Margus Jukkum

Sad ending. I remember seeing Loon poles for the first time at NAB in 2006 or 2007. Bought one then that is still my favorite to this day.

I just got back from over 2 months on the road and find out Tyler has moved on from Trew Toronto. Over the past several years Tyler has helped me out immensely by shipping needed equipment to far flung locations I have been working in a timely fashion. I was also amazed at how current his knowledge of technical developments in our industry were. If you're reading this Tyler - I already miss you bad!

On 12/28/2015 at 5:08 PM, Tom Visser said:

Odd timing, but I'm dealing with the scroll wheel myself.  I think it's understandable that something mechanical will need occasional service.  When I contacted Aaton right before Christmas about the issue, they express air / international mailed me an Allen key (totally above and beyond) and instructions on how to field service the part.  I admire the customer service and solidifies my allegiance to this company that makes a recorder crucial to my professional career.

Fortunately for myself we have a trained technician at Audio Services in Toronto, Canada who is able to do a lot of the service on the Cantars. I had him clean up my X2 as one of my last shoots with it was in the desert in Arizona and I was in some severe winds kicking up a fair bit of dust. The X2 functioned flawlessly but the scrolling wheels had that telltale crunching noise.

I have to echo Axel's accolades for the X3. I received my X3 some 6 weeks ago (#52). I made my deposit payment in Dec. 2014. Delivery was delayed a couple of times so I worked the entire year (2015) with my X2. When the X3 arrived I was 6 weeks into a series and the producer was reluctant to have me change recorders fearing a hiccup in the post flow. Next year for the first three months I will be on the road with musicians recording music into Pro Tools. The X3 will be the backup recorder. Currently my only cavil with the X3 is that the highest sampling rate it can do is 96096 kHz. The initial specs I read were that it would be able to record at 192.0 kHz. I have been assured by Aaton that this is a future update. 

I have ordered an X3 bag from Aaton and will make a decision on it when it arrives. I'm intrigued by Axel's good words about the Kortwich bag that perhaps a quick trip to Berlin is merited when my music gig is finished. Lord knows my KT bag designed by Stuart Wilson that I've used for years with my X2 is in tatters. It was also interesting to read about Axel carrying a 4 input Kortwich preamp so he can quickly adjust the gain on the line level inputs. For years working with the X2 and my Schoeps Super CMIT I carried a Lake People digital gain and 10 volt phantom power supply in the bag. It was bulky and I hated it but it worked. I'm glad that with the X3 this won't be necessary.

For the time being I'm going to hang on to my X2 as a backup recorder. Despite the robust build of the X2, over the years I did have it go down twice. Both times it was the scrolling wheel. I believe that any machine, no matter how good, that is used professionally will eventually break down. That said the Cantar X2 was the best built, best sounding recorder I have ever used and I expect that the X3 will be even better.

I'm sad for your loss. Your father was a great inspiration to a lot of us.

Thanks for pointing out this list. A lot of interesting reading here.

I've worked for 7 years with an X2 on a variety of projects where I used it out of a bag and encountered no problems. As for weather proofing the X2 was incredible. The only modification I had Grenoble do was to put heated display for the meters as when the temperature dipped below minus 30 degrees C you could no longer see the meters. I also remember doing a shoot in the Egyptian desert and the temperature climbed to plus 50 degrees C and the X2 worked flawlessly. The X2 was also good in the sand. For the expedition type documentaries the X2 had no rivals. I early on abandoned Sound Devices and Zax gear because it would literally fall apart and become unreliable. Over the course of its life I've had the flywheel on the left side replaced twice with the work done by a factory trained tech at Audio Services in Toronto but that's been about it. I am now waiting for my X3.  I was told it should arrive in Toronto in the next couple of weeks.

​Never say never. I had this happen in Russia during a doc with my X2. In a fluid shooting situation I ended up too far from our backup vehicle and thought I could finish the walk and talk.

