nickreich

Also very useful to have the TC Slate as a 'third party arbiter' to prove it was the Camera that drifted or was offset by 2 frames - not the Sound Recorder! Otherwise Editorial will always blame Sound.

Under wigs is always my go-to if at all possible - especially for Dancers or Stunters (the wigmakers need to know in advance - I have a set of wood 'dummy packs' to send to them for fittings). Between shoulder blades works sometimes. Ursa make a nice double arm-loop strap for that now. Under the arm like a shoulder holster can be done using the same Ursa strap with an extra pouch stitched on. Both of those positions are heavily used on Athletes as well for transmitters or GPS Trackers - and there are lycra 'halter tops' made for the purpose. Also under the breast/pec works on some shows depending on costume. That's how many of the roles in 'Cats' have been done for 30-something years - but also more recent shows like 'Newsies' on performers who end up flat on their backs or tumbling. Put a foam filled pouch on the other side to keep them symmetrical!

You will never achieve "no bleed from other actors what so ever" if the actors are in the same room - no matter what mic you use. The only way to get that is individual voice recordings - or forbidding any overlapping dialog then editing the audio assets tightly. While DPA 4099s or MKH 40s are somewhat more directional than 4060s or other 'Omnidirectional' Lav mics, you'll still hear significant spill from other sound sources in the room.

yes, this looks just like my ones that I use regularly. Right Angle Lemo is fine and I can see from the picture is correctly oriented. As Fred has said, the Alexa Mini LF has changed to a 6-pin Audio Connector - just to annoy us all.

I've mixed FOH on, and set up for others, such remote monitoring systems quite a few times in the past. Anything from mixing Theatre shows in a booth with a fixed glass window, to someone mixing half way around the world. Firstly - I think you are on the right track with hypercardioid or tighter mics. I've dealt with systems that used a Neumann dummy head or similar binaural rig, or spaced Omnis, and I don't find they translate at all well for this particular FOH mixing task. Co-incident crossed shotguns can also sound a bit odd in headphones, particularly in the ambience or 'room' component of the sound - due to the often 'ragged' frequency response on the side patterns of each mic. The mic I preferred (driving headphones) was a Sanken CSS5 stereo shotgun. While the CSS-5 was not strictly speaking a MS mic (mid-side stereo technique - lots of info on line if unfamiliar) - there are quite a few MS stereo shotguns available for on-camera use in a lower price range that might be worth considering. Audio Technica and Sony have some in the sub-$1000 range that might be available used for much less. Of course if you actually own the single 416 you tried out - you could use it as the 'mid' mic and just add a figure-8 mic as the "side" capsule. Ambient in Germany make a little "emesser" clip-on figure-8 capsule for this that should be available through places like Gotham Sound in NYC - or any multi-pattern mic with a fig-8 setting. If you do the MS to LR Stereo conversion on three channels on your console, you can listen to some music in the room then adjust the stereo image and more importantly the volume in the headphones to match as closely as possible and lock it off. For what you are doing ("remoting your ears" into a venue for mixing FOH PA) you do NOT want to be micing from multiple positions or mixing in dry console sound from the actual performance mics. If you are switching between monitoring the house PA, and monitoring a streaming mix or PFL'ing individual channels, you need to come up with a scheme that allows a fixed reference level to your headphones for the room mics independent of the other sources.

If you are unfamiliar with Arri camera timecode, best be aware of the following. There are two TC Mode options available in recent model Arri's for "jamming" to external TC: "Regen" and "Jam Sync". In both cases you want the "Run Mode" to be "Free Run". While the wider industry uses the term 'jam' to mean either connecting the recorder once, or leaving a TC box on the camera - in the Arri world, this is not the case and causes confusion If you want to connect TC from your MixPre at the start of the day, and I'd suggest at the end of Lunch Break, and 'jam' the camera's internal TC Generator to that - then select "Jam Sync" TC mode. In Arri cameras - this means sampling the incoming TC for around 30sec (sometimes longer) to accurately 'tune' the internal generator to the external source. After that time, it carries on using the Internal generator ONLY. You can disconnect the MixPre. In theory, Arri claim that this 'tune' will hold across battery changes and going off-speed, but I'm not convinced - especially for lunch-break type lengths of power off. If however you want to use an external TC box attached to the camera all the time (more common in professional practice) - choose the "Regen" TC Mode, as it's continuously referencing the external TC source each time a camera file is started.

As a Theatre / Awards Show mixer - the reason we want the TXs left on all the time is not really so we can PFL them at any time. Monitoring the radios is the job of the backstage radio techs on a large live show with a multi-person crew. The main reasons for leaving them on continuously after pre-show checks are: 1) to prevent the slight chance of someone being sent onstage with a transmitter turned off (and bypassing a backstage check before they go on). 2) the more real chance that the (analog) receivers of unpowered transmitter channels are susceptible to going off and finding some other RF Noise signal to make them un-squelch. Sometimes this can cause them to output full-scale audio hash which is just plain annoying to see on the console meters when mixing. Back in the day, certain top-end analog consoles favoured by Theatre especially had the unfortunate feature that such full-scale noise could leak through a channel that was "VCA Muted" and be audible in the mix.

