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Aaton Cantar X3 Launch


Bash

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So it helps if the bag isn't deficient? That must be the case with any bag set-up - regardless of which type of recorder.

 

T

 

Indeed. But the problem with Cantar is that you need to be able to access the front and the top, which makes it hard to design something that you can have attached to your chest while still providing protection.

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The problem isn't with the Cantar. The Cantar is an awesome machine. I was an X1 owner and I used a Fostex PD4 bag which was cut to make use of the left side rotary dial. Access to the top wasn't a problem because it stuck up enough to get at everything. This wasn't ideal and in fact I found no bag solution ideal. So Cantar users adapt to what is at there disposal. The big issue isn't with the Cantar it is that manufacturers aren't making a suitable Cantar bag. Manufacturers are trying to fabricate a bag that will suit multi able recorders. As they should. 300+ bags isn't worth the time and effort for any manufacture to make a Cantar only bag. But until there is a bag that is designed around the Cantar for the Cantar and with mixers using the Cantar there most likely won't be a perfect solution.

Kriky

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I'm not saying the Cantar is the ideal recorder for a bag. But the guy in the picture at the time also had a Deva on his cart, but he made the decision to take the Cantar onto that ship. The trip lasted a few weeks and he obviously thought that what the Cantar has to offer outweighs (literally) any other offering (again, at that time, the picture is a few years old). I'm just trying to defuse the argument that the Cantar was not built for bag use, when I believe that almost the opposite is true. Those big mechanical controls and overall very robust build allow it to be operated in extreme conditions. Such as in freezing temps where you just can't take off your heavy gloves. The Cantar is possibly the only recorder (except maybe Nagra 6) which allows this. If those are your conditions then putting a Cantar in a bag and work with it is the easy part

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Since the new Cantar is very nearly the same size as both the original design and the X2 upgrade, and since it has a very similar layout, I was also curious how it might fit into a bag built for the earlier version. I brought a Cantar bag into LSC and dropped in the new machine to check it out. By and large, it was a decent fit but there were a few places where the old case constricted access. I took some photos at the time but held off uploading them here because I wasn't sure there would be real interest. After all, Aaton would surely make a bag design available (later if not sooner) to customers that would be exactly suited to the new machine. But I can see there is considerable interest in the subject so I'll provide a few photos.

 

This particular bag is not the regular Aaton-supplied bag but, rather, the Stuart Wilson-designed bag available through KT Systems in the UK. Ian Frazier is the principal at KT Systems.

 

David

 

 

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Looks good, David, and certainly proves the point that a suitable bag is very possible and the intrinsic design of the Cantar X-3 does not preclude using it easily in a bag. The fact that there is not an existing bag generally available form any of the usual suspects is not surprising. The Cantar X-3 is brand new and even though it is similar to prevous models there appears to be some significant changes in terms of user operation. Also, the bag manufacturing companies have to weigh up what resources and time they need to put in to design and build a bag for the Cantar. By all accounts and past history, the Cantar will not be a huge seller and will not be the sort of mainstream bag recorder that we have from Zaxcom and Sound Devices. The lack of a suitable bag at this time should not deter anyone from looking into the Cantar X-3 as it is an excellent fully functioning and highly capable recorder.

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I have to interfere and post some pics for those who claim that Cantars are not made for bag use:

 

preparing for a shooting day with Fazil Say in Istanbul, 2 weeks ago

 

My Cantar inside Roland Winkler's self made south pole bag. I only borrowed it in 2012 for a TV movie shoot in the Austrian Mountains, but his Cantar has traveled 3 times to the pole inside that bag.

 

"Sons of the Sea" for Qatar TV in 2010.

 

one boom, up to seven wired actors, a dual channel hop to camera and a separate interpreter feed for the director and a separate on camera track. Batteries, camera hop Tx and lav mounting stuff are carried on the back. For normal bag shoots a much smaller rucksack is sufficient.

 

pretty much gear for the camaera also

 

"Climbing the lost world" 2010 shoot for Red Bull Media house.

 

Camera crew hanging around in Venezuela. 2 cameramen, 1 soundguy, 2 climbers. 6 alpine guides for safety, supply and logistics. Terrain good for Cantar, but not really viable for soundcarts.

 

me and Cantar #122 inside that raincover. We both survived.

