RandyHall

Here's a little update, replaced the other PCB, which honestly, I think I damaged during the initial installation, with this unit, which is more or less a similar type of board, except it is rated for 7A discharge limit. My Lectro D4T, Zaxcom MicPlexer, and 2 Zaxcom QIFB are probably only drawing about 1A while running, perhaps a momentary higher level surge on initial powerup. Everything is working fine with this PCB, keeping fingers crossed that I get a half day runtime out of the pack. It was a couple dollars more expensive than the original board.

http://www.batterysp...ckat7aimit.aspx

Tom, did you source everything from BatterySpace? If you could, I'd like to see where you placed everything in the Pelican box. I'm pretty handy and love the idea of rolling my own battery packs.

I agree that the solder type BNC cable connectors used on the Remote Audio cables are often unnecessarily long. They were built to accommodate some of the larger audio cables and to accommodate circuitry for pads, etc, but most of the cables they are being used on could use a smaller connector. I'll see if I can help make that happen. Regarding the retail price, there does seem to be a discrepancy, so I'll look into that, too.

Glen, I didn't see the BNC connectors on Trew Audio's web store. Searched "BNC" but got adapters, and then cables and other bigger-ticket items.

I'd be lying if I said that I haven't benefited from the buy/sell forum, as I get a feel for what's good gear, what's a good deal and what's a waste of money.

The side conversations (or straight up flame war) are often amusing, sometimes enlightening, and then there's what's been happening recently. I apologize for whatever my part is of causing this conversation to happen.

So, while I think that moderation would likely help, and perhaps having a minimum number of posts to your name, I get the feeling that it really imposes on Jeff more than anyone else, and that hardly seems fair.

Still, I'm totally for keeping the buy/sell forum going, and I'll limit my interactions there to only the threads that I am interested in buying and/or selling.

They love him enough to roast him for future clients. He is more courageous than I am.

As handy as the iPhone has been to me (early adopter here), I agree that my face is not flat from my ear to my mouth, so pressing my oily flesh up against the glass surface really only makes it smudgy, and I can't seem to hear a damn thing.

Received mine today, can hardly wait to wear it on set.

How much heat can this module produce, anyway?

Famous last words...

Because I can't leave it alone, here's the Remote Audio version of the same cable, the BNC's are even longer....

I don't suppose anyone from Remote Audio will chime in and say where these connectors are from.

I think it's telling that his film "Rope" looks to have been shot entirely MOS, with someone's voiceover and the boopy-doopy soundtrack underneath.

... if the issue is you're using a non-standard coax so the crimp BNCs don't fit... how about soldering to a good quality RCA plug, and then soldering (or even shrink-tubing) that plug to a BNC adapter?

The issue is primarily that BNC's are really a coax-only connector, despite the connector being used for timecode. And trying to solder a coax to a 5-pin LEMO sounds like a little slice of heaven.

The goal is to duplicate the ridiculous $90 cable with parts I already have, or can source pretty cheaply and easily. Already have the 5-pin LEMO's and cable, just need the BNC's.

So the "solder an RCA, then glue/shrinktube it to a BNC adapter" idea is worth trying. I'll post the result here.

Any other ideas? I'm curious where SD sources the BNC connectors in their cable, to wit:

The fact that the barrels are shrink-tubed makes ID'ing it a bit more challenging.

The guys at RED are just LEMO whores, aren't they?

Just a thought... Is the iPad getting its time updated from the internet or a cell tower?

In this case, Internet. However, the MovieSlate app rolls 23.976 timecode with a warning that it will drift from clock time.

Fun fact/bug: when the clock on the iPad rolls over at midnight, it rejams the timecode on the MovieSlate app! Stealthy!

Anyhow, I left the app running overnight. Woke up and it was 1 second and 7 frames faster than the GR1. I'm wondering what the drift would be in colder weather...

Eric, of course, is right. After a friendly phone call from him (where he told me to shut up and listen -- I like him already) I desoldered the red from the ring and resoldered it to the sleeve.

I wanted to close this chapter by mentioning that I did get email back from OST regarding resoldering. They confirmed that yes, this was soldered to Sony UWP specifications.

Their instructions were to unsolder the black from the tip and solder it to the sleeve (with the braid), and then solder the red wire to the tip. So I re-resoldered the connector to correspond to that. The mic worked in either configuration, making me wonder where the braid is actually attached inside the mic itself.

obviously what we have here is a failure to employ basic troubleshooting techniques...

Yup, I was stung by multiple user errors (all mine) stacked on top of each other. Mostly in a hurry and didn't have another working lav or transmitter to test against. Hence the mention of wasting a perfectly good thread. It all ended well, at any rate.

