (like file copies) on a network without Quality of Service measures. * Discrepancies in the implementation of IGMP version compatibility modes between different devices. (See the Audinate FAQ about DVS on MacOS showing "Listening" status). * An as-yet-not-completely-diagnosed issue where devices lose sync from time to time. This might also be related to IGMP in some way.
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