Fred Salles

Same here. First shorts and first jobs as a trainee on features were done with sound mixed down mono on Nagra 4.2 But there was still a sound editing and final re-recording mixing process down the line. That is why I was always reluctant to use the word « mixer », as I wrote it comes from the French terms. In my youngish foolish brain I associated « sound recordist » with the work on set that I loved, and « sound mixer » to the work in a dark studio done by people already bold at 30... (no offense) 😅 From then it remained a habit, encouraged by the fact that others, native English speakers, were using it too.

😲 Oh my... Thanks Bab414 and Jeff, that shed a complete new light on the term « sound recordist » I never ever thought of! So is it that bad? Have I been completely wrong and misleading in using «sound recordist » all this time for my job as production sound mixer on features and documentaries ?! On credits and even posters! My English speaking was nurtured in South Africa and also on set with US and UK crew shooting in Europe and Africa. I have never been told that I should use « sound mixer » rather. Any inputs from colleagues in the UK?

Hi and thanks everyone, JonG that is precious information and we can all benefit from knowing what to look out for in our contracts and invoices! The Emmy story of your friend is disturbing. How can they not figure it out? Philip, thanks for the info on the union production practice in the USA, it confirms my supposition. About being properly credited in my experience whatever is agreed on the contract regarding job title is what is seen on the credit, and sometimes foreign productions -non French non English speaking- ask me what I would like while drafting the contract. I tend to say Sound Recordist as a habit from the times when I was mistaking Sound mixer and Re-recording mixer (the latest translates as "mixeur" in French while we use "Chef Opérateur du son" for production sound recordist/mixer) 😁 Codyman you might be right in term of habit, UK and South African and Kenyan productions I worked with use or agree on Sound Recordist (Production Sound Recordist also). I have never been asked to use Sound Mixer only yet! Obviously never done a US union job, although I worked for US productions overseas. I am sure others can give inputs, especially from all the diverse areas of the world represented here 🙂

Hi everyone, When interacting in English, I have always been using the term "Sound recordist" for my job and I realised that many here use the other term "Sound Mixer" (sometimes with the added Location on both). I know they pretty much mean the same thing, but do they really in the industry? Who and why choose one over the other? Thanks warm regards Fred

Hi everyone, just to let you know that I will be staying in Nairobi, Kenya from December 2021 till April 2022 and I will be most of the time available for work there or anywhere in East Africa. I have my full kit for documentary shoot. Regards, Fred

Hi, you need a high read rate meter (most professional multimeters) with a « «max » memory option. At startup most electronic machines draw a high peak current for some milli seconds to a few seconds. To know the peak current is useful whenever there is a protection circuit to choose in your project. For example if you are conceiving a power distributor and want to include self reseting fuse (=polyswitch) on outputs: in order to choose the right one it is good to have an idea of the max peak current as if you choose a fuse that has a too short term sensitivity it will block itself at startup cause of the peak current draw, if it has too long term sensitivity you might damage a piece of gear or most likely blow a unprotected battery pack in case of accidental shortcut.

Thank you so much Moe for your precious inputs! Great! Do you insert the Audio ltd filter mini board (so called RFI filter i think) in the XLR plug? Could I ask you what cable reference are you using? You mean bridging ground to plug shell, right? No I did not know all of it: I did not try number 3!! not intentionally at least. Since most of the major hiss problems occurred using the A10tx for planted mics, the mini cables were never straight and extended. Moving the cable position changed the hiss but we never thought of trying to have it straight, which was actually not always possible but anyway, now I'll know, thank you so much Moe !! Number 2 did not change much, the older CMC6 had more hiss but with the newer still hiss was too much. I used the A10 rx within the Sound Devices SL6 in combination with Wysicom mcr42 no pb at all, and also with an external distributor (Broady AS-122) when we had more than 6 radios ch, no pb neither. We did not do comparative test though. Warm regards PS: one other thing I really like about the A10 receiver, when not in the SL6: you can switch the outputs from analog to AES very quickly and seamlessly.

HI, Moe I see you are using Schoeps mikes with your A10. On my last shoot I had several huge hiss issues with CMC6+MK4 or MK41 on boom that were only solved by changing the specific Audio ltd short cable XLR to lemo tx. I had several spare as I was warned about this issue. But eventually all cables generated some sort of hiss. No problem at all when switching to a sennheiser MKH50... On other thread some users said it is a common issue between A10 and Schoeps CMC6. How did you solve it if it ever appeared to you? Thanks PS: apart from that issue, I definitely agree about the sound quality for a radio tx!