" I wrote "Senny". "

personally, I've never used, or even cared for that slang, or "Panny", either.

now I have a reason!

Yup, having recently adopted the slang, I'm dropping it now that I know that someone could read "Senny" and see "Sony". Big difference.

As a largely academic exercise, I decided to free run the MovieSlate app running on a 1st gen iPad against a reasonably accurate clock.

So, I started at 9:02 PDT by jamming my GR-1 from the iPad MovieSlate app (Headphone jack to GR-1 input). Watching it over the course of the first interval, the iPad wanders steadily up to just shy of one frame ahead, then the timecode seems to flutter on the input of the GR-1, starting around +0.5 and becoming steadily more "flickery", such that as it approaches +0.9, you see it flicker -0.1, then suddenly the timecode is back to even.

So, by 15 minutes, the iPad was roughly 0.4 frames ahead of the Denecke.

By 30 minutes, the iPad had jumped to 7.4 frames ahead of the Denecke. The jump seemed to happen very suddenly, it went from being less than a frame ahead to seven frames ahead.

At that point, I think I had seen enough. The fact that it jumped so suddenly and by so many frames makes it unusable without doing the whole TC Buddy wifi jam. But I'm still not sure the $1100 for a TC Buddy is worth keeping an iPad slate app in sync. That money is probably better spent just buying a purpose-built TC slate and use the iPad app as a log.

If you said Senny instead of Sennheiser it's understandable that they heard Sony.

Well, it was all done through email, so I wrote "Senny". Damn my own shorthand.

Holy crap - when speaking to Eric is the highlight of your day you really are having a bad day.

Quite pleasant, actually. When you're working with film people, I appreciate those who are straight-talkers.

Now call OST and tell them how wire their mics for Sennheiser G2/3 so they'll work.

Looking at my invoice from them it said they were wiring it for "Sony TRS". I think when I specified the connector, I said "Senny TRS".

Some days, it's not worth getting out of bed. What an amazing waste of a thread, though I did get to speak to Eric on the phone. So it's not an entire wash.

Disconnect the Red wire to the ring and connect it to the ground.

Eric, of course, is right. After a friendly phone call from him (where he told me to shut up and listen -- I like him already) I desoldered the red from the ring and resoldered it to the sleeve.

Voilà! Crisis averted, and this Sennheiser G2 lives on.

FYI, email sent to Dave at OST.

So here's the plug once I've taken off the cover.

Based on what I know of Sennheiser TX wiring, this seems wrong.

As seen below:

• Black wire to tip
  
• Red wire to ring (wtf -- )
  
• Shield to sleeve
  

Open to suggestions. Don't want to send it back if I can hack it myself.

Just for the heck of it did you try a line level signal to ring and sleeve?

Yeah, just tried something of that sort. I plugged the OST mic halfway into the socket, and suddenly I hear my voice.

Sigh. So much for the problem being the TX. I really should just screw with stuff more before I post anything here.

So I am now looking at fixing whatever mess OST made of putting the locking TRS plug on the mic they just sold me...

You've tried it with something other than your new arrival OST yeah?

Yes, tried with original lav that came with the TX. I now have to confirm with my boom op, who swore that a different mic from a different G2 TX worked on mine. Ugh. Trolling used equipment sites is not helping my mood.

" Ideas? "

after all of the usual troubleshooting and trying alternatives, like different mic's and different TX's, etc, have you tried the double secret, ultra master reset sequence ??

Would that be the "jump up and down on it and beat it with a sledgehammer" reset sequence?

A problem cropped up with my cheap but otherwise quite reliable G2 wireless lav. The SK100 TX now seems to have a problem with the mic input. I've taken the whole thing apart and there's some corrosion on the plug contacts but nothing excessive.

What's strange is that when I plug in a lav (and I just bought an OST 801 with the locking TRS plug that arrived today to test this) while the TX and RX are tuned in, I get noise over the link to the RX, but no mic signal. No amount of fussing with SENSIT on the TX or AF OUT on the RX has availed me anything other than a slight buzzing noise, but usually just this hiss of the noise floor (headphones are turned way too high right now).

Ideas? Or is it just time to go to the WTB forum?

Fascinating. The "open letter" itself was yawn-worthy, as it did nothing more than assign blame to the wicked and depraved Hollywood entertainment industry.

The comments were more interesting, as you had people engaged in full-on character assassination rather than debating facts. Nothing like a little bloodsport in the comments section.

Oh wait, character assassination in online forums good, mass media depiction of mayhem and violence bad. Hmm..