nick

No artifacts. Right. This is why today's singers all sound like Stephen Hawking. Check out Billy Joel singing the national anthem at the Superbowl a few years back - at "oh say can you SEE-EE", you can hear this miserable box force his voice a semitone sharp (about 0:30).

Last Wednesday I rolled playback from my iPod. The signal chain was: iPod running Oscemote (generating OSC messages), logged into a Wifi network created by my MacBook Pro, which is running Osculator. Osculator listens to OSC messages and parses them into MIDI events, then sends them back out. In my case, it was sending them into Logic Pro, which I had configured to take specific incoming MIDI events and use them to control the transport. Timecode was an audio track within Logic. I configured this mess to recognize two commands: Play and Back to Start. For the trial run, I kept it simple - but this could be easily expanded to include cue points, scrub forward/backward and so on. Thanks to Tim Elder for permitting me to perform this experiment on his set.

Excellent point - I hadn't thought of that. I can think of two solutions. The easy one would be to record your isos post-eq, although i feel that would violate their "safety-net" characteristic. The complicated theoretical way would be to use DSP equalization on set. The idea is that the location mixer and the post mixer share a piece of software that does two things: 1. performs realtime equalization on set applied after the iso tap. 2. stores metadata about the EQ on a track-by-track basis, so that post can mix from the isos while retaining the mixer's EQ decisions Aaton has something like this, but only concerning fader movements. The Cantar mixer performs a mix during the recording, and the mix is described in the metadata of that recording. There is an application called Majax that takes care of the post end. Majax re-performs the mix from the metadata stored in the iso tracks, and is also capable of editing this metadata on the fly - you sort of get a second pass on the initial mix. The result is that post can use the mixer's mix as a foundation to which refinements are applied, rather than starting from scratch. I think that this is a kickass idea. Alas, I don't know of anyone who uses this workflow. Maybe it's big in France. Anyway, it is a small step to get from logging mix metadata to logging EQ information. The most likely candidate for this strategy would be Zaxcom, as they manufacture the only credible field recorder featuring onboard DSP. The question is: are fader movements made on the Mix-12 recorded anywhere? My hunch is no.

I agree with Glenn. If we trust ourselves and our monitoring apparatus enough to make decisions concerning level, it follows that we are capable of making EQ decisions as well. After all, the EQ knob is only a frequency-specific level control - a more articulate kind of fader. In this age of iso-track safety nets, I think the location guy has a license to take greater risks in perfecting his mono mix. If our EQ decisions are just horrible, certainly we will hear about it from post - and hopefully adjust our practices accordingly. Otherwise, I see no reason to avoid the judicious use of EQ.

Correction: Range is actually 350 feet away from base station.

Ever have production ask you for a "cough-to-talk"? :-) Gotham Sound makes what look like modified walkie PTT mics that terminate in XLR, or TA5 to plug directly into a Lectro TX. They make also an evil pop when switched, but they're appropriately low-profile. Or, if you're feeling adventurous... this http://www.callpod.com/products/dragon in conjunction with this: http://www.callpod.com/products/phoenix should offer 5-way (6-way including the base station) duplex communication at (if they're to be believed) a range of 300,000 sqf. Five dragons plus a phoenix should cost less than $1000. I know you don't need the duplex, but I imagine you'd find a use for it someday.

Me too! Why, specifically, are they asking for this? I'm wondering exactly what information they want to be displayed.

Your speculation above, Sergio, is absolutely correct. You need a laptop between the Lemur and the automixers. The Lemur speaks and understands a protocol called OSC - essentially MIDI 2.0 run via CAT-5. There is a piece of software associated with the Lemur called the JazzDaemon that translates between the higher-bandwidth OSC into serial MIDI messages which are then -as far as what the Lemur was designed to do- supposed to go to various MIDI musical instruments. We wanted to use those MIDI messages to dynamically remote control Lectro's AutoMix/Matrix box. Unfortunately, Lectro's machines don't speak MIDI, - but they do speak a serial protocol and, indeed, they are designed to be remote-controlled. What you then need is a mechanism to parse MIDI into LecNet - which didn't actually exist until misunderstood genius Peter Schneider wrote it from scratch over the course of a few days instead of sleeping. So that's how you hook up the Lemur to the DM84. It's a massive pain in the ass. Especially considering that there are other, off-the-shelf control devices (Crestron) that speak directly and natively to Lectro's machines and would have kept us from reinventing the wheel. We found the latent possibilities within the interface inspiring enough to warrant this added complexity. I love that thing.

Congratulations, Graham. I second all of Peter's praises. You pulled it off!