Olle Sjostrom

Oh I consider myself very tech aware and quite savvy. I work with computers every day and I still think I'm right when I say that computers, especially windows, can't update themselves and insure stability with all other softwares, licenses and peripherals. For instance, security settings may change from one OS update to the other, making mission critical apps or web pages not function correctly with the new update which makes the whole system moot and has to manually be downgraded to much dismay and lost work hours. This is happening now than twice each year in my workplace. We use windows 10, albeit a corporate version where we have people working exclusively with MS updates. That said, yes, computers can update themselves but they are still not self sufficient in all aspects and therefore is not yet a threat to us technicians. It's luckily a kind of a built in failsafe that we still need to supply power and the right codes for these machines. As long as the code itself can't code itself, we should be OK. But again, I can be wrong. And I'm happy to say I am! I am also aware that people in post use tools all the time, but this particular tool, to my eyes, is not a new tool in the sense that we as mixers or technicians will be replaced by the tool anytime soon. And I'm saying again that I think for this specific application, the sound and result is amazing. But for high end production sound, I think this developer has a long way to go. Nvidia will probably not venture into the world of pro audio with this. They make a lot more money selling graphic cards to kids than a few studios..

Yes well, then again I think we should be more concerned about the actors.

I'm having a hard time seeing innovation radically changing our workflow.. If you think about it, technology in post and recording has been developing rapidly, all these new RF systems and their remote capabilities and so on. High dynamic range.. Noise reduction is nothing new # this is just new algorithms, algorithms that see based on this application. AI is great, but it still has to be applied specifically to an application. There's no AI that can hear that this is a DPA4060 sitting too far away and has some bad rustling and knows exactly what to do about it. Then the software would have to recreate the voice of that actor, and then you'd have another discussion about if we really need actors. I wouldn't worry. Computers still can't update thermselves and make sure that all the other programs are compatible. And don't get me started on external hard drives and if you change letters or catalogs... Nah. Computers are still stupid, because we are (thankfully) still stupid.

Yeah I love to be proven wrong! I tend to take these demos with a grain of salt. But again, even if it does sound acceptable, the bitrates are low. In a theater, you would probably hear all kinds of things. Those mics are very close to the mouth and are probably designed for specific application and position, whereas our mics are made to sound flat and reproduce natural sounds. And that vacuum I could hear in his speech. And there were audible artifacts from the RTX. That Krisp thing sounded better to my ears, but it still wasn't good enough for the cinema.. So yes, impressive, but it works because the sound quality is so low. It's made to make voices over gaming sessions clearer, which means that you as a player are listening to the games audio and up to maybe 32 people talking at the same time so I reckon removing noise from those voices world change a whole lot in that context. But I still think we're far off integrating this into our profession. But again, I love to be proven wrong!

Chances are this will never make it to set or even post, due to several limitations, one being we often require much higher sound quality than these gaming services do. I mean the bandwidth of these streaming services are under 64kbit, if even that. Imagine being in post having a line that sounds fine and this is applied, it still sounds good and clean, but there's artifacts that make it just that little bit unusable. I still think it's faster to adr or find another line and edit that in. I really wish though that this will be great and can reproduce high quality sound. That'd be awesome.. But I'm not so sure.

Sure hope so! I'd buy an actual tumbleweed in a heartbeat if it came in a box labeled lectrosonics

Why don't you just release a tumbleweed already?!

Maybe the charger is high?

That explains a lot

Sweden is still kind of open..

Love them. I use the cm3 always for ambiance mics, crowd mics and pretty much anything. Especially for fx or music, they're awesome. I’ve put a pair in a zeppelin in kinda ortf config. Great quick setup. Kind of uncharacteristic, which is a good thing obviously haven’t used them for voice though, but I think it wouldn’t sound great. Not bad but not great either..

Cell phone ifb? Like an SIP or webrtc connection? That'd be awesome.

I think the key thing here is har the outbreak in China had such a huge effect, and what China had to do to dampen the effects were very radical. That scared the western world, I mean we couldn't even shut whole cities down like that. And no one has any immunity, no one had been exposed to this virus, so potentially everyone can be infected. Then I think the smart move is to just shut things down for a while. I mean, sure it might not kill people in any greater way than regular flu, but since everyone's a potential victim (there are vaccines for the flu) that needs to be taken into account. I'm pretty positively surprised that big events close down. In the darker parts of my brain I thought everything would be churning on and the weakest people would be infected and die off. Maybe not responsible to shut things down, fiscally i mean, but humanely it might actually be. We'll see where it takes us. But I agree that is kind of blown out of proportion. But again, we've seen the flu and we have the defense mechanisms up and running for it. Even though it kills more people, Corona is still potentially able to infect everyone and make a ton of damage to large communities. Not just economically..

