Fred Salles

Thanks PCMSoundie, I like that as a possible solution for clients&agency tents instead of speakers on commercial shoot where there are always more and more people asking for IFB than initially required by production and paid for, ending up to frustration (and speaker is often an issue for me when too close to set). I can very well see this thing installed by the LCD monitor with a side poster with QR code for all those interested to hear audio but who were not accounted for for a proper IFB (on average around 5 people). It does not need a wifi router as it seems to be its own access point.

Thanks Gregoire indeed for such an active updating of your fantastic piece of software. Airspy mini seems to be my next upgrade!

Whatever you choose, for me there is but one rule: shelves and ratchet straps. Even if you have the luxury of a your own sound vehicule make sure you have appropriate shelvings. Appart from whatever is on wheel (sound cart, assistant cart, etc) for me every case must have its space on a shelve and there must be space to access it quicly, meaning the floor must be free. And you must be able to tight everything securely and fast (hence ratchet starps). Any other solution involve time waste and/or risk.

Note that the original post is asking about how to handle the MTP61 files (not any other data). The MTP61 does not allow physical card extraction so one has to transfer the files to a card via mag to usb cable or the LBC61. I would avoid as much as possible to hand over the MTP61 to the data wrangler or DIT. So I have to do the transfer. So far for files recorded occasionally on an rx (mostly MTP60) I have done like Fieldsound. I back up at the end of the shoot and deliver to post on FTP with all additional sounds I have recorded off set or when I managed to get booked additional days for ambient recording. It allows me to organise the files as I want including renaming. But I never had to record on tx on a regular basis or as a main recorder. That would be another discussion I guess. And probably involve OT yes. The few times I recorded fx or specific sounds on tx during set was on MTP60 so I was able to hand over the card to DIT. “Recover” do you mean when there is a file missing or corrupt? I use “disk drill “ for that. Otherwise the basic transfer does not require specific software since files are already wav and the mtp61 is seen as an external drive by the computer. You can use Teracopy on PC if you want checksum verification. I use wave agent for renaming files if needed after backup.

Hi, for once I totally disagree with you Philip. You cannot judge a boom op non professional and downright stupid because he/she is not wearing heaphones! The choice of wearing headphones is for the boom op to make and the practice is I guess cultural and also generational. In France for a long time boom op were not wearing headphones and were actually often disregarding the ones wearing some as “unprofessionals” 😅 A very experienced boom op does not need to ear what the mike is picking to know if she/he got it right. Just as experienced focus pullers of previous generation did not need video monitor to know if they had a soft or not. Same as Louw I was trained to boom without headphones (although comteks already existed though quite bad) for not only all the reasons Louw gave but also because the boom op need to focus on his/her movements in space, the movements of the actors and the camera, the lights, all the sounds that can occur on set, wanted or unwanted, and so on… And having to listen to something in an earphone can affect that focus. Focusing on what is recorded is the job of the sound recordist! You can practice and begin working with an earphone if you still not master your skills as a boom op but you definitely do not need it when you have experience! I know in USA it is a big thing and when I worked as a boom op on my first american tv feature the recordist made me wear headphones and head mike, plugged in an intercom box on my belt that was plugged to an insanely thick cable 🤣 It took me a while to get used to it but was happy with the ability to communicate with him so easily! That said I do ask my boom op to wear headphones for communication purpose, espescially nowadays that regearsals are things we need to fight for and therefore scarce so i need to give instructions whenever camera zoom change frame during or between takes for example… All the young ones are used to it anyway, but from time to time, an experienced boom op would prefer not to wear it during the take. If i do not have to complain about his/her job then I am fine with it as long as she wears it when I need her to hear what i have to say if necessary (sometimes eyes contact is more than enough!) Anyway all that to say that some of the best and more recognised professional boom ops here in France were, and sometimes still are, not wearing headphones, and we are very happy with their job!

Sincères condoléances Jeff. Love and support from France (actually Kenya right now).

Pretty sure it is RF overload now. Being surrounded by glass your receiver's antennas might also get reflected RF. What happen when you have the TX more than 10m away?

Did you try 10mW as well? as you said tx was never less than 5m to the rx antennas, my first guess goes to RF overload.