If your initial device, with the Analog to Digital convertor is outputting 24-bit AES, having a larger bit depth available in the transport or recording path isn't going to help you. AVIO AES devices automatically ASRC (Asynchronous sample-rate convert, aka 're-clocking') the AES to match the Dante Network clock and settings - but that doesn't increase the dynamic range originally converted.

I use an app from Germany called Logster, exports .csv files which I then drop into a sheet in a template Excel workbook, the Sound Devices 970 .csv sound report goes into another sheet, they get re-formatted a bit then I manually combine and sort them into the final report - I'm sure with a bit of effort I could automate them more, but it's reasonably quick. In the stuff I do, I need timestamped notes within the run-time of a single take on the recorders. Logster has the advantage that it'll chase LTC coming in the headset socket of the iPad, I have a Tentacle Sync stuck to the back of it - meaning it's accurate for non-integer TC rates like 23.976FPS which I get a lot. It seems to be a University project, so will probably stop working with the next major iOS update however. I tried MovieSlate, bought the sound dept extension etc. but it didn't suit my workflow. Logster is typed notes only, no voice.

I do a lot of projects shot in a similar style to the one Philip has described - both TVCs and full Cinema releases of Opera and Musicals. Almost always between 3 and 13 ARRIs. The difference is I've NEVER been asked for Playback Timecode (I call it PBTC) on a slate - the speed my various clients move at they barely squeeze in the TOD slate for the cameras. Some have previously wanted PBTC sent to a camera audio track but more common nowadays is top mics (for absolute emergency syncing only) and TOD TC boxes on cameras (via Lemo TC ins), and I run a production recorder on TOD TC in the usual way, with playback guide audio and PBTC on an audio track that they sync in the edit in the usual way for 'normal' narrative film. I've never got to the bottom of how they go from that in the edit to a multi-cam timeline with all of the takes for a particular song stacked - but they do! Either way - I sometimes also do Audio Post on these projects and the PBTC, as both a window-burn the Editors provide on my guide video, and the LTC audio track that has gone through the vision edit (hopefully muted!) are invaluable for re-syncing with the pre-record multi-tracks.

I use K&S Precision Metals .025 (.64mm) Music Wire - available from Hobby stores. It's the thinnest I'd recommend and this particular brand is springy enough - don't go on size alone, maybe go one size thicker for your first attempts. I put clear heatshrink over the areas in contact with the back of the ear. Back in the days before such headsets were commercially available we used to make them out of Coat Hanger wire completely covered in heatshrink, with the mics taped on with Micropore. Very rugged but not that cool visually nowadays!

Many of the professional 'Broadway' shows make their own headset 'frames' out of stainless steel 'piano' wire and attach normal Lav mics to them using either Hellermann Sleeves (short rubber tubes) or the smallest size monofilament fishing line using a whip-finisher tool. They do this rather than using the off-the-shelf headsets as the bespoke ones are more rugged, fit the performer they are made for better, and don't stick out the back of the head like the commercial ones as they don't need to be adjustable. The downside it that its a permanent build - not a drop-in and drop-out solution like I think you want. Point Source Audio make an ear-hook solution you can pop a lav in and out of, which is big, ugly and over-priced - but still not a headset per se. Sennheiser used to make exactly what I think you are asking for - a plastic headset frame that you could clip a MKE 2 lav into, and pop it back out in seconds, but they seem to be discontinued, and were only popular in Schools and such where the look of them was deemed to be acceptable. They were also designed for a slightly thicker cable than currently used on pro-level Lavs nowadays.

I find decent 15" and Horn self-powered speakers, such as the JBL SRX 800 series can usually suffice as a Thumper for smaller indoor spaces (for example smaller shopfront cafe spaces or a "band rehearsal room" type scene). Pretty much all boxes with a 15" LF will be dropping off in level already at the 40Hz range I do thumps in. There are larger 3-way all-in-ones from JBL and others with an 18" LF driver that can do better and are still flat output down to around 33 Hz, but they are not practically portable enough for my liking - I prefer the separate single-18" sub with a pole mounted 12" and Horn high-mid box rigs instead as they are a lot easier to get in and out of vans etc and more versatile in deployment. This also means only the Sub has to be timber construction, you can get away with much lighter plastic high-mid boxes.

if you still have copies of the corrupted files, you might like to try Audio Rescue from Pokitec (the developer of Boom Recorder). It's free. I don't think they are still actively developing anything, but the website is still there and Audio Rescue has worked for me and others in the past, better than something like Audacity - as it was written to be timecode-aware. Mac-only. https://www.pokitec.com/downloads/

I'm pretty sure the Alexa LF, like the Alexa, can't Genlock at all. I looked into this last year when I was about to shoot an Opera with three of them (covid-cancelled a few days before). Apart from that - I've only used Ambient on Minis when genlocking from TC, so can't contribute anything useful - but maybe measure the level the Betso is outputting vs the Ambient that works - it might be lower or higher than the Arri can lock onto.