Sound Devices? Zaxcom? Who to choose!?

[pindrop]

Yes, about 17 seconds on the Sound Devices 788t, depending on size of hard drive and whether it's built up-to-date directories on both drives. I would be reluctant to go into record until I waited at least a few seconds longer. To tell you the truth, I try never to turn the thing off after the first take, unless we're in a run-n-gun travel situation where battery life is at a premium.

 

The 788 draws about 1 amp, the last time I checked. The Zaxcom Nomad 10 and Maxx are rated at 300ma, which is significantly less, so the Nomad would seem to be the winner for power consumption.

Isn't that with a hard drive or SSD in the SD though, with all the reports of very fussy memory card requirements there's something re-assuring about a built in drive.

[Jack Norflus]

with all the reports of very fussy memory card requirements there's something re-assuring about a built in drive.

I can't speak for other recorders but there are no memory card restrictions for Nomad. As far as I know there are no reported issues with any sizes, speed, or brands of cards you can use with Nomad.

[soundslikejustin]

I can't speak for other recorders but there are no memory card restrictions for Nomad. As far as I know there are no reported issues with any sizes, speed, or brands of cards you can use with Nomad.

*Currently, anymore.

[Zack]

Biggest factor for me (between these machines) is size and weight. All great machines, you'll be happy with any decision.

[Ianellemo]

Be glad that the two guys most responsible for the the major do-or-die tools you drive every day are willing to talk to you at all, let alone answer questions on a nearly daily basis on a public forum under their own names!  You don't get that kind of response from Yamaha, or Shure or Sennheiser or even Nagra.   Please be polite, it's a great thing having them participate in this forum.

 

philp

You couldn't be more right Philp, well said. The fact that they even offer up their two cents, and take the time to share their concerns and knowledge is amazing, applause. 

 

I ended up going with a Sound Devices 664. Why? (Aside from it's CAS Award) Location: Canada. To send a Zaxcom device to the States, (Of course that is, if it has an error or the hardware fails on me) is simply too costly. Yet, I can send my Sound Devices over to Trew Audio in Toronto at a much lighter cost. There are other reasons, but really, when it came down to it, that was my main concern. Affordability goes way further than just initial purchase.

 

My only concern when I purchased the device, is why they wouldn't include an AC power plug to power up the device! In my opinion, this is a standard, and is very silly that they do not include this in the box... unless mine was simply missing one?

 

Cheers everyone

 

Ian 

[James Louis]

Appreciate the transparency, Glenn. And just realize that a lot of product forums are weighted towards the problems and not as much the satisfied customers, because many folks only chime in when there's a problem. Still worthwhile read to keep you prepared for worst case scenarios

[Marc Wielage]

My only concern when I purchased the device, is why they wouldn't include an AC power plug to power up the device! In my opinion, this is a standard, and is very silly that they do not include this in the box... unless mine was simply missing one?

 

All the SD mixers and recorders take a standard DC power input cable, and the 7xx, 552, and 664 all work on any 12VDC adapter (with the right pinouts). I'd bet that since most users are going to operate from batteries, SD probably figured an AC adapter was superfluous for most users. I do carry an AC adapter for locations where I know I'll be tied down for long periods of time in one area where AC is available and I'm running out of a bag, just because the 788 pulls 1 amp; everything else runs fine from a couple of NP1's. 

[glenn]

I ended up going with a Sound Devices 664. Why? (Aside from it's CAS Award) Location: Canada. To send a Zaxcom device to the States, (Of course that is, if it has an error or the hardware fails on me) is simply too costly. Yet, I can send my Sound Devices over to Trew Audio in Toronto at a much lighter cost. There are other reasons, but really, when it came down to it, that was my main concern. Affordability goes way further than just initial purchase.

 

All of our dealers can do repairs on Nomad. If somthing were to go wrong we can send boards to the dealer to swap so not all units have to come back to us for service. This is basicly the same for our competitors. There are many reasons to purchase one machine or another. I am sure TREW Audio Canada will do the same job servicing the product no matter what brand you own.

 

The Nomad also has a CAS award presented last year.  ;-)

 

Glenn

[Boomboom]

Of course... and I think it's a good idea to go through the dealer anyway so you "share the pleasure" and the dealer gets an idea of the stuff he's selling and its reliability. If you have to send a unit three times to get it properly repaired in the end, and you did it all by yourself, the dealer won't know about it... Congrats for your new mixer Ianellemo.

[bmfsnd]

The 664 for me is about its straightforward operation, and having more hardware pot/switch controls. The less I need to dive into menus, the quicker I can roll the next take. 

 

The Nomad is a more portable solution with a huge list of features and tools, but I felt that the 664 was an already familiar workflow that I could immediately pick up. It was priced right for me (bought before the $ increase), sounds great, and fulfills the needs of my work. 