Hey Rich I finally got to take some time to listen to your test. Thank you so much again for that and Happy New Year to you too! I must say this is quite impressive. I do hear definitely more bass, and some medium overall warmth on channel 1, that makes channel 2 a bit more dry, espescially at a distance. So I would say CH1 is the hardwired. But the quality of channel 2, if that is the A20tx, is indeed pretty close! I hear no difference whatsover in noise/hiss, when you have some silent moments, and again the differences in the medium and the highs freq. are very very subtle. Edit: I realise I used the word “dry” wrongly. That is because in French we say “sec” as opposed to a sound “chaud” =warm. Although “sec” litteral translation is “dry” it also mean something almost harsh.

It looks like a promising achievment. I have one question: Should we be concerned to have the mike surrounded by magnets? It might not be too much of an issue for consenser mikes but i will definitely not leave my M88 near this... (=dynamic mike, for those unfamiliar) Do you know if there is any testing of different mikes behavior with close proximity to magnets?

+1000 to contact directly the psm. But I would add something further: The fact that you "have been asked to give recommendation for the next season", combined with your producer "expressly asked you to communicate through him", smell funny to me. This is neither standard procedure nor an efficient one. It denotes more of a control freaks producer that do not trust his/her team, OR she/he has a good reason to not trust some of the team (I don't know maybe the inexperienced boom op is the son of the director and the psm is not in position to complain nor disclose the issue other than to the prod ??) ... Either ways if I am not wrong then it won't do any good to just communicate through this producer, it might actually do more damages than benefits. In my experience an experienced producer would put post team in contact with production sound team so that what post-production team might see as a problem might receive an explanation that will help solve it, before raising flag to the producer as "a complaint". Experienced producers know that prod and post team do not always have same point of view or ideas, and want to have to deal only with real issues, like if there is a real communication/ego problem between the teams or a real workflow technical issue for example. My advice would be to yes speak to the producer who required it but do not present it as a complaint yet, before you have spoken to the psm. Be diplomatic and try as hard as you can to find an explanation to what you have experienced. It might well be that the psm is not experienced either, or it might be any of the reasons given by my colleagues above. But only after talking to him/her you will be able to take an informed decision. You have to find out by yourself, not let the producer decide alone.

Thank you so much Rich for the test and report, much appreciated. I am on the move so not able to do a proper listening session before a few days but will do asap. Please don’t reveal anything yet ! 😁

Hello, reviving that post to ask if any A20-tx users can tell me if, according to their ears, the claim by Sound Devices that the preamp of the A20-tx in balanced mic +48v mode sounds equivalent to that of the 8 series recorders is true? I am eager to know if anyone has done (and posted) a test to compare a mike wired in a 888 preamp versus on wireless boom with the A20-tx (using digital AES out of the receiver in the 888 of course) and can confirm or contest that assertion. Thanks.

Yes but he is talking about a live movie musical, so that would be quite extreme to lock mixes! Btw going back to your comment on 26 October, I don't subscribe to your choice of word. It wasn't called a stupid approach when we were mixing mono to a 1 track tape, or even two tracks... In France some of my PSM colleagues have kept the status of what we call today "sound supervisor" that was the norm back until 20 years ago. We are still the first sound department interlocutor with the director in pre-production on 8 films out of 10, and sometimes the only one before post actually starts. And in many situations the director does not have enough time to share and discuss with the post sound team as much as with us in pre-prod. In some context, the PSM and the post sound team are regularly working together so they know how they work. In the case of the person I was first mentioning the dialog sound editors actually prefer to receive his ISO post-fader so they have less tedious work to do and can focus on actual creative editing. We are expected to provide a mix of the dialogs that is not just a basic mix for monitoring but a mix that not only matches the rest of the scene but above all matches the creative vision and desire of the director that we are supposed to have acquired a proper understanding of. Especially for scripted scenes with rehearsals. Yes there might be some ego involved as most want to hear their dialog mix in the final mix. But I do not think re-re mixers are much less without ego 😁 It is quite rare that the director would actually be present for the whole of post production sound steps, and even more rare that she/he would be able to take decisive choices regarding the dialog mix in the auditorium. So it ends up being the re-recording mixer taking them. Personally, again, I record my isos pre, but because firstly I work mostly for non-french productions, and secondly most of the films I do have a lot of improvised dialogs or (sometimes and) have foreign languages that I do not know. Also I agree with you that sometimes the choice might be more properly done in a quiet auditorium than on a noisy set with earphones. I guess if I had another life, staying and working only in France, I might have ended up like my colleagues, recording iso post faders.

That is quite an interesting and clever concept! I never thought any mike could be used to form a boundary layer setup but it makes total sense. I suppose you use omni mikes mostly with it?