​I agree that the Sanken CS3e is the way to go but you should also have a backup like one of the cheap Sennheisers that doesn't run on 48 volt phantom power but is powered internally by a battery. Over the years I have found 48 volt phantom mics don't do well in humidity. I've had a Sanken CS3e go down in Africa. It didn't stop working but just sounded a little harsher. I later compared it to another CS 3e I have and it didn't sound at all similar. The humidity damaged one got sent to Japan where it was repaired and now works as well as new. Only trouble was that 6 months went by before I had the mike again.

I have all 3 furs and the water resistant cover. For most normal situations up to fairly breezy days I use the shorter hair. Lately I've been working with some storm chasers and been in some tornado situations where the winds get crazy heavy to the point I have trouble hanging on to the boom. In these situations I must say the heavy fur stands up very well and I've been able to capture significant bits of sound without the constant rumble I was hearing with my Rycote windjammers. For heavy wind I think Cinela is the only way to go.

You rock Jan!

Hey Margus, my HD25 are taking a beating, and have been looking at the Focal Pro set for awhile now - do you feel that they are durable for field use?  It's not like the HD25 are super durable either, but have been reading about people complaining about cracked plastic on the Focals.

It's a bit early for me to talk about the durability of the Focals as I've only owned them for a little over a month and had them on the road only once. I still take the Beyer's with me as well. I have traveled for years with a backup headset as early in my career I was in Yellowknife, in the North-West Territories and my headphones broke. I never again want to have work with earbuds to get through the day.

They did indeed rent them from Reynald.

I found a some shots for Philip of the receivers I used a couple of years ago with the Q5X transmitter. When working at a fixed location on the beach I used the half rack receiver and when working out of a bag on the water in a boat I used the Sennheiser unit.

I used them on a series last year in the Caribbean. We had to do shooting around water with people para sailing and jet skiing. The production had already rented them as I came on the project. The transmitters are small and easy to conceal. I didn't like the fact that the transmitters had internal batteries that had to be charged so using the units on a daily basis meant you had to have extra transmitters to swap out as batteries died. The receivers are large and cumbersome, meant for racks and not for bags. For bag work I had some units tuned to  Sennheiser receivers.

The transmitters themselves work well around water. I did have a unit go down but it was one of their earlier model transmitters and it had a faulty sliding panel that provided access to the on/off switch which had to be depressed with a small screwdriver or pin. The range is fine especially if using the larger rack mounted receivers and dipole antennas. I haven't considered buying any of these units myself as the manufacturers have been taking their time with coming out with a receiver that works in a bag. It seems they spend all their R&D time and money on the transmitter. I recently bought 2 Lectro waterproof wireless transmitters and diversity receiver. The transmitters are not nearly as small but the kit is easier to use in a bag. I can and do also use the Lectro units as an audio link to the camera something the single purpose Q5X can't easily do.

For years I used Beyerdynamic DT 48's. Since they no longer make them I recently bought a pair of Focal Professional headphones after reading some good notices in magazines like Sound On Sound. They were certainly warmer and brighter sounding than the Beyers and had reasonable isolation and solid construction. Cost too was reasonable at $399.00 Cdn. The Focals were ideal for my last project that was a full length doc on big band music that involved some studio recording as well. While listening at home to my stereo system I must say that the Focals sound the second best of the headphones I own. My HiFiMan SE 500's sound better but they are open backed and cost 3 times as much. I was surprised that the Focal headphones were even in the ballpark when compared to the HiFiMan 500's but they sound great for closed back headphones. It will take a little time for me to adjust to their sensitivity to background noise as they sound quite different to the Beyerdynamic DT 48's. They Beyers seemed to have extended range and most times I knew I was hearing far more than was going to play in the final product.

Hi margus

You Mean the AW Sounds better with a lav than an lectrosonics with a lav?

Which lavalier did you test? Which lectrosonics tx?

I had a similar experience with a dpa 4061 lectrosonics LMa 411 versus my own DPA 4061 and micron SDR 116 tx716.

Lectrosonics sounded thinner (less bass) and a Little less detailed.

