Fernando

In Spain the freqs they assigned time ago for wireless are useless. They are around 835 MHz and that band is completelly polluted with phone companies. They are considering wireless used in music concerts, with the antennaes very close right there in the stage. I doubt they ever thought about our applicattion of wireless... Take "they" as the "competent" organism. My advice for Spain is use 100mW transmitters, use receivers with an usable scanner (like Lectros) and warn the crew you may have to boom-only. Best if you can scout the day before and watch the scanner in the receivers. If you work out of cities, in the countryside, you'll be fine though. Avoid harbors, small or large, sport or industrial. You can almost forget to use wireless there. And, I guess as everywhere, have luck telling the crew to turn their smartphones off or to airplane mode... Here 3G is generating a lot of RF noise well down the spectrum. My assumption is that it is due to differential freqs out of the already present spurious rf happening in higher bands

thanks for the suggestion But... if you wire it in parallel they will be drained simultaneously... or am I missing something? If they are drained simult. they will be dead +- at the same time The switch could be implemented with a comparator I guess, so it switches once the first battery reaches a certain low threshold. I can't design that from scratch. I'll see if I can find some examples/help to do it... Very very easy for someone with basic electronic design skills. Very nice as a useful gadget, that's why I though in RemoteAudio

>I bet you could use any old 4 bay NP charger as the "base" and rework it to act as a DC supply! >Especially if it already has the 4 pin output. that's a great idea, thank you, I may even have an empty 4 bay charger chassis soon but a small box with two inputs and an output with auto switch would be great, it could be used with any type of battery format and in many applications... excellent for the Lectro Field Venue but also stellar for that suddenly needed device working off the cart that needs more than one NP-1 for some reason... Anyhow, reviewing the Hawk-Woods APD is very positive... Central power for the cart from batteries or PSU, nice. My cart is battery-only for many years now and I don't even have permanent PSUs installed in it, but it's good to have a PSU there (from the APD) for certain set crisis moments : ) EDIT: the APD does not have an integrated PSU as I thought!

IIRC, my concerns were that it uses all batteries simult. for more power instead of depleting one by one or in pairs. Great for a central power "station" for the sound cart, but still, a box for two batteries in sequence would be very useful for devices like the Lectro Field. That was the box I was suggesting. Another concern is that it regulates to 12V, maybe a bit of a waste with Li-Ion NP-1s (with a plateau at 14.8V or some at 14.4V) and at the edge for some devices (Deva will read low voltage at 12V for instance) I will re-evaluate it against my current needs though

Thank you very much Brian, useful info On the 788, can you keep recording to the CF as the only media if the internal SSD or HD dies? And to the external FW HD?

I'm insisting because, as many, I think is key

I really wish this too. On a feature film or long planned docu, we can send in advance to post a properly formatted template with our name, etc (even logo) but for all other jobs certain specific data is seriously needed in a sound report! At least - Sound recordist Name and contact (phone and e-mail, user setable) - Production name (user setable) - Date ("Aug. 03 2014", from system's clock) - Shoot Day number ("Day 1", user setable) - TC type (rec run, free run, TOD free run)

yep, it's not like some years before, now all editors are expecting metadata in the sound files, correct metadata. And that's a pain without a keyboard. And a keyboard is much more immediate and tough for location than an iPhone or iPad app (which btoh will force to have you phone on in the case of an iPhone, which is a no-no)

I agree. I think keyboard should be implemented asap for obvious reasons...

Yes, thank you, I saw it time ago... can't recall why I didn't go for it... price maybe. I'll take it into consideration again

I have the Schoeps version in 60 and 120 Hz. A must for some MS work on the go.

>what would happen if I add in the cl-wifi on top of all of that LOL for sure it will be harder to make the crew switch their iPhones to airplain mode! LOL So, all audio on the HD went bad and everything on the CF was OK? Was it a mechanic HD or SSD?

>how do I wire this up to split the source so that I can power both a 702 and 302 from the same battery The more rugged the better. So you can make a sturdy little box with the connectors in it or use a BDS from Remote Audio (or get inspired by it) You could also use an XLR4 break-away Y: XLR4 female to your battery and an XLR4 male with two cables from it to your devices. And have spares of both always with you. A well made box is always better/safer if you are dragging considerable power from the battery, I'd say But if your XLR4 Y is properly soldered and you use adequate cable etc. it's fine. In the box you can include a fuse and two diodes to protect you equipment. With appropriate wattage diodes you'll protect against inverted polarity, since the connector on that battery looks like it can be connected both ways... In the XLR4 system you could include at least the diodes in the female XLR4 at the battery side.