Quite a busy scan though. That's the wonder of it all I guess, that it works anyway. In Sweden, even in the busiest parts, I probably would never have that much RF...

Fascinating! Thanks for the warning. Weren’t thinking of buying, most definitely won’t be buying now.

+1 to all. I learned that fabric type can really make a difference. I did a hospital series where the actors wore scrubs made from a thick cotton material. We hid the lavs in their name tags on the outside of the scrubs. Worked great in the winter. When summer came their clothes suddenly started rustling like hell. We learned that they had had cotton tank tops under the scrubs in the winter. So tree forced the, to keep them on. Rustle gone

But.. In the photo of your post are safety pins? Wouldn't use that as a spacer. Paper clips are fine. On a documentary I did a few years back I used undercovers wrapped around like a burrito (It created a sort of cone in the end) on the lavs (dpa4060), and then I mounted the lavs upside down on the subjects. Worked great on t-shirts. I wanted a non stiff solution to a quick mount. I'll see if I can find an image Here's one.

Yeah, it’d be great if you could be able to split one section at least: the top one, so that you can take it off for tighter locations. Sure, most people I’ve seen have a bag on their cart that they take off and lug around when they change to cars or whatever, but there could be a middle way with the top section, so to speak. Sometimes you might want to be able to just have that top bit sitting on a table or something. So the idea, for me at least, is to have all the essentials in the top bit and be able to take that off for tighter spaces.

Another vote for Reaper here. But if you know your way around Audition then I'd stay with that and hone those skills instead of having to learn something anew. If you still want to change I can see no other option than reaper, honestly.. It's cheap enough that you can buy a new license every six months (which of course you don't have to) and still not break the bank. There's a learning curve, no doubt. But it's highly customizable so when you're up to speed you'll be able to work really fast. I've worked with most daws and I can safely say that reaper is by far the one that suits me the best right now. It takes everything and silently takes care of any issues with file type or bitrate.. It's ridiculously fast and flexible. Very complex and deep. Worth reiterating ; learning curve. But once you're up the hill you can really look down on the other daws.

Oh, and can I also add : (this might be of interest for anyone) Radio and podcast is really fun and important. I got employed at the Swedish public radio as a technician and I've learned a lot and I'm not breaking a sweat. Ymmv, but if you still want to keep doing some sound, radio and podcast are seeing a new dawn. Spotify and others are putting lots of money into podcast, and a lot of exciting tech stuff is happening in the audio only world. You could do both recording and mixing with much of what you already have. Again, just saying. Maybe you know already

Thanks! I like to think I'm fluent, buy that's just in the spoken form.. Writing is a different beast... But I guess watching all those movies with subtitles really paid off in the end

Hope everything works out for you and that you find something that suits you. Can I just say that I Love your writing. You have a real gift there.. Just saying..

Thank you! So yeah, Rails was what I meant. Detachable rack rails would be awesome. And detachable sections too. I’m dreaming of being able to have one part of the cart, like the lower, contain rack width equipment, like receivers, batteries or the likes, and the top section containing the recorder and maybe some redundant battery powered receiver, so that the top section can come off and be put in a car or in a small space where you couldn’t fit the whole shebang. But on the other hand, now that Nova is out and can have 8 receivers in a bag, I might as well just take the bag.. (again, I don’t have any movie equipment any more since I work in radio nowadays, But if i were to invest in movie sound equipment I’d invest in Nova for sure, thus not requiring as much of a cart) But as a radio sound mixer, a cart is surprisingly useful. We do use a lot of rack width equipment and one VERY large mixer (still rack width but just impossibly heavy and cumbersome: Digico) and then another lovely small custom built called Seeport from a Norwegian company called Seem Audio. Anyway, a cart that’s customizable would be awesome, seeing as I, if I were to switch back to movies, would probably keep a foot in both worlds (? Again language, this proverb is a verbatim translation of a Swedish one.) and want to be able to go back and forth between minimal setup and heavier setups... On the topic off tipping over: I don't think I've ever had a cart tip over, even when I'm overloading it.. Maybe a slightly longer (deeper) base than the shelves would give some, even more, security.

I guess I mean I'd like the maximum width of the cart to be 19" so if I wanted I could mount bars where I could put rack width equipment, but also be able to take those "bars" ( sorry not a native English speaker so I probably am at a loss of words here) off if I wanted to put something wider in there instead. Depth wise I'm not really sure.

The thing that's scary is how good the deepfake algorithm actually is. But it probably wouldn't be as good if the algorithm hadn't seen the already retouched footage...