Philip Perkins

Well, I did a great deal of recording to Beta, SP, 3/4", 1" etc DECKs, as opposed to camcorders, and with those I took the balanced line level outs as a return to my mixer, so I had a very good idea of how the tracks would sound. No, the HP amps in the camcorders weren't great, but I didn't notice a substantial diff between what I heard on return from those and what I heard in edit rooms. Yes, Nagras and pro DATS and pro file recorders had better headphone amps...obviously? I did and still do a lot of audio post, so I hear production tracks in a studio environment all the time. I still get archival audio from those analog video formats and can tell you that they require a great deal of work to make sit in a track with more modern recordings. The "PA system" in a real movie theatre is a highly calibrated setup checked by Dolby (if the owners of the theatre are honest), and are made on purpose to be as consistent as the owners can afford. A decent theatre B chain highly magnifies flaws that a TV set sound system might conceal, if only because the audio will be played at a much increased volume level vs how people listen to TV.

There is no comparison at all between that FERCO harness and my Versaflex....!

Triple media!

I had one that was sold by FERCO. I didn't like it much, since it made it hard to put the recorder down when I had the opportunity to do so...

I worked all of those network shows at one time or another, and have to say I was not impressed at their interest in or understanding of recorded audio beyond what an exposed clip-on lav mic gave them. I'm talking about the highest-end feature news shows of the time. I didn't argue, I figure they knew what they wanted and what worked for them (feeding audio to the cameras of that time), but my headphones listening to a return from the camera told me that the audio being laid down was not at all close in quality to what my Nagras, DATS and eventually file based machines could capture. I get it, they were in the content business, and good-enough was just that. But if you heard that Beta etc audio in a theatre at theatrical levels you would not be happy. I DID hear that sort of audio in theatres, many times, while working on some indie movies that were shot with those camcorders. A WHOLE lot of NR etc in post...

Yes to pan pots. And yes to something that sounds good and is less fiddly for those of us not mixing Big Movies off Big Carts.

I am crooked and arthritic in my '70s due to many many many miles walked (and run, and climbed) wearing Nagras. I loved the sound but carrying it, especially with a simple strap "guitar style" has cost me. But....that's how location sound was recorded then...

I assume the reason that SD doesn't make non-recording mixers like 302, 552, 442 and the non digital MixPre is that hardly anyone wants to buy them new, and as a small co. they can only make a certain number of different products at once. I'm impressed that they will still service oldies like what I use (old analog SD stuff) at all. Yeah, their service is expensive, but they have the parts and the expertise. Only an experienced soundie would understand the utility of a 302 these days--I use mine all the time for one task or another, and would definitely replace it if I lost it. But a newb is better off having a current MixPre as their first and only device.

Even on run-gun verite shoots I've found having the slate very useful, as I can easily and silently show it running to a camera op and they can verify that our TC jam is holding on their camera, even across the room.

RE: Betacam, me too, bro, and 3/4" and 1 inch type C and even 2" on TPR-10s before that. Please do not hold up the quality of the audio those devices recorded as being good audio, because it wasn't and we knew it then. Anyone who had recorded audio on a Nagra and then moved over to those VCRs could hear the diffs immediately. The Dolby C used in some of them mostly made matters worse. If I delivered audio that sounded like what those recorders layed down today I'd be fired. And yes, audio from lav mics gets to the mixer via wireless. Unavoidable, part of the landscape, not negotiable. But audio then taking ANOTHER wireless hop to a camera, particularly when the soundie can't monitor what's being recorded there on the far lesser-quality audio systems of cameras vs modern audio recorders is not a way I want to get the only recording of a shot. Then there is the matter of post wanting multitrack recordings these days--audio sources split out to the greatest degree possible, fully annotated. Sorry, the master sound recording device stays with me--I'm not going back to the 1980's and handing it back to video. And slating the shots becomes a better idea the more shots, crews and shoot days are involved.

