Jump to content

soundmanjohn

Members
  • Posts

    481
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

Everything posted by soundmanjohn

  1. For all you Harrison fans, if you haven't already got it, the DVD of the memorial concert at The Albert Hall in London is well worth getting hold of. Even McCartney is able to tone down his contribution to become part of an extraordinary band. Joe Brown's final rendition of 'I'll See You In My Dreams' is beautifully done and exceptionally moving. The sound is pretty good, too! Regards, John
  2. Actually, I think I've found the answer on this site: From an old FS post: "I have an IDX KX-2 Charger on ebay. It very clean and i used it only about 5 months before I switched over to Lithium." Thanks, John
  3. Well, I tried the UK company directly and got this response: I do not recognize the part number. Our website is http://www.idx-europe.co.uk/ Best wishes Neil Which is not the most helpful. I'll emai the US lot and see what they have to say. Thanks, John
  4. I've been offered this charger, with the seller claiming it'll charge Li-Ion batteries: I can't find any details about this unit anywhere, but I can find that an IDX KL-2 or a KL-4 does handle Li-Ion. Does anyone have knowledge of the KX-2, and if so, is it suitable for Li-Ion batteries? Thanks in advance, John (Oh, and I've hatted the manufacturer's website and can't find any information on there about either the KX-2 or the KL-2.)
  5. Apologies if this is old news: it just came my way. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/29/gibson-teac-purchase-idUST9N0BZ01Q20130329 John
  6. Graduated from a Kodak Brownie 8mm to a Bolex D-8 in the days before I really discovered sound. Better at sound than vision... John
  7. And a very happy birthday from across the pond. Best wishes and thanks for a great resource. John
  8. There's an early morning (06.05) train that will get you into London at around 08.22. A short cab ride to Paddington and then the Heathrow Express to LHR should get you to check-in by 09.30, if all goes well. Pre-booking tickets will save you time as well as money and you can book Heathrow Express tickets that way as well. If you're flying from Terminal 4, you have to change trains at Heathrow Central, which is a pain, but if you're travelling from terminal 5, it's a doddle, about 20 minutes on the train and then a short schlep to the departure gates. Regards, John
  9. Get your producer to go online and book the train tickets in advance, especially the Liverpool journey. With the money saved by doing this, he/she can upgrade you to first class, which is a much more enjoyable experience. Booking two first class single trips out and back in advance will often be less expensive than a standard, bought-on-the-day return fare and you get free snacks and drinks. However, there's not much luggage space on the Virgin (Liverpool) trains, so it's not advisable to turn up at the last minute if you're carrying a lot of gear. In any event, you should avoid buying tickets on the day, as the prices are insane. The ticket pricing system in the UK is arcane as there are half a dozen different train operators, all with different deals and prices, but by judicious use of various web-sites and travelling at off-peak times, you can get bargains. My recent Liverpool trip, first class both ways (but with a Senior Discount Card) cost £67, but my best (pre-senior) round trip was London to Manchester, Manchester to Glasgow, Glasgow to Oban, Oban to Glasgow, Glasgow to London, all first class except the Oban leg which doesn't have a first class, for £80. They also screwed up the train from Glasgow to Oban, so I got a cab at their expense, door to door. I just did a quick check and an advance purchase first class single to Liverpool can be had for £38 if you pick the right time of day to travel. A standard class bought on day of travel single is just over twice that amount. I use the East Coast Rail web-site at http://www.eastcoast.co.uk for ticketing across all the networks in the UK with no booking charge, but there are others that work just as well. Anything else you want to know, just ask, especially about Liverpool, where I've just spent the last ten days. Best wishes, John
  10. I've done this a number of times for theatre work, although in the days before really small transmitters, we used to have to carry out surgery on the old Sennheiser SK50 pack, and separate the battery holder from the transmitter section as the complete pack was too long to be hidden successfully. Actors were not always that happy, as the weight of the system made it a bit uncomfortable to wear for long periods and we had one lady (ranked at one time as one of the most beautiful women in world) who did everything she could to make the pack fall out of her hair during one preview performance, but only managed to dislodge the battery pack. Consequently, I found myself in the quick-change room with a very stroppy naked lady and a flustered wig-person, trying to get her to stand still long enough to us fix the unit back. She got a telling-off from the director (not the only one - she was a little on the 'difficult' side) and finally accepted the fact that if she was going to be heard, the mic was a necessity. Needless to say, with today's tiny packs, the problem doesn't happen anymore and the hair/wig position is quite common in theatre. Regards John
  11. +1 for the Glyph PortaGig drives. I also gave up on the LaCie drives a while ago and changed to Glyphs and have had no problems for many years now. John
