Philip Perkins

I haven't been asked for LCR either...stereo (and not LtRt anymore) or 5.1 (maybe Atmos?). Who shows or streams LCR or 2.1?

2.1? Like stereo with an LFE track? I have to say I've never been asked for this. Split stems is a pretty normal thing to ask for.

I've tried including language about "long-pays", and it has either been ignored or I get a call from someone who basically tells me that its corporate policy and comes down from the C-suite. I know that larger vendors in these situations (like G+E rentals, stage rentals, prop rentals, etc) are in the same boat and not happy about it.

The 12 hr thing became a thing for producers because we let it become a thing. There was a time (in my fairly long career) when a "day" actually meant 8 hrs, then it meant 8+2 @ t+1/2, then it meant 10 and now it means 12. I recall several conversations with producers who would tell my that I could "have my rate", ie my 10 hr dayrate, but that "it has to be for 12 hrs". The illogic of this escaped them: they somehow thought that that a rate for 10 was equivalent to a rate for 12, or so they said. This was usually followed with "well, everyone else on the crew is on a 12 hr day, I can't have one person on a 10 hr deal". Oh, really? And why is that? The truth is that these people decided to help themselves to some free labor, and we went along with it to the extent that it has become the de facto assumption, vs 10 hrs now. One more thing you have to watch out for in a world full of people trying take advantage of you.

Can you move your RX closer with the same antenna rig and run audio lines back to your mixer?

I did a show this fall where I needed a lot of TC boxes, and dusted off my Ambient "greenies" and an SBT. No issues at all. Young shooters look at those boxes like one might regard a Model T starter crank... what do they know--they get the job done.

Just my opinion: TC: reliability=Denecke.

You could remove the TC board? There is a way to turn off the TC without doing that (I did it by accident once), but you'd need to get the manual from Kudelski to learn the series of esoteric button pushes needed to do this.

Has anyone used the Kortwich Preamp 6? This is the 6 channel version of their add-on for Sound Devices 6xx machines like 664. I recall some discussion of these some time ago, but don't recall if anyone thought they were a decent match, or as good as the onboard SD preamps?

Haven't there been some posts here over the years that encouraged taking the info from RX onboard scans with a grain of salt? To me the best scan is your ears listening to a walk test...

Unfortunately the answers are A: Ebay (biggest reach, biggest hassle, biggest risk) and sell for what anyone from anywhere will pay, B: donate to a school etc (if they will take them) and take the write off, C : give them to a newb you may know and take the karma points. Most Pro audio consignment places won't take old gear much anymore (they have too much already), and it's pretty impossible to sell old stuff here or on GS. I have some quite serviceable old gear that I think may end up as e-waste, sooner or later, as much of a pity as that is.

well done

Were all the radios on the same freqs? Like each set used the same TX/RX tunings? And your tests were exactly the same, at more or less the same time of day (and location!)? thanks

It's not just failure backup. I do a really wide variety of jobs with all sorts of oddball, often unforeseen setups and rigs, and being able to reconfigure things from separate components is really helpful. I understand that there are mixers who drive a fully -kitted cart every day on their jobs, but note that there are also a lot of soundies who need to be able to make up bespoke rigs for one-off or short term special gigs as well.

When I was starting out and had wirelesses from a couple of different makers (all of them dead or gone now) I hated the connector-compato issues I had to deal with on every shoot. A very long time ago I standardized on Lectro...and then Lectro "unstandardized", having a couple of different connectors and wiring schemes. It seems like most soundies try to keep their package as interchangeable as they can. For a newb today, probably buying used gear mostly, I'd say Lectro was still the best bet in terms of compato, being able to rent more-of-same and getting service, and is likely to be sellable at some price as long as it still works and is legal. Financing really expensive new wireless gear of any kind seems terrifying these days..tough choices, don't envy you guys.

Call for help today from some well-meaning but under-experienced friends shooting on location about why their two wireless systems would work when only one of them was operating but not both. Well, they had them on the same freq.... Elementary to us, Greek to most filmmakers. If their wirelesses had been set up right to start they would have gotten away with their shoot just fine. But someone had messed with them and they were suddenly hosed for not having a professional along. And so on.