But i thought it was Down to the rental House and the stuff Wasn't well maintained. Tried several DPA with no better result.

Please Share your experience.

Hi Armin;

 

I used the Countryman B6 lav for my test. I should say it wasn't really a test but an observation when I first purchased the Lectro diversity receiver with 2 WM watertight transmitters. I ordered a pair of CountrymannB6 lavs for the transmitters as a contingency should I ever need to use the units as talent mics. My intention was to use the Lectro as a link to the camera as I was working on a couple of television series that were using the Sony 800 camera. With the SRb5P I was able to use the wireless slot built in the camera. Since shooting took place over several months I was able to leave the receiver in the camera for the duration which was handy. The Audio Wireless use a 6 pin lemo connector which is totally different from the Lectro connector for lavs but since I had several B6 lavs with lemo connectors I was able to listen to the Lectro and Audio Wireless units side by side with the same model lav but not physically the same lav. I played the wirelesses through my Cantar X2 and listened with my Beyer DT48 headphones. The Lectro units sounded a lot thinner, almost tinny.

 

I did this almost a year ago. For me the Lectro units work fine as link wirelesses on the bigger cameras as well as for the smaller ones like the Canon C300 because I can use the 9 volt battery pack to power the diversity receiver which can be put into an external sleeve. To date I have never used the Lectro on talent. Had it not been for the convenience of being able slot mount the unit on cameras I would not have considered any Lectro unit for purchase. For most of my career I have used Micron wirelesses and have made a slight shift to some Audio Wireless units when Aldo Haklil opened up his own shop and began the manufacture of his wide band units. Because I travel a lot for work the bandwidth issue is important and from a practical view because the Audio Wirelesses use the same 6 pin lemo connector for lavs as do my Microns I can seamlessly integrate the use of all my lavs.

 

My little test was done out of curiosity and is by no means scientific or extensive but based on my initial conclusions I have not rushed out to buy or borrow different sounding lavs to see if they perform better in the Lectro units

 

 

I've been using Audio Wireless  wirelesses for 2 years now. Overall I've been really satisfied. The sound quality is outstanding and they are small and robust. For me in the bag they seem to work better if I power the receivers externally. The menus are simple and the bandwidth has been a blessing since I do a lot of foreign work. I use them mainly as talent mics and have bought an Electro diversity receiver SRb5P with 2 of the watertight transmitters which I use as a camera link as it can fit in the slot of full sized Sony cameras. On projects I work on the link audio is mostly a courtesy and no one is too concerned about its quality which is a good thing as the Audio Wireless units sound markedly better when placed side by side with the Electros when listening on my Cantar.  I would say the Audio Wireless sound as good as the series 700 Microns I still use as well. 

Margus Jukkum,Toronto, Canada

I also love my Loon pole. After several years of use I needed another internal cable along with the basemate and wing. I ordered off the web site and noticed my credit card order was very quickly accepted. For the parts to arrive it took 3 months and 7 or 8 phone calls to prod them to ship. I was grateful that I finally got my parts but it was a bit of a hassle.

My condolences.

Stay strong.

I ended up buying a second CS3e when the one I had went down with humidity problems in Africa and had to be sent to Japan for repairs. The problem mic came back in perfect order 5 months later.

I'll get back to you very early next week Math with pictures of the Q5X's I've been using and go into more detail about their positive and negative points. At the moment I'm up to my ears on the water in Sint Maarten with the Heinekin Regatta.

I've had good success with the Countryman B6 in water. I'm currently working on a water sports thing in Sint Maarten where people are on seadoos from which they fall off of frequently. Production rented the Q5X QT Aquamic wireless transmitters. In several weeks of shooting I've had one transmitter go down but the lavs have all worked flawlessly in salt water. I usually rinse them off at the end of the day with fresh water.

The Cantar doesn't do long file names so sometimes it is easier to work with the 788 to satisfy post metadata requests.

Thanks Tim for the link to your article about JP. I really enjoyed reading it and found it most informative, especially since I have been working with an X2 for the past four years.