Philip Perkins

I can't fault Glenn S for defending his work. I see it as no different from artists, composers and authors defending their creative work. This defense can be inconvenient for some (ie the Zax recording TX patents), but I don't want to live in a world where anyone with enough legal muscle can steal whatever they want. Oh, wait...

PE has really damaged what were a lot of great audio gear companies. But we can't expect the "inventors" or founders of those companies to keep them going as mom and pop operations if their families or employees don't want to do that work. (See Denecke as an example of employee continuity.). The founders worked very hard and will want to retire by selling up. We can only hope that a profit oriented PE group isn't their only possible choice of buyer.

JW was a great hero and exemplar for me--I aspired (in vain, usually) to be and work like him on the set. His integrity, diplomatic skills, deep preparation, ear for much more than just dialog audio, exceptional understanding of all aspects of filmmaking and deep desire to push the craft and the art of cinema forward were inspirational to all who knew him. This forum was his great, selfless gift to the world-wide sound community: Jeff made it possible for so many of us to learn from each other and discuss issues unique to location sound in a positive environment in which the newest newbie could ask questions of the most experienced professionals and hope to get clear, honest answers. Jeff never made a dime on this forum, and I know that it was a serious headache for him at times, but he thought it was important for it to continue. Thanks, man; you will be very missed in our world.

Anymore I buy them from Audiopile. Decent quality, good prices, nice people. https://www.audiopile.net/

C Link was for connecting up to 3 7xx machines so that they follow the TC, clock and transport controls of the first machine in the series. It was a great useful thing, missed in later SD models.

but noisy... It's interesting that there weren't more of these around considering how ubiquitous the 2880 was for a few years.

Is anyone here old enough to have used (or owned) one of these? I recall Dave MacMillan using one on a shoot I was a PA on in SF in the late '70s (or so), before he became famous for the "The Right Stuff". At the time I really liked the form factor and what it could do (what did I know?). Several years later a used one showed up at the old ASC in North Hollywood, and the kindly salespeople gently guided me away from it, intimating that was nothing but trouble... It was pretty big, very heavy, and had no channel direct outs, since in those days they figured you were mixing to mono on the set.

would be cool if v2 works with MP

That's a serious suggestion if it worked for you in that situation--pretty inventive! In verite doc post often entire conversations have to be taken off one character's lav, balancing the closer voice against the other one. In that case having the talkers close together would actually help you!

+1 Dugan. Still noticeably better sounding than the competition. The version that can be added to Sound Devices recorders is quite good, the version that can be added to the higher end Yamaha (etc) consoles is even better. Dugan mixing saved my ass several times over the years. The higher end Dugan allows some tweaking of the level parameters re: which "voice" is "preferred", but it takes some time to get it working. Worth a try.

When faced with this sort of project in post I make the director work closely with me about which of the simultaneously speaking talent they want to spotlight at that moment. If the talent are all on lavs, and yelling close to each other your options for isolating anyone are pretty limited, as you have discovered. I had a few highly skilled boom ops, who when equipped with a long-gun mic were often able to fish usable dialog out of such a mess IF they knew who to go for and of course were able to get in close. If the OP's project is improv-verite style and also being shot wide and tight I'd suggest asking about the possibility of painting out overhead booms in post. If you are going to rely solely on lavs then you are already doing what can be done.

Oddly, I've found that they start to care if they get into a festival and the film is shown in a theatre, with a theatre sound system playing at theatrical levels. But that kind of screening is far from assured for most indies anymore.

I'm sure that the editors of that testimonial project had whatever NR feature came with the last update of their NLE app. They would be very unusual indeed if they had made a greater effort than that, as in buying and learning the NR etc plugins we use in doco audio post these days. Wishful thinking distorts reality for a lot of people. I have clients who send me verite docs that they believe "sound fine" saying they just want me to do a few tweaks, when in fact the soundtrack is an unlistenable, non-QC-passable mess that would cause viewers to bail on the show early after constantly working the volume control on their remote. Some of these folks aren't listening closely, some of them don't think those audio issues are a cause of concern, and a lot of them are just plain cheap and lazy.

Be sure that Avid et al are working on this sort of thing every day.

Another opportunity for overuse of dialog fix tools before the tracks end up in a mix, where it is usually discovered that given the rest of the track that much processing was not needed for the dialog. As an RRM of mostly verite documentaries I dislike nearly all of what is described. Mispronunciations and vocal inflections are part of how a real individual person (ie not an AI) communicates in their unique way. The acoustic environment they are speaking in is part of their story. And over and over I have the issue of production sound or editorial folks improving location dialog into a ruin because A: they are not hearing that dialog in the context of an eventual mix and B: when you have a (new) hammer in your hand everything looks like a nail. When I get tracks that have been victims of this kind of "one and done" or "one size fits all" NR passes I usually find that really only the BG noise has been dealt with--they haven't done the nitty gritty work of working over clothing noise, tongue drops, nose whistles, chair creaks, crew footsteps, nearby car door slams etc etc, they've just done the easy stuff. If you are working on a dramatic show shot in a modern 360 virtual set with monitor and camera fans, crew noise, HVAC, prop noise etc etc then by all means carpet bomb your production DX with this kind of thing. But if you are trying to tell a story about a real person in a real environment leave the dialog the hell alone.