Philip Perkins

My tests and anecdotal experience with SM Lectros is pretty much what Louis got. The Eneloops are ok for low key kinds of jobs (interviews etc) with defined time frames, but for live shows w/o breaks or doco I went back to Lithium AAs. The cost is always an interesting conversation with the filmmakers....

The "scratch" track, AKA "reference track" is an audio feed sent to cameras from the sound dept so that A: playbacks with sound can happen immediately on-set (without syncing up the audio recordings) and B: so there is a reference for the editor to "eye-match" or auto-sync by audio waveform to in the audio syncing phase of post. A timecode-based autosync is perferred and has fewer issues, but many productions that do not use any form of timecode in the field rely on audio-match syncing (ie "Pluraleyes" and the Premiere onboard version of same) to sync their field audio with dailies picture. Thus having both a "scratch track" and providing timecode to a camera (from a TC generator that has been jam-synced to the TC generator in the audio recorder) is a very reliable method for making post syncing possible and straightforward.

Interesting idea. If Sony, Arri and RED adopt this then I guess it's what we'll do. If producers get sold on it as a new cheaper+more efficient workflow component then ditto. Until then this is pretty speculative, since this sort of change to established methods doesn't generally come from users like us, they are invented by the big manufacturers of gear and then sold to filmmakers through advertising and demos to their senior tech advisers. Standing by for more info!

As a side note, I think it is important to bill equipment by type or category. IE a client wants a wireless package with a certain number of channels, possibly for a certain price. It's my call what I give them--I don't work for people who specify brands and models of gear I will be operating.

It's worth it to ask if they want them? On many low-end small-cam jobs they don't understand or use TC as it would come from a Lockit etc..

well done

DT480. Just remembering them brings back the headaches they gave me.

Very tempted but never went for it. The size was very appealing for doco work.

Thanks for doing a real test. There is a long tradition of location soundies doing their own gear tests, no matter how "cowboy" they are so that they then really KNOW what their gear does. Well done.

So....how does it sound?

You should ask him if that's his motivational speech? What he said is kind of what I meant above. It's also bullshit.

I think there will be a change in what "acceptable" production sound is to allow this technology (and the attendant savings) to happen. Many older sound people mourn the advent of the "all -lavs-all-the-time" approach to production sound, vs. what could be done with skilled boom ops, location treatment, set discipline and rehearsals: the "all-lav" sound is now accepted and probably preferred by many. Whatever "AI production sound" ends up sounding like will probably be another step away from naturalness and real-location audio perspective, many of us won't like it, but it will gradually become the accepted norm just as "all-lav" did. Sorry.

There is a new version of the Neutrik box that also will take mic level signals (ie has pres), but much more expensive. There are alternatives that do this 2 i/o thing from several other co.s too.

I use Neutrik NA2-IO-DLINE. It has mostly just worked, no issues, ditto with the Audinate AVIO 2 in or 2 out adapters--all powered by the network. But only 2 channels....

I haven't been on Really Big Music Multicam shows lately, the ones I'm doing rely totally on TC sync with cameras (cameras deriving sync from ext TC with no genlock used), so the accuracy of the TC they get vs the audio recording is important, as is the audio WC being locked to the TC. That's why I usually want to be the show masterclock, since my rig can make very accurate WC and TC that are locked together. This works well for most shoots I do. For bigger stuff the conversation with the FOH people about possibly supplementing their rig with an external box that has a super accurate clock, can make WC, TC and Dante can be delicate if they don't have this together already.