[hemmerlinj]

One issue is Zaxcom and its products often gets bashed, and in most of those cases, unfairly by people who have never used the product. So like any good parent Glenn is just defending his children.

Yes, this is very true.  I've been seeing a high amount of posts about people having problems with the 664 and very little trashing of it for these problems.  Unlike the Nomad where it seemed as though everyone had to get their opinion in on what ever matter was at hand.

 

I own a Nomad and have one of the early Production units #34 and I've had almost no issues with it.  It has been a rock solid machine.  It sounds much better than any SD gear I've used which is just about everything minus the 664, and I've given the 664 a listen and thought nothing more about it than I do the 552.  (I'm not bashing either).  

 

When it comes to features the Nomad blows everything out of the water.  I have 6 XLR ins over the 4 of a 788 without the need of different cables.  And I can make better use of the track count on my Nomad than a 788.  I still don't understand the x1 and x2 tracks on the 788.  Seems like a waste if I can't route 2 other additional inputs to them for for something like 10 iso tracks if needed.  I can do this with the Nomad and have a faders for it, be it Virtual but it gets the job done.

 

The 664 is more comparable to the Nomad in it's input capabilities, but I don't have to take up extra bag real estate to get extra faders and tracks.  And with the many outputs of the 664 better routing options would be nice.  I can route like a bad ass mother with my Nomad and I can do it on the fly much easier than 788 for sure and 664 I believe.  Something that can come in handy sometimes.  

 

All in all these machines are all great.  788 is ready to go for a couple of days of rolling right out of the box pretty much before you have to think about uploading your files.  Nomad and 664 are ready to mix out of the box and are easy to get recording with throwing in a cf card.  Nomad is guaranteed to have your files if you lose power up until the point of power loss, and has rock solid pres on the inputs, and is uber light.  Zaxnet takes the work out of keeping things in sync(not that there is that much work,although sometimes its a nightmare).  664 gives you the highest track count(with an additional piece of gear) than other field recorders.

 

The weight, price, and flexibility of the Nomad was what worked best for me.  Although, if the 664 was available when I bought my Nomad I may very well would have purchased a 664 instead having been an owner of SD gear.  Nomad was my first Zaxcom purchase.  And for what it's worth the Nomad has a much better menu system than both machines in my opinion.  I'm sure others will disagree.  When I have to use a 788 and I need to make changes via the menu I want to shoot myself.  

 

Think about what you'll really need out the gear and buy accordingly.  Take into account where you want to go as far as the type of work you'll be doing.  A 664 may not be a good choice if you think you'll be doing more cart based work and want to have linear faders over rotary faders, but may be the perfect choice for high track count bag work (although your back won't thank you).

 

my .02

 

cheers.

[Chris Woodcock]

I think you summed it up nicely Hemmerlinj As I and many others have said over and over again, they are both great machines. I started with a 552 and was starting to get requests for more tracks on my jobs. There wasn't a 664 around at this point but I had started to hear about the Nomad coming out. So I researched into the Nomad. The choices were a 788 with a cl-8 which was very highly priced or a Nomad 6 at a much lower price with the ability to upgrade in future. I just love the Nomad the menu layout is fantastic compared to the cluster fuddle that is the 788. The bus routing and output flexibility alone makes it worth while and that's before we get to talking about Zaxnet. I have gone down the full zaxcom route now with an upgraded nomad 12 and zax wireless. It's horse for courses though, a good friend of mine just bought a 664 even after all my praises for the nomad, he just felt more comfortable with the SD work flow. Regards Chris W Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

[Marc Wielage]

I still don't understand the x1 and x2 tracks on the 788.  Seems like a waste if I can't route 2 other additional inputs to them for for something like 10 iso tracks if needed.  I can do this with the Nomad and have a faders for it, be it Virtual but it gets the job done.

 

The X1 and X2 tracks are explained at length in the 788 manual on page 110 in the section on "Aux Routing." It's just two more tracks to carry a different set of isos or a different mix, with or without its own limiting. Not complicated. You can always route different inputs to these tracks if you want to, the same as Zaxcom. I personally wish SD had just called them "Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5" and so on instead of "L, R, A, B, C" and so on, but it's just a philosophical difference, not a real problem. 

[hemmerlinj]

Marc,

 

I know that you can route different inputs and what not to it, but those inputs are all being recorded already.  I guess it can give you a bit of redundancy.  Can you route some hidden 9th and 10th input into it that I never knew existed on the 788?  I have a Nomad 12, which has 10 possible analog inputs that I can route each to their individual cards tracks pre of post fader, and I have 2 more tracks for a mix.  That I can't really do that on the 788 (as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong) just seems like a waste.

 

Cheers,

 

J Hemmerlin

[ChrisH]

I have worked with both although much more extensively with SD stuff.

