Derek H

I agree on the used 633 suggestion. I still think it’s the best tool for the job for documentaries for example. You can probably find a used one for under $2k. Of that’s out of the question then I would think a Zoom F8N or F8N Pro would be your next best choice. The Zoom F8 series is a much better recorder than their earlier handy recorder days and has most of the features you would need for an actual job. It is a pain in the ass to mix on though. Interface takes some getting used to. Actually I may never get used to it. Good luck PS .. can you prove you’re not an AI bot? I see this is your first and only post and we’ve had a lot of bots here lately.

Hi and thank you. Suddenly there’s lots of choices in this area.

To Damien 78 and Audio Rich.. You need a custom cable to go directly from a TA3 to the TA4 the Shure uses. Find a friend who solders, learn how or have Trew audio or Gotham make it for you. You can find wiring diagrams on Shure’s website if you dig around for about 3 hours. The good news is it doesn’t require any resistors inside the TA connectors. Audio Rich I also almost went with the J52 band and the previous version as there were good deals available but decided future me would be happier to have the wideband version.

Nice find, they look great.

I’ve found they increase the audible noise floor when using them in my SMQVs but not with SMs.

My biggest concern would be how is the lithium np battery going to handle being in parallel with a constant DC source of fairly high amperage? You should contact your battery manufacturer and tell them your proposed setup with the voltage and wattage of your ac adapter and let them advise you. I think it will depend on what the battery circuitry does. Products like the PSC triple play which have multiple power inputs are designed to isolate the sources so you don’t have one trying to charge the other. You could just try it, best case scenario it works fine, worst case your battery overheats, shuts down or worse.

Having a hard time believing the zoom preamps made that big of a difference. Did the other mixer use the same kind of mics? Same boom op? I think differences in the boom op’s technique alone would amount to a more audible difference than the preamps of a zoom F8 vs a 633. Maybe on your scenes you had to deal with wide and tight and for whatever reason they shot the other mixer’s scenes single camera. Too many variables to know for sure. Can you describe the difference?

Thanks!

Here's some very recent field experience to add to this discussion. I just finished recording a few documentary scenes with people on canoes singing very loudly. Used 32bit float pocket recorders (Tascam DR10) on multiple people and it worked mostly great EXCEPT one guy who was incredibly loud managed to distort his recording while singing. This happened despite the record level set to the lowest setting. So it proves that 32 bit will not always be the savior it's made out to be. You have to abide by the physical limits of your microphone capsule and preamp stage. I'm still not sure if in my case I hit the SPL limit of the stock Tascam lav or if I hit the input limit of the DR10. TBD.

Great thank you! Like the person above, I also vote for a mode that allows you to take multiple recordings, align them by timecode, fill any gaps with silence and output a poly WAV. Without necessarily requiring a reference file to match. I could have used this kind of thing the other day on a shoot where I wired up several pocket recorders on people going on a canoe trip. 4x separate recordings, no “primary” recording to match to. Thanks! Derek

A small thing but could you make the fields where you enter a timecode address automatically add the colons? So that you can just punch in 8 digits and it comes out 00:00:00:00 with the :'s in place. Thank you.

TDSG, (I like the abbreviation btw). I love your post and agree that if it were acceptable to adapt our gain staging approach to take full advantage of 24 bit’s dynamic range then we’d be fine. However, and sticking with the whisper/scream example, if I turn in a scene that is gained correctly for the scream and let the whisper live down at -100dBFS post will email me and ask where is the sound. Or they won’t ask and they’ll just ADR it. I know this to be true because I’ve experienced it. I recorded a scene where an actress portraying a mentally ill patient starts out in a barely audible breathy whisper and by the end of the scene is having a full-blown maximum volume meltdown, kicking and screaming. I rode the levels best I could but I knew what was coming so played it pretty conservative. Got an email back asking why levels were so low… I swear post would rather fix distorted peaks than deal with low levels.

From a post production perspective I’m sure 32 bit float seems unnecessary but it’s very different when you’re recording in the field. Bouke, have you ever had to record someone who whispers one line and then screams the next? Without warning? Or mic up 4 people plus plant mics for a free-driving scene where you have to leave the recorder in the trunk, press record and walk away without a rehearsal? There are many excellent use-cases for 32bit float and there will be more and more going forward. I have a feeling 32 bit float will become standard on the acquisition side of production and move beyond its current position as a gimmicky marketing feature for prosumer gear. Is just a matter of how soon. Post production software will hopefully catch up. If we’re sticking with 24bit in cases where 32 would be advantageous just because that’s what the Avid wants then I think we need to start pushing back. What already seems to be happening is experienced sound recordists are choosing when to use 32-bit float when it’s helpful in a particular situation and then doing additional conforming work after filming in order to hand over 24bit files to post that are immediately usable. Hopefully that will be a temporary workflow as post gets used to dealing with 32-bit float. Also, I’d say there is a low-level advantage with 32-bit float recorders as well and it’s not all about overload. Most recorders that have 32bf also have dual ADC inputs and used in conjunction with 32bf results in eliminating the digitization noise floor so that the only bottleneck is your microphone and preamp quality. Feel free to fact check me on that one and it’s maybe more a function of the dual ADC design but 32bf allows you to capture the entire dynamic range of a dual-ADC input.

Someone should compare this to the other one that was released recently. Meta sound tools? Maybe in a different thread.

Because I wanted the whip antenna. Plug-ons are designed to use a handheld mic body as their antenna. I was concerned that without a mic plugged into it the transmission would be compromised. Probably would work just fine though. The plug on has more RF power available and a built-in pad.