Philip Perkins

Around here no one wants my cables and the latency is liveable.

Once the local videoists went to QTake all video became wireless. Teradek on cams, wireless to monitors. We don't hook them up for sound anymore, they take the wireless hop audio from the camera Teradeks.

A mixer that is also the recorder needs TC to function in our world. See Sound Devices, Zaxcom, Aaton, Yamaha DM7, etc etc.

Nicely done! Very clean and functional.

My FOH friends agree, in that they all hate the TF mixers, and find the DM3 stage interesting. I looked long and hard at it and decided it was not enough of what I need (inputs, faders, recording, timecode) and a lot of what I don't need (most of the FX etc). That it has Dante from the get go is very cool. But it is not any sort of DM7, which is reflected in the price. Maybe a future firmware upgrade will allow the DM3 to accept more inputs to mix (via Dante), that would be great.

The 664+552 is a nice combo if you set it up right (prefade iso outs, link i/o mix buses). But no linear faders like CL12. CL6 worked well but you had to keep in mind the way that the operation of the 2nd group of 6 channels differed from the operation of the 664's chan 1-6. OK but annoying. In my later life I really missed having mic pres on Ch 7-12, hence the 552 (+a 12th outboard pre when needed) vs the CL6 which is line level input only.

CL16?

What devices are you speaking of re: +/-26ppm? Consoles? Preamps? Stage boxes?

For me--just the first level: I got lost pretty quickly in the 2nd tier. But the first level seems to contain most of what a humble location soundie needs to know. Now that I know I can make a basic system work in the shop, my fear of course is what would I do if I could not get something to connect out on a real job. The other bugaboo, which has been discussed here by people with real Dante experience, is dealing with issues caused by other people's networks (as in trying to patch into a live-sound rig).

Because I come from the Age of Analog, I needed to convince myself that a Dante based recording system would indeed hold sync to the degree needed for location dialog (etc) recording. After being told it would by a friendly tech @ Audinate, I set out to prove it to myself. A mic pointed at a radio with a talky station on, the pre output split between my 744T (which has been an extremely reliable source of WC and TC for my rigs for decades now) and an Audinate AVIO 2-input Dante adapter, then a switch, then an ethernet to USB A adapter, then into a quite elderly Mac laptop running DVS and Reaper. 3.5 hrs--dead sync all the way. No external clock on the Dante side at all. I realize this isn't news to a whole lot of you folks, but I was very glad to be able to prove to myself that this kind of thing will work.

And no ability to cascade onto the mix bus (Link i/o).

Wingman and 664, far too unreliable for me to use on a job--much too fussy.

A brief call to Yamaha support answered a few questions mentioned above. They do not view the DM series as replacements to the CL+QL or even the TF mixers and are still making all those. The DM3 is a different beast than a DM7, not just in # of inputs--they viewed the TFs as the next step up (in inputs etc) from the DM3. I asked for clarification on the number of channels to mix on the DM3, and they said that while you can mix and match input sources, 16+2 channels to mix is all you get, period.

So in this system what is the word clock master? What drives the TC generator (making TC for BR)?

CLs and QLs are much more expensive than DMs, even used. I don't think it will replace them, but will for sure replace TFs, at least among FOH folks. I'd be interested to know what is clocking the Dante feed for this mixer when it is using Dante for inputs. Is it something that is generating TC? How are you feeding the computer running BR? Dante? USB?

A very kind man and completely willing to give anyone the benefit of his long experience in production sound. At the end of his career as a PSM he really tried to get producers to see reason about wide-and-tight, all-lavs-all-the-time and stupidly noisey locations with the famous "Letter", mostly to no avail but it made him a hero to us soundies. As a vendor, as was said, he could not have been more supportive of the production sound community. RIP JC.

Wingman and 664=NG.

This would be a great test. My highly suspect anecdotal info seems to indicate less run time when the weather is super hot.

thanks!

Me too!

I did! Loved the sound!

Bruce B's custom mixer was lovingly made from the best parts and modules available back then, put together by someone with a very deep understanding of how dialog needed to be recorded given how movies were being made at the time. The Stella AMI was not a good mixer--pretty to look at, great size, not great sound, fragile and impossible to field service. There was one floating from recordist to recordist in my town for several years: people would buy it, try to use it and then give up when they listened closely to it or it broke (again).

I do a lot of live recording and even some live FOH style mixing in DAWs. You do have to manage your latency, for the live stuff I use mostly just the lightweight plugs that came with the DAW. Real plug-in work like NR, DeClick, heavy duty comps, big reverbs etc DO result in latency, which the DAW compensates for within itself. But you are right to be concerned about sync issues re: recording with cameras, even if you have your clocking very together (not at all a given with nearly all ADACs and digital mixers not operating on an accurate external clock). I'm sure you'll do your testing about this, I'd be very curious to hear what you find!

Yes but we managed our levels very well, as low as we could get to read, actually, but the content of that signal is really pernicious and audible as bleed at nearly any level. Below a decent level the readers, even with reshapers in line, could not reliably recover the TC well enough for it to be synced to/from in a fast-working telecine suite. That was the most expensive post work per-hour in those days, with all the adults in attendance in the suite, so panic over TC sync was always in the air and the blame fingers were always primed and ready (to point at the sound dept.). We also discovered that several popular brands/types of 1/4" tape stock would record TC in the center track that had just enough micro-dropouts that the TC would read fine on the recorder but not be recoverable in fast wind on an Otari MTR12 or Nagra T-Audio! I DON'T MISS THIS.

Bouke...TC DID bleed, sometimes at any level. It wasn't just a head stack issue, it was also a cable+connector+chassis+other electronics and routing issue as well. A great many things had to be done really well to avoid TC bleed, especially on the way IN to the recording device. We spent SO many hours chasing TC gremlins in audio post studios and on multicam video shoots.