BAB414

Hey guys, Thank you SO much for all the insightful responses. I can't tell you how helpful this has been. I want to clear up one thing about me watching his meters as opposed to listening to my levels...he was sending me post-fade signals as opposed to pre-fade because he didn't know how or if he even could switch them to pre-fade. That's why when his faders were down (because he wanted the speakers down, right after laving the talent) I was watching his input levels. I ironically even verified with him that I shouldn't be hearing anything at the moment and he confirmed. If his outputs were set to pre-fade, I would have known right away that there was a problem. Am I right in assuming that in this situation you would always prefer to receive pre-fade as opposed to post-fade? I was pulling from his direct outs, not from his insert outs. Can you please explain how I can screw up his sound if I'm getting a feed from his inserts? I really don't know the first thing about inserts. Thanks, Ben

Hey all, I've been reading posts on this site religiously for over a year but this is only my second post. I wanted to share a little story that happened yesterday on a gig to seek some advice to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. I apologize for all the text so the short version is: I was getting a feed from a house mixer for a live event, whose careless mistake completely ruined the first 7 or so minutes of my recording, though in retrospect, I should have double-checked the connections on his side, despite the extreme carelessness of his mistake. I felt like a jerk, but I held a grudge against the house mixer for the rest of the night. Did I mess up and how could this be avoided in the future? If I am downstream from someone else who might make an error, what kind of precautions (technical, political...) can I take to save my recording and my reputation? The Long Version: I've been doing production sound for a little over four years, with a strong background in narrative, but lately I've been doing a lot of interviews, live events, etc. Yesterday's gig was one of the easiest: a live-audience interview that was being taped. It was part of a series of celebrity interviews with a pretty big actor from the 80's and a big client. I was solely responsible for recording the sound (2 lavs and a handheld mic) which was being mixed and handled by the house guy on his own board in the booth. The house mixer, who was very nice, said he usually gives guys a mono out for everything, but I told him it was important to me to isolate everything as much as possible for my purposes. His mixer had direct outs, inserts, and line outs for each channel, so we tried the direct outs, which sounded a little dirty and a little low to me after testing each mic. I thought maybe there was a pad on them or something so I asked if we could try the line outs, and he graciously repatched the cables for me. It sounded worse than before so I told him I'd prefer to go back to what we had with the direct outs. He again repatched the cables and we waited for the event to begin. After he laved the talent, I saw the levels on his meters bouncing, and was completely confident everything would be fine. It was quite a shock to me that once the interview began, sound was coming out of the house speakers, but I was receiving absolutely nothing from the board. The producer/shooter saw he wasn't getting any signal from me and he started freaking out too. I immediately told the house mixer that I wasn't getting anything. He abruptly ran out of the booth, leaving me alone with his gear for a solid 5 minutes while I recorded nothingness. The first question that came to my mind is: Is it OK to mess around with this guy's equipment to try to save my own ass? I do not know the answer to this. It's a sort of ethical dilemma, but my reputation was on the line. If I knew what the problem was, I probably would have fiddled with his gear, but I also didn't want to mess up the live sound for the event. Finally, the guy returns and sits down at his board as if nothing was wrong. I anxiously reminded him that I was getting NOTHING. He repeatedly told me that this was impossible because nothing had changed. After fiddling around with the connections for another 2 minutes, he realized that I was plugged into the wrong direct outs, which belonged to 2 adjacent unused channels from his board. AKA - When he plugged me back into the direct outs, they were the wrong direct outs. He repatched me to the correct ones and I had signal. I sat there with a grudge for the next 2 hours, knowing that I had an incomplete recording of an interview I would only have one chance at. I knew that the producer/shooter had a shotgun going into his camera as a backup, but it almost didn't matter for me. I felt like I had failed. And I think I did, because even though I did not make the mistake, something as rudimentary as plugging cables into the correct outputs cost ME my recording. I didn't think I would have to watch this guy to make sure he was plugging my cables into the correct outputs (the same set of outputs from which he was unplugging them to begin with) but that little stupid mistake screwed me. Is it really on me to check on that kind of stuff (I assume yes, since it's my cable and it's going to my mixer)? Furthermore, is it on me to make sure that this guy is doing his job to the best of his abilities so that I get the best recording possible? What can I do in the future to prevent myself from being so vulnerable to careless errors caused by others (doing sound or anything else), that may not even be under my control? Outside of using my own lavs and sending HIM the signal, how could I have made sure that nothing this guy did could have messed me up? Generally, how would I explain what happened to a producer without playing the blame game but still saving my ass? In the end, I explained what happened to the producer and he was surprisingly really laid back about it and told me not to worry despite my excessive apologies. The house mixer ditched immediately afterwards without a single word, and that really felt uncool. Did I mess up? Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Ben

Hey, first post here. I'm in the market for an 8 track recorder and just started reading up about this one, even though I would absolutely love a SD 788t. Does anyone know if the control surface/recorder software allows for pre-fade/post-fade switching, like the CL-9 would? I imagine it would HAVE TO, but I can't find any info on this. It would be nice to have 8 pre-fade iso's and a L+R mono.