Why bring up the sort of jobs that don't have a sound person on them for comparison? If they don't or can't care enough about their sound recording to hire a real soundie then they aren't part of this discussion. Sound people lowering their rates a bit will not get them on a job where the producer is satisfied with the sound that a shooter can do with 10% of their attention. The rates being quoted here are for sound jobs that are challenging, require experience, skill, talent and a great deal of uncompensated package-design and prep for each day of shooting.

I would have preferred doing sewage plumbing to recording many shoots I have been on over the years with abusive directors, producers, ADs and cinematographers. What they pay you to take their abuse and participate in their exploitive scams is cheap for what you have to put up with, often. Making good money by working in a business that generates huge profits is why some folks get into and stay in the biz. In discussions of rates with Europeans I usually remind them that we here in the US get a lot less "for free" in the way of health care, education and so on while rents and the cost of living in urban areas like SF/LA/NY has become silly-expensive. If you want to shoot here you have to pay the price.

I'll bet those 441s sounded great. But that setup is not an option for the average soundie--very few producers want to see a lot of mics on the table, the talent will not be careful about touching them, they are far too expensive and hard to find in that number as rentals in the USA and you still have the "Dugan problem" of too many mics open hearing the room when the speaker they are in front of isn't speaking. I covered many discussions like this by having the "leader" or maybe 2 'leaders" on lavs and booming everyone else from overhead, but the leaders kept control of the conversation so I generally knew who of the others was going to speak next a few seconds in advance. For a truly unscripted free-for-all you need to lav everyone, and a Dugan equipped mixer will be your friend. You must exercise your diplomatic skills to convince the producers that the film they are hearing in their mind (that they saw someone else make) was done this way, since it is really the only way. And, yes: small lavs well-rigged on the outside of the clothing, "TV-style".

The 552 is a great sounding unit, and I personally still prefer the Sound Devices preamps in it (with Lundahl transformers) to those in their later equipment, especially for musical instruments. A 552 can record but is very limited as a recorder compared to other, later devices and it really requires that you learn well how it operates, since it has very little in the way of visual indicators and follows a logic of its own. Its recorder isn't on the level of other SD machines in terms of sync stability and TC operations, and is stereo only in any case. I still use a 552 for its preamps, but never try to record on its onboard recorder any more. If you need a portable, "wearable", small recorder for doing sync location dialog recording I'd recommend looking at something else. Most newbies I know of go with either a Zoom F-series machine or an SD Mix-Pre series recorder.

All that may be true but if the cam dept decides to use RF-profligate devices all over the camera then you can be hosed no matter what RX you have.

My fave piece of location gear: my Magliner. Buy one once, get the wheels and accs you want, and you'll use it for your whole career. Especially on small one-person-sound-dept gigs (most of what the OP will be doing) it will be your steadfast friend, allowing you to load up even the biggest job you get and get in and out of the location in one haul, give you a workbench and bag-shelf where ever you want it and be something you can attach antennas, boom holders, cup holders, computer holders, battery chargers, cable hooks and even a tent to if you want. If you get work with a sound crew on a bigger job, it will be their friend too...

Maybe ditch that card...

There are many things that will probably only sell on Ebay if they sell at all, I have found. The big barrier to selling online is the cost of shipping--it makes a lot of things not worth buying that way.

I agree, although many sorts of older or obscure gear are not wanted by the consignment folks, and newer brand name stuff you can sell yourself and save the fee. If you don't live in a major market there might not many folks interested in the sort of gear we use, and places like Trew have an international clientele and will sell big items pretty fast if the price is good. EBay has become even more of a hassle lately, but I found that it was the fastest way to sell by far--they have the biggest reach of all. For me the order has been 1: local soundies, 2: Trew consignment, 3: JW/Gearspace classified, 4: Reverb or Ebay. But a lot of stuff is never going to sell at all, is the big problem...