I would consider weight (65-70W NP-1 are 480 grams) and charging time in the equation. Here we don't always have proper turn-around time to sleep. And also how rugged are the connections at the weakest point. Those connectors in the battery... I wouldn't consider them location friendly... For me 6 hours max charging time it's fine. 4 ideal, but only if the charger stands being on for 6-8 hours often. It's also important to see if it's OK to have the battery on the charger for 8 hours on a regular basis. Some chargers will burn. thanks for sharing your findings

I use NP-1 in my sound cart and over the shoulder when needed I'd use something of larger capacity for the cart but I find much more practical to have only one type of batteries and chargers + for over the shoulder I think NP-1 is the best compromise of weight/energy. I'd love to have a simple and not expensive holder for 4 NP-1 for the sound cart. I'd also would love to see a simple and cheap switcher for two batteries of any format to feed for example my Lectro Field Venue from two bateries. The device would switch from one battery to another so I could replace the depleted one. Glen, I think is a good idea for Remote Audio, small box, 3 XLR4 connectors, two LEDs so you know which one to replace I used NP-1/chargers from Proctor and Bray from UK but I think they are out of business now. I currently use Global Media Pro NP-1 and charger successfully for a couple of years. Their NP-1 have a charging connector so you can use the traditional 2 or 4 bay charger or a very handy 1 battery charger using that in-battery connector. I have both types of chargers from them. Be aware the 2 and 4 charger look is different from the one in the pictures at their site, but it's very similar. Just be aware the equipment come directly from China so it's not checked by them before shipping as they state. They are comfortably somewhere else, very possibly Netherlands. The 18Ah Jeff pointed looks very interesting for the cart...

That's great Brian. Was it a 788 or a Deva?

>I have been recording to (788) HD, CF and EXTHD with complete success, 6-7 tracks plus a 2 channel mix. That's 8-9 tracks to 3 media simultaneously, is it? If that's the case, that's great While recording to 3 media simult. on the 788, in case of a failure during a take (power off, freeze, buffer underrun, whatever) will you loose that take in all 3 media? Or if the failure was due to the internal hard disk, will you loose all data in the hard disk?

>Many many users of recorders that are CF only (the Nomad and 702 among them) have great luck recording exclusively to CF cards. I know. I use Deva V so I don't use a CF as a prim. media. I guess the point is how the recorder writes to the CF card, AFAIK it is not the same procedure as writing to a hard disk. I assume buffering is different too. Happy to read so many (or everybody maybe) are having success using a CF as the prim. media... Anyway, the most problem I see (as lack of reliability) is to write to the main hard disk and to a CF at the same time. I'm worry that a buffer problem with the data going to the CF could freeze the recorder. This is my main concern, but if it works for everybody 100% without any hiccup, great

I'm very sorry to read that happened! Said that, I never record to more than one media at a time, since that is calling for problems in the devices we use (I use a Deva for many years now but record to the main internal disk always) I know many do that on a daily basis but my experience is that that puts the recorder at it's limits re. data handling. Even on a good computer, unless using an specialized disk array (RAID etc), copying from one source to more than one destination will often be unsuccessful. I'd love to hear how wrong I am, trust me. I think that is still a weak point in our recorders. Fortunately the Deva is very very safe in the way it writes it's files to disk, file system, etc. But I'm talking about writing to more than one "disk" simultaneously and being as safe. And CF cards (or any flash card) are not the safest, although they are practical for delivery duties. I can't trust it as a recording media (so far)

and there's no wind

I think it is positive and necessary to expose questions and issues here. It's the only way to get answers from the real world... But of course it is important to ask the manufacturer too. Unfortunately you can not rely on just what the features brochure will tell you the device will do. Many features will never see the light even if they are presented as "soon to be implemented"

they just need to implement phase inversion in the matrixes... not MS decoding strictly (by matrixes I mean assignment menus, inputs to headphones, inputs to tracks, etc)

Can't tell about the Nomad, but I hope is the same as in the Deva: MS decoding is implemented in the most elegant way. Being for recording tracks, outputs or headphone outs, you just decode discretely by assigning M to L and R busses or tracks and S also to both but with it's phase inverted for buss R. This way you can decode any pair of channels anywhere, providing you understand how MS stereo works Say you want to decode inputs 3 and 4 only to headphones. You assign input 3 (M) to both L and R. And assign input 4 (S) to L (as is) and R (phase inverted) and voila! you have your sum and difference, listening in normal stereo. (in Deva, and I hope Nomad too, you can invert the phase of a signal in any matrix) No need to declare MS pairs or connect them in specific inputs or select special modes in the headphones menu. All recorders should work this way re. MS stereo, IMHO Again, I hope you can still do this on the Nomad

Spain is... different A total chaos re. wireless, that is. Do not use freqs higher than 790 MHz and pack lots of luck in your bag... there's lots of small local TV channels so what works in the center of Barcelona may not work in a near town... No problem using 100mW transmitters I use US block 22 now and before I was using 21 and 24, which may still work I use a wireless send to video, director, etc. around 630 MHz that also works If you use Lectro receivers with scanner feature you'll find clean freqs Fernando

microphone sensitivity conversion I find it useful: http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-transferfactor.htm http://shure.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/390/~/microphone-sensitivity-conversion-basics