Wyatt Tuzo

Agree with Patrick above ^^^ What kind of work are you doing? I generally cable to VTR via Canare A2V2. Sure there are other ways, but this is pretty foolproof and allows for sending playback return to Comteks (or even just for my own QC monitoring of playback.

Oh, for that, sure! Sometimes, If I'm questioning an annoyance that I really can't do anything about, I'll open an instance of Rx to see ho well I could manage it, were I stuck with it in post. I do not, however treat anything for delivery (I'll make a note in my sound report, and maybe flag it in an email). I do realize though, that there are many here doing different kinds of work than myself. As far as latency with Axient/A10 racks/dante: I don't have any numbers for you. Honestly, I rarely worry about these things with the work I do. I remember many years back when there was a lot of talk about system latency of the Lectro and Zax gear... while certainly aware of these processing delays, I never truly felt an impact in practical use. To your question on DAW integration on set: There was one time, just back from the pandemic, where I was shooting a scene of someone addressing a large crowd from a concert stage... Because of social distancing considerations, we had to tile the crowd many times over. Because of this, our lead actor wasn't getting the energy he wanted from what was supposed to be a very large group. The best we could do to help, was to record several passes of crowd murmur and cheering, layer those with some canned crowd sound, and play them back through the FOH system while we shot his side of the coverage (and overs). I did this by hooking up my laptop, running Pro Tools, into my dante network- grabbing crowd reactions during all of the separate audience tiling passes (while simultaneously tracking into my main recorder for delivery). This made for a REALLY seamless way to grab performances on the fly for playback. It was really wonderful to have the tools to make a last minute pivot like this. It made us look like magicians 😄

On “movie sets”, our primary goal is, generally, to minimize the issues so that these tools aren’t needed. Maybe I’m in the minority, but I feel that our tracks are scrubbed a bit too eagerly (and aggressively) these days. I hear what you’re saying, but in my opinion, the logic is backwards. Fix it IRL > fix it with plugins (whether on location or in post)

I would guess that there are maybe 10 or so (myself included) narrative mixers here in NYC who are using Axient. I had personally finished my transition to the platform a few months before the Nexus was announced. Fully expecting I would experience some buyers remorse, a few colleagues and I took SD demo stock out to run tests against my setup. Both systems sounded great, but I personally have to give the edge to Shure in terms of range and remote control. Obviously, external conditions are always a factor, so I wouldn't feel comfortable making any hard declarations. Suffice it to say, I left feeling assured that I had made a good choice for my own needs. The thing that I find enticing about the SD platform is the potential for further development. We've seen this just recently with the extension of the system down into the VHF range. I believe they'll continue to refine their system leading to improved performance and an increase in features. My Shure hardware, on the other hand, is probably locked into it's current feature-set. I'm okay with that (because it's a rich and high performing feature-set), but maybe there will come a time down the road when I look into the SD offerings again... I dunno

Sorry for the confusion, Derek. I was referring to the second posted article (the one from protoolsexpert). I feel the author did a really good job pointing to all the contributing facets of the problem. Maybe the strongest (or at least most through) I've seen on the topic. An small excerpt, acknowledging our side: Pre-existing Knowledge - Those Involved In The Production All Know What Is Being Said Another big issue at play as to whether a particular line is intelligible or not, is that everyone involved in the production knows what is being said, they have lived with it through pre-production, script editing, shooting, and post-production. This means they probably know the script as well as the actors, if not better! What this familiarity with the script means is that they can hear the words even when they are not clearly intelligible. For example, this can happen when the drama is being shot, the director knows what is being said, and even if the sound team asks for a retake it is likely to be received with a hard stare and "I can hear it what's your problem"! When we get to the dub when the director comes to sign off on a scene, again they know what is being said and so may well be asking for the FXs and/or music to be lifted to increase the sense of drama in the scene to a much higher level than they would if they were new to the production and hearing it for the first time. Changes In Production Techniques - More Multi-camera, Less Use Of Boom Mics Shooting a scene using more than one camera means that your use of a boom mic is compromised at best, as at least one of the cameras tends to be a wild-shot, meaning the boom mic cannot get in close enough to pick up a clean sound. Consequently location sound teams end up relying on the use of personal radio mics. As we learned in our article Speech Intelligibility - The Facts That Affect How We Hear Dialog the spectrum of speech recorded on the chest of a person normally lacks frequencies in the important range of 2-4 kHz, where the constants are, which results in reduced speech intelligibility. In fact in this article, we also learnt that just over the head, where the boom mic would normally be, is a great position for getting the best speech intelligibility. All of this means that the growth of multi-camera shoots results in a double-whammy, we lose the use of a boom mic and replace it with personal radio mics often in the chest area, which don’t pick up the consonants as well as the boom mic and as we learnt, speech intelligibility is all about the constants.