  12. I was lucky enough to tour the sound archive studios at The British Library last Friday and they have closets full of DAT machines, cassette machines, Beta & VHS machines for those early Sony PCM transfers, laser-disc and mini-disc players, vinyl disc players and assorted tape machines. They also have a really nice "pro" Edison cylinder reader that uses the tracking arm from an old Revox linear turntable along with a variable speed cylinder carrier. For tape and DAT archiving, they have special software that allows four items to be digitized simultaneously, with logging for any detectable errors. There are boat-loads of Studer and Revox tape machines for the pro reel-to-reel stuff, as well. They maintain a stock of older rotary-head machines purchased from various places, including ebay, for the specific purpose of repairing the main transfer machines, which is a rolling process. When I visited, they were part-way through archiving 6,000 VHS tapes that had been used for off-air logging of BBC classical music programmes. I still have reel-to-reel, cassette, MiniDisc and DAT machines and I'm currently archiving some old MD stuff that I found in the back of a drawer, gathering dust. A lot of dross, but some surprisingly good sounds that will go into the library and be useful in the future. As always, I find that I can re-create the location and circumstances of most of the recordings much more vividly by listening back to them, rather than looking at photographs. Regards, John
  13. Glad it's sorted - just one thing, though; why is this in the Recording Direct To Computer section? John
  14. Tamsin Greig (pronounce it "greg") is one of my favourite people. She's also an award-winning Shakespearean actor and a recurring character in a long-running radio soap about farming here in the UK. For more Tamsin and Mangan, see a series called Green Wing, and for some completely bonkers Tamsin, see another series called Black Books. She's also a very nice lady. John
  15. Sorry, total senior moment. For some reason I got a "new product" notification in my email today and posted on without checking. Seemed vaguely familiar, I must admit... Delete at will. John
  16. Just announced: http://www.zaxcom.com/maxx John
  17. Marc, Thanks for that. I'll have one more try at customising before I buy another bag, although the Petrol bags do look good. I suspect that I might get better results with a more permanent cable harness, as you suggest. The Kortwich set-up looks nice, but I'm tempted to try and make my own cut-down XLRs. I'm pretty handy with a soldering iron and a Dremel. Senator - I was just asking for other bag suggestions, not for you to sort out mine for me. And some of my best friends are sinister. Hmm, The Sinister Senator... Regards, John
  18. This is undoubtedly true. But unhelpful... Thanks anyway. John
  19. Ah well, I guess that I'll take that final comment on board. I've done all the trial and error, and tried endless permutations and extra bits and pieces, but I can't make it work for me. Nothing ever seems to end up in the right place, no matter what I end up doing, so I guess I'll try some alternative cases. Any recommendations? Oh, and just in case, I'm in the UK and it's almost impossible to visit what might be called 'the usual suspects" as there's not a single dealer that I can find in central London where I can walk in and try stuff. Pretty much everything is on-line now, which is not good for trying things out. Anyway, thanks for the encouraging words: we live and learn. Best wishes to all for the New Year. John
  20. Hello folks, I posted this question on the Sound Devices forum and got no joy, so I'm hoping that the wonderful people here might be able to help out. It's a simple question, but one that is causing me grief: How on earth are you supposed to organise the various partitions and supports on the CS-5 case? I can't for the life of me work out what goes where, especially when using an extended battery on the back of the 788. I'm only using a 788, no mixer, and I find that the recorder slips sideways, or drops one side. A picture or two would help, if someone has the time. Alternatively, should I just dump the CS-5 and stump up for a PortaBrace? Many thanks, John
  21. Sorry, yes. I should have explained: it's a sig-gen into the mic inputs with the capsules removed. John Further clarification: I had one of my H2s modified by a colleague to accept the input from one of Len Moskowitz's Core-Sound TetraMics so that I could have a pocketable Ambisonic recording system. The mic capsules are removed and a multi-pin connector fitted to the top of the case. First recordings indicated this LF boost and a test by another colleague confirmed that there's inbuilt EQ correction for the existing capsules.
  22. Found the picture of the EQ curve. Ignore the red and blue traces; the yellow trace shows the LF boost and slight HF roll-off that's applied to the capsules in the H2. The tilts happen either side of 1 kHz Regards, John
  23. In the original H2, there was some quite severe EQ going on for the on-board mics, which meant that you couldn't just strip the mics out and put something else in without having a compensating EQ curve somewhere in your processing chain. I think I have a graphic somewhere that gives an idea of what was applied. You might want to do a quick check at some point if that's what's in your plan. John
  24. I moved up from my old Soundfield ST250 to an ST450, thanks to Ken Giles at Soundfield. At the other end of the scale, I bought a pair of Karma-Mic Silver Bullet mics for $35 which saved my butt the first time I used them. And I continue to relish the advice and information that this list provides. Best wishes for the New Year, John
×
×
  • Create New...