 

do you know of any other recorder you can rest your elbow on?

 

Yes, I use it for sitting interviews also.

And yes, I use my Cantars mostly on the Cart. But not always.

 

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I've been using an X2 in a stock Portabrace 1.5X and I haven't been seeing the need for a completely custom bag as of yet.  All the controls are easy to access and can reasonable make patches to the inputs with a little bit of fiddling.  Most of my audio goes in via the DB-25 digital AES connector, though.  I'm actually going to try a 1X bag, though, as there almost seems like a little bit too much room in there. Without the factory batteries attached, the width of the Cantar is actually pretty slim down on the body.

 

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That's a great looking cart setup! I am putting it up right now in the Gallery of Sound Carts. I do have two questions: one, I would like to know your name so I can put something other than Touni on this cart, and two, what is the little screen I see tucked in behind the Sonosax?

 

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Hi Jeff, 

My name is Philippe Kohn

The display is the touch screen controlling the SX-ST internal recorder

 

More details on my X3 experience to follow, ...

So, you have 3 recorders on your cart --- the Cantar-X3, SD 970 and the Sonosax SX-ST internal?

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Hi again,

Yes there are 3 recorders on my cart. I know this might seem a little bit overkill but let me explain, ...

 

First there was the Cantar.

 

Then the SX-ST Recorder came in as a backup recorder.

I un-arm unused tracks on the Cantar and because of the limited display view(s) on the X1/X2 it has happened a few times that I forgot to re-arm iso tracks on the Cantar some shots later, although these sources where recorded (and heard) on my mixdown tracks. In that case the SX-ST recorder (always recording 8 tracks) has saved me.

 

 

Meanwhile I decided to no longer record Ambience Mics (MS, LCR or 5.0) trough the Sonosax but directly with the Cantar mic inputs.

This has the advantage of the Cantar being able to link up to 5 input gains witch is quite handy against struggling with up to 5 pots on the Sonosax.

Now these tracks did not have a backup recorder ! ;-)

I then sold my Pix 240 (used mainly as an HD Video Monitor) and changed it for the Pix 260 witch receives the 8 AES outputs from the Cantar.

OK perfect, this is my mirror recorder and it has Dante, the perfect companion to the future X3 I thought.

The truth is that I have to switch it off anytime I'm shooting interiors because of the fan noise.

I spoke to Sound Devices about this at IBC last year but so far no feedback.

Hope this can be solved by software as I took care of ventilation when mounting the Pix260.

 

If the fan noise problem is solved and providing the Dante connection between the X3 and the 260 works flawlessly, the ST-ST recorder will be somehow obsolete, but believe me after installing the recorder option myself I'm not even thinking of removing it. ;-)

 

All the best, 

Philippe

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and third question: how did you manage to take two almost identical pictures with different recorders in them? Did you Photoshop the X3 in? That'd be weird, though...

You're very observant Constantin, when you start looking the faders are the same, the video monitor picture is the same, the headphones are the same, it becomes spot the difference....... :)

Maybe just at the moment of changeover though?

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and third question: how did you manage to take two almost identical pictures with different recorders in them? Did you Photoshop the X3 in? That'd be weird, though...

 

to me those are clearly different pictures with different angle, no way you can photoshop something like that (well, unless you have tons of spare time)

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to me those are clearly different pictures with different angle, no way you can photoshop something like that (well, unless you have tons of spare time)

With that black surround it would actually be very easy, but so what, it's a very nice bit of kit, in an interesting and unusual arrangement, thanks for the pictures, Philippe.

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I think Philippe made an effort to make the pictures almost identical except for the change out of the Cantar. There are some differences, of course, but I appreciate the effort --- it was a nice and interesting way to present the new Cantar.

 

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Look at the bracket just to the right of the Cantar. It's position moved between the first picture with the old Cantar and the second picture with the new Cantar.