Imho and if your refer to John useful post, I do not think knowing the "wattage" of a particular equipment draws is relevant but you should rather focus on the current it draws when operating. If you follow the ohm law you will understand that the power (watt) will be dependent on the voltage as much as the current. The current drawn by your gear is constant in operation, the DC voltage is not: your battery start maybe to deliver 16v then goes down to maybe 13v few hours later, so if you only read watt it does not tell you what your gear needs. Izen, measuring the AC line does not give you the current draw of your gear per se because the gear operates in DC. It gives you the power (or current) drawn from the AC power plug yes (and that is usefull if you want to know how much it is going to affect your electricity bill) but our gear has very minimal impact on the main power plug (compared to light for instance). Furthermore you have a converter in your gear that turns the 230 or 110 AC into usefull DC (I would guess 18v). That transformer, whether a transformer or switch converter also uses power. If you want to know how much total DC current your cart draw you should measure the DC current after the converter. You will read a much higher measure than 1,2 Amp. If your cart has elements that actually use 110v AC power then I guess you have to do several measures, one for AC and one for DC :-) Since the original post is about building a battery power pack I assumed Martin's gear is portable and all operating in DC. Martin you should actually take at least two kind of Amp measures if your build a battery pack: peak and nominal. Most gear especially digital recorders draw a lot of Amps at turn on and then get a more or less steady consumption thereafter (actually recorders draw more when recording than idle so you should measure at least at full use: all mike channels armed and with phantom power on and mikes and headphones plugged on). Once you know the total peak and nominal current draw from your gear you can start build your pack. Most Li-on battery cells or packs have a max peak Amp and a max nominal Amp spec. So you choose accordingly. Most commercial battery pack have higher peak current tolerance than what is advertised. Also if you want to insert a self resetting fuse (polyswitch) in your pack you must take that in consideration, it must not be too sensitive to peak current (not sure about the english words sorry).

Paul what are those interesting square angle minijack used for your G3 outputs? They seem even lower profile than the Neutrik. Thanks I like the “hinge away” system idea for the G3!

Very interesting. I got caught by the line "sound ranging was an important means of locating the positions and calibers of enemy gun" , using a sort of waveform before the daw. It does not look like the waves of optical sound on a film so I wonder what kind of device was used. Peakmeters for several mikes in different points in space?

Hi everyone maybe this should be discussed on « the post place » forum but I am not sure yet whether what I want do bring up is a technical, artistic or rather a commercial topic. I saw Dune, by Denis Villeneuve, in a rather bad 7.1 cinema theatre (difficult to get it in original version AND in dolby atmos here in Marseille). I was totally frustrated and above irritated by the overuse of the music. ok we know Hans Zimmer is not a light touch kind of music composer, but never before have I felt the heavyness of his music overcoming and overpowering everything I perceived in the film. Everything in the film made me want to love it but I found the constant use of the music so redondant, so overwhelming, that it did not let me any space for emotion. Now the work of the sound team might have been mindblowing, but I hardly can say I remember any of it since the music took all their labor and love of the craft away in my opinion. Villeneuve and the sound team do try to say the opposite in the rather interesting talk below, and hearing them made me wish I could see the film again in a proper atmos setup, but what have you thought about it ? Especially if you had the chance of watching it in optimum setup. Looking forward to read your opinions Thanks

The 2-pop 😃 That is a very nice new film lingo to me, thanks! We do 10 sec before first frame in France most of the time. I always provide one before first picture AND one after last one, on each track provided. Oh and we call it simply "un bip". Also when doing sound editing, if things smell funny during talk with picture editor (eg. he/she does not know how to do an AAF or OMF export on that software...") I ask for a "bip" at start and end of each sound track (obviously along with the bar frame in pic file). It can happen that the AAF import looks fine at first glance but some tracks got out of sync... So a double 2-pop bip ensure you see immediately if there is a sync problem somewhere.

Isn't part of the set protocol in the USA that no one would stand directly in the line of fire whenever a weapon is fired (blank obviously)? It is here in France. I have also seen plexi protection just for the camera rolling alone once. I recall the armorer saying that even blanks can make serious damage.

I would also recommend Soundplant on a PC. I have used it extensively for theater and choreography live performance and it never disappoints. Of course the choice of the sound interface will dictate the sound quality of the outputs and their quantity but some gig can be done with the minijack out of a laptop. Also note that the creator Marcel Blum is quite responsive and if you need a specific feature for your company/set-up he might be able to customize the soft.