Major problems with nomad is lack of important information display; does not display sample rate and bit depth and other important things. I worked with a guy who owns a Nomad and his tracks sounded great but he accidentally recorded at 48.048 all day because it is not displayed on the home screen.

Less than reliable time code generator, i have worked on several shows with a Deva and each of the ones where they used the deva as time code master we had drift issues. Most of the mixers i know that use zaxcom rely on external time code clocks. On the other hand I worked on a show for Sony and they sent us 4 sync boxes 3 for cameras and one for the sound cart, when we called post and asked about the one for the cart and our 788t they said "oh you have Sound Devices? No need for a sync box on you cart we love sound devices!" That says to me that Zaxcom has established a bad name for its sync abilities.

Severely limited internal power and storage. Ie when your main battery in your power distro dies the SD units will switch over to internal power seamlessly and let you know that power has changed, and give you plenty of time to finish the take and change your battery. I know that nomad at least with all tracks armed and recording won't last long with the internal aa batts and they are not rechargeable from the unit.

Sound devices negatives are lack of a proper slate input( except on 664), power consumption and heat. Also they lack a file format like .marf which stops data loss up to power loss, that being said as mentioned above you would really have to be trying to fail to miss that both the external and internal batteries failed, so your likelihood of of the power loss is lower than with Zaxcom. Also I think the 788t has the best sounding pres on the market short of Sonosax Neve and SSL, although its limiters are not as good as Zaxcom.

[Zack]

I have worked with both although much more extensively with SD stuff.

Major problems with nomad is lack of important information display; does not display sample rate and bit depth and other important things. I worked with a guy who owns a Nomad and his tracks sounded great but he accidentally recorded at 48.048 all day because it is not displayed on the home screen.

Less than reliable time code generator, i have worked on several shows with a Deva and each of the ones where they used the deva as time code master we had drift issues. Most of the mixers i know that use zaxcom rely on external time code clocks. On the other hand I worked on a show for Sony and they sent us 4 sync boxes 3 for cameras and one for the sound cart, when we called post and asked about the one for the cart and our 788t they said "oh you have Sound Devices? No need for a sync box on you cart we love sound devices!" That says to me that Zaxcom has established a bad name for its sync abilities.

Severely limited internal power and storage. Ie when your main battery in your power distro dies the SD units will switch over to internal power seamlessly and let you know that power has changed, and give you plenty of time to finish the take and change your battery. I know that nomad at least with all tracks armed and recording won't last long with the internal aa batts and they are not rechargeable from the unit.

Sound devices negatives are lack of a proper slate input( except on 664), power consumption and heat. Also they lack a file format like .marf which stops data loss up to power loss, that being said as mentioned above you would really have to be trying to fail to miss that both the external and internal batteries failed, so your likelihood of of the power loss is lower than with Zaxcom. Also I think the 788t has the best sounding pres on the market short of Sonosax Neve and SSL, although its limiters are not as good as Zaxcom.

I own both and use both, and I only agree with the first statement about Nomad's display arrangement.  The TC generator and sync capabilities are just fine if you use them correctly.  I have not had any negative comments from post about TC sync, only compliments of doing it correctly.  To say one machine does this well and another doesn't is not accurate... take a look at either company's user forums and you'll find "sync issues" which I believe is usually user error.  As for power switching and back up, it's just fine and will give you plenty of back up time running on internal to get the main issue resolved (both N12 and 664).

 

You can pro and con machines all day and you'll get no where, what you need to do is try out "yourself" and get what you're happiest with.  As I was once told before when I was having to make up my mind, "either way you'll be happy".... and I was.

[VASI]

I worked with a guy who owns a Nomad and his tracks sounded great but he accidentally recorded at 48.048 all day because it is not displayed on the home screen.

 

- Human fault. Not from recorder.

[studiomprd]

" he accidentally recorded at 48.048 all day because it is not displayed on the home screen. "

pretty weak "cause and effect"...

 

" get what you're happiest with. "

so, we are back to personal and subjective...

[Jeff Wexler]

I don't normally like to respond to a post, point by point, but there are so many inacuracies in Chris's post that I have to comment on all of this.

 

"I have worked with both although much more extensively with SD stuff.

Major problems with nomad is lack of important information display; does not display sample rate and bit depth and other important things. I worked with a guy who owns a Nomad and his tracks sounded great but he accidentally recorded at 48.048 all day because it is not displayed on the home screen." 

 

First of all, if you read the entire post, it is painfully obvious that Chris has had very little experience with Zaxcom. Secondly, the mistake of recording at the wrong sample rate is something several people have reported here, even while using a variety of the most commonly used recorders (that pre-date Nomad by several years). I think recording at the wrong sample rate qualifies rather directly as an operator error. 

 

"Less than reliable time code generator, i have worked on several shows with a Deva and each of the ones where they used the deva as time code master we had drift issues. Most of the mixers i know that use zaxcom rely on external time code clocks."