I actually felt this article, while true that it was written by someone with more experience in post, was quite thorough. The author spends a good deal of time highlighting the very issues listed above. He specifically discusses the boom mic’s ability to more faithfully capture frequencies in the range critical to intelligibility, and how it’s use has been compromised by the proliferation of body mics, multi-cam shoots, and lighting choices. Also of note, the phenomenon of directors not heeding our advice, borne of their familiarity with the script. This is a point that I’ve personally had to make numerous times on set.

Amphenol makes 50-ohm panel mount sockets, if it helps. These are what I've built into my patch bays.: https://www.amphenolrf.com/031-3220.html or: https://www.amphenolrf.com/000-47025.html

Just, just did this. I agree that you’re going to want the base station in the hero car. In my case, we ended up switching to a tow rig on the day. I rode on the back of that, took PB into my recorder, and transmitted via UH/411 to my base station in the car. I was prepared to do the same from a command van, but again… last minute change, as they wanted a frontal 2-shot. I’m rambling a bit here, but bear in mind that if the performer is singing along to a known song, you can also have a speaker playing at a reasonable level in the vehicle. They are going to have to cut around the song anyway, and this will just worldize the track a bit. For car to car, I generally try to get my Tx high in the hero vehicle, and rig my antennas to the top of the follow vehicle. With an ultimate arm, you may not have that luxury. Are you sure they dont plan to shoot conventional coverage as well?

Thanks Patrick. I remember when you and I first opened one of these up to assess a plan of attack for this. While you’re right on the drawback of not quite having the control in one convenient place, my tablet will generally be positioned in front of the Rx rack, giving me even more complete control and feedback. That said, there are more potential points of failure. In the pros column, I get: modularity, a more shallow and lighter rack, and greater channel density/rack Cons: more potential points of failure, and less integrated networking capabilities. An example on the last point… in order to use showlink to control all of this, I have a wifi access point and separate PoE injector built into my cart. One nice aspect of this, is that either myself or my Utility can have access to settings through WWB and/or Channels on our individual devices. A downside, is that I have to keep a 610 in range of my cart or I lose showlink connection to the Rx. There is a slim possibility that this will drive me to get an additional 610 to position close to set for Tx control in the future. This will iron itself out with time.

Long delay here, but I finally got some downtime and was able to integrate everything. All is working well, and as hoped. Racks are communicating over Dante, with Showlink intact.

Thank you. I think I got the answer I was looking for around the 20min mark (if anyone else is wondering)

Just curious, is there anywhere we can see an image or video of this, in an ear, from the side? It feels like the earpiece may stand a bit proud for my needs, but I’m only guessing

You're very welcome, Martin! One thing I've been hoping to follow up on... after the conversation with Vin above, I decided to try snipping the SMA's off of my second mod and the traces flew right off. This is really a job for a focused hot-air rework station. The ground pads are extremely weak on this board. Fair warning. In other news, I was thinking of machining notch for the db25 risers for the 1st position receivers, but decided to 3d print some instead. I'd be happy to share the file, if anyone needs, but know that I am no expert in 3d rendering

I had a very, very similar need on a show last year. Fortunately, I didn't have the added headache of the Roger shortcomings. One day, we'll trade war stories.

Good angle, Vin. Maybe I'll give that a shot with my next one. One thing that I didn't mention in my original post that is worth noting, is that the SMA connectors are soldered to both the top and bottom of the PCB, for a total of 5 connection points. This would leave hot air desoldering, your method, or a product called chip-quick (which reduces the melting point of solder in order to give you more work time) as options. The hot air is tricky without a microscope on account of the circuit near the SMA's, leaving the last two as the most practical to execute at home