I use a TC slate when asked to because it is very useful in post, no matter what sort of shoot it is. It makes a permanent visible record at the head or tail of a shot of what the shot was, when it was shot, by who, for what production, and the system TC. On projects of any type, including those the OP mentioned, there is the potential for a great deal of confusion in post when footage from many sources, locations and dates need to be reviewed quickly. If your people don't want to use slates then don't use them. I don't actually care if the people I work for use my slates or not, not using them is actually easier for me. But mostly they DO want them, so go figure. The OP is also very sure that since cameras can record "24/48" audio that that makes the sound they record "broadcast quality". What I want to record is "really great quality" sound--that's why I get hired, not to record least common denominator average quality sound. I would strongly recommend doing a comparison listen between audio recorded on a high quality current professional sound recorder with excellent preamps and ADC and the recordings from the audio electronics in cameras. Those electronics are generally compromised by both their design and by their proximity to noise and distortion-inducing picture electronics within the camera body. Meanwhile, how is that audio getting to that camera? On a wireless? On a long cable? A well- thought-out shoot allows freedom of movement by sound and camera people, and that we accomplish by recording audio and video on separate unattached devices, with ref. audio (maybe NOT "broadcast quality") sent to the camera, TC jammed between all devices and maybe even that old TC slate to make life easier for the posties.

You can do the poly split in Reaper. Item-processing>Explode multichannel audio items to new one-channel items.

If you decide to make a plugin (which is how I think most post-pros would use it), please consider making a VST version so non PT and Windows users can use it!

I look forward to test driving this app, but I probably would never "batch" process any audio for NR in a movie mix. I'd want something like this to work in real time on individual tracks or clips of audio so I can hear what it is doing (or not doing) and be able to tweak what it does per clip or even per word if needed, with those tweaks being part of the mix automation. Will you make this into a real time VST plug in that can work within a DAW?

Bra back too

Wait...Sax has a ground loop when the 2 chassis touch each other? Even if interconnected with cables?

More or less level? I've had it go either way....

I did the generic rack-shelf+velcro thing and it worked fine for local transport+use. The 664 is pretty much the same footprint as the later "full width" SD recorders so I'd think that anything made for those would work for the 664 too.

You can record in 32 bit if you want but when your editor exports the film to me for audio post the audio needs to be in 24 bit.

Weather?

A TC alternative that is simple, tiny and pretty trouble free are the old Mozegear Q-series TC gens that run on AAA batteries (that are only avail used these days). Tiny, small, all day runtime, more camera friendly that the older boxes that have genlock as well as TC. I too am a fan of the old Ambients and even the Denecke SBT, but they have become an increasingly harder sell re: getting them mounted on ever-smaller cameras due to their size and weight. The SB3 is very useful for music work (ditto the older Ambients) because it can make word clock.

pm'ed you

I wonder if Denecke would send you a new loaner to try?

Mine is a Jr. with the narrower Nalpak removable top shelf. Some dirt paths are ok with the small front smart wheels, as long as you go big wheels first (ie pushing from the handlebars). You can put a shelf with a lip on the bottom too, or stick with the narrow, lighter deck and just run bungees down the sides to keep cases from falling off the lower shelf. At one point I had a 2nd Magliner Jr tricked out as a sound cart, with the wider top shelf with a lot of permanently attached stuff (mixer+recorder, power distro, undershelf for a USB interface/drives etc, Phaserite, BST75, DVD drive etc etc ) with pneumatic rears. It worked very well but was heavy enough that it needed to be ramped into a van. Eventually that was just too much and I slimmed everything down to the smaller simpler Mag Jr.

A lot of the weight of a stock Magliner Jr is the pneumatic rear wheels--the rest of the cart is pretty light. I went with the narrower plastic hard-tire wheels when I started having to fold the thing up to put it in my hatchback for every gig, and that's worked out very well. I can understand why a Magliner used by G+E or camera on high-end (big) camera-type jobs could use the weight-bearing aspect of those pneumatic wheels, but we've loaded up mine with the plastic wheels with enough gear, stands, racks, snakes and cable to do 32+channel recordings and it didn't bat an eye. Sound gear usually just isn't heavy enough to need those heavy pneumatic wheels!