 

So, you've worked on "several shows" with the Deva and had "issues" on all of them. I have used the Deva for the last 15 years, 25 feature films, no timecode issues (and never used external sync except for one Sony job where they insisted sync boxes be used on everything including the Denecke slate --- and I will add that they said it was okay if I used the Deva as the master to jam all the sync boxes and there was no need to have a box on the Deva --- this is exactly the opposite of what you are reporting). 

 

"Severely limited internal power and storage. Ie when your main battery in your power distro dies the SD units will switch over to internal power seamlessly and let you know that power has changed, and give you plenty of time to finish the take and change your battery. I know that nomad at least with all tracks armed and recording won't last long with the internal aa batts and they are not rechargeable from the unit."

 

Nomad, like all of the Zaxcom recorders, will utilize the internal battery power when external power is depleted or disconnected (and this happens seamlessly without any interruption --- there is never any worry about "finishing the take"). Nomad's internal battery sled does not have the capacity to run the machine for a long time. How long can you operate the 664 on its internal battery? With Nomad, as long as it doesn't take you a half hour to change out your external battery you should be okay.

[Chris Woodcock]

"Severely limited internal power and storage. Ie when your main battery in your power distro dies the SD units will switch over to internal power seamlessly and let you know that power has changed, and give you plenty of time to finish the take and change your battery. I know that nomad at least with all tracks armed and recording won't last long with the internal aa batts and they are not rechargeable from the unit."

 

Nomad, like all of the Zaxcom recorders, will utilize the internal battery power when external power is depleted or disconnected (and this happens seamlessly without any interruption --- there is never any worry about "finishing the take"). Nomad's internal battery sled does not have the capacity to run the machine for a long time. How long can you operate the 664 on its internal battery? With Nomad, as long as it doesn't take you a half hour to change out your external battery you should be okay.

I can get 4-5 hours out of my Nomads internal batteries so not sure where you have picked up your very wrong information. The Nomad switches between internal and external seamlessly and will continue to run, correct me if i am wrong but wont the 664 just run until the point of completing its recording and then shut down? Also wont the 664 loose the current recording if all power fails? The Nomad will keep the audio right to the point of power failure(might not be right but hey if others are spreading misinformation then I might as well join in)

[Jack Norflus]

Chris,

I have to disagree about your statement that Zaxcom has a "less than reliable time code generator"

In the year and a half I have been using Nomad I have found  its TC generator to be very accurate. Early on I even ran sync tests with my Nomad and my Deneke. And with Nomad powered off for 6 hours I had only one frame drift. And in 12 hour - I don't remember exactly but - I had some where in the vicinity of a 3 frame drift. I would have to call that reliable.

In addition I use ZaxNet and my ERX receivers to jam, and keep frame accurate, sync with other devices. So now I can be sure that everything will be in sync all day long without having to manually re-jam.

 

Also Nomad DOES seamlessly switch from external power to internal power - and I'm not 100% sure but I believe that Nomad has a significantly longer run time on internal batteries that the 664.

 

Sample and bit rate are easily accessible with a single button push,and I'm not sure how a user goes a whole shoot with out ever checking his sample rate.

[Matt Mayer]

I can get 4-5 hours out of my Nomads internal batteries so not sure where you have picked up your very wrong information. The Nomad switches between internal and external seamlessly and will continue to run, correct me if i am wrong but wont the 664 just run until the point of completing its recording and then shut down? Also wont the 664 loose the current recording if all power fails? The Nomad will keep the audio right to the point of power failure(might not be right but hey if others are spreading misinformation then I might as well join in)

 

If in record, the 664 will seamlessly switch to internals if the external power is lost.  If the user doesn't flip the switch from EXT to INT, the 664 will close the file, finish housekeeping and then power down once recording is stopped.  If the switch is flipped to INT, the 664 continues running until user swaps battery and flips back to EXT.

 

The 664 re-writes the files headers every few seconds.  If power is completely lost while recording, you will likely only loss a few seconds of recording.

 

Run time with Eneloop XX "Pro" black cells (2400mAh IIRC) is about 2:55, 10tracks recording, 6 inputs mic level, phantom on one input.

[David Lipka]

And what about Sonosax gear? I think their preamps are a blast!

 

 

[VASI]

I think Whit Norris have Sonosax.

[ChrisH]

I stated that it was operator error but I believe the machine should show this kind of critical information to user all the time. And I am glad to hear that the Nomad has good run time on internals, my thing is again that it does not charge the batteries so if you don't have fresh batteries in it and your external dies so does your recorder. The 788t is self charging although I don't believe the 664 is, and I don't know about the deva.

The reasons I laid out are the reasons and experiences that have led me to choose the SD route and I thought that applied to the OP. I believe that most of you having had the same experiences would have come to a similar decision.