 

 

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Hi, I promised to share my experience with Cantar X3:

I am working on a fast pace TV series with 12 main characters and switched to X3 from 788T last Tuedsday after a long weekend.
I hope I never have to switch back.

first impressions of the real recording experience:
- it is a powerful machine (see the specs). My brain now needs a hardware upgrade to monitor so many tracks. But Cantar made it as easy as possible.
- Haptics are outstanding, X3 feels very well built + engineered. Although i miss the clicking of the scroll wheel of old Cantar X1.
- Software feels like an early release. It  still lacks some promised features, like delay per channel, simultaneous play/rec , EQ and some more.  I experienced one freeze on REC on the last day of this first week, I emailed Aaton right away and they responded immediately. Lets see if they will work out the reason.  Plus the metadata entry could be done in a more streamlined and elegant way, but thats a mere question of programming. Aaton has been very responsive to my feedback this week :-)

but now for the highlights:

Playback monitoring ( a" wow" experience:)
In any mode (Test/Rec/Play) headphone output configs can be adjusted easily  and those configs can be switched through (like with any other top class recorder) with the big Crown on the left side of the machine.  Input or Channel prefade monitoring is accessible on dedicated buttons on both inputs and tracks.

But on playback you got two more factory made headphone output modes:

"B" Config,  which skips the mix tracks and puts the isos on the mixer faders again. When play/rec will work, I guess this will permit you to remix your Iso tracks, which is a nice option if you didn't make it on the first attempt and got the time to try it again.  Until the play/rec feature is released  you can use the option to listen to a specific playback mix that you can change on the fly by only using your faders. It is basically ident with the unique "mix" monitoring option of Cantar X1/X2, which also worked in playback mode.

"A" Config sends only the mixtracks in mono mode to the phones. But also in this config the machine is responsive to pressing the solo buttons on the mixing panel to give you a pre fade track solo of any recorded ISO track in the instant, like it would do in recording mode. This allows for quick access of critical points, where any track can be soloed with just one dedicated button and listened to A/B  against the mix or other tracks.

Not enough with that, in any playback mode there is a timeline with the waveform displayed on the full length of the screen. If you listen to a mix of tracks, the waveform resembles the mix with an overlay of different colors, if you press any SOLO the waveform changes to show only the soloed track. It took me two days of working with the machine to realize this feature but now I find it is really striking. So better I should haver read the whole manual in advance.

Like with previous Cantars the playhead is not controlled by FFW or REW buttons, but can be moved by the jog wheel that sits inside the lefthand Crown wheel. It is big and responsive and gets the playhead  to the desired point on timeline in fractions of a second.

Cantar also recognizes and marks the slate in the timeline, just press the "right" button to let Playback start from there.

So if there is a doubt about a rustling lave within a certain line, a distracting car sound on Boom B  or if a dialogue overlap could be worked out in post, it is a matter of seconds to start Playback from slate, press the respective track solo, see in the waveform where teh character's lines takes place and move the playhead there in just a second. And go back and forth moving over the spot again, do it on different tracks, on the whole mix. This takes NO time. Overwhelming experience :-))

Faders:
Working with the 10 smooth onboard faders feels like luxury, maybe because I've never owned one of the classic mixers. Those faders really outperform my old Cantar X1 or Sound Devices CL9 board in every way. X3 stays with the previous Cantar concept of logarithmic gain structure (versus the  linear concept of the CL9), plus you can chose whether a fully opened fader means 0 dB or +6 dB of gain compared to the ISO track level. The faders are smooth and quiet and ultra precise.  
Because the faders can be assigned to more functions than just mixing ISOs, I find myself wanting more of them. Which maybe will result in the purchase of an additional "Cantarem2" fader panel, once it will be out and can afford.

outputs:
So far I have used only the analogue outs, there is only one dB25 port for them, so make or buy your custom output snake (Tascam pin out). Output configs can be made in the same way like the monitoring and can be changed on the fly even during Recording, which is nice and easy without need to enter a menu. For the moment there is no "playout-mute" function if outs are routed to tracks (vs inputs) but I think that will come with some software update in the near future. I even forgot to ask about it.

Preamps:
From on location use I can say that preamps have a very wide range and are ultra quiet, a listening experience which in part could also be a result of the improved headphone driver. I am sure they are top notch, but  I've not listened to my X3 recordings on external high end devices yet, so I can give no real info about how good they sound.

Limiters:
I "grew up" with Nagra and Cantar Limiters, so I've always been using them as a mixing tool.
The limiters act in the same way they did with previous Cantars, which means they are non audible as Limiters. They cannot be adjusted, only turned on or off (now for line inputs too), which is great for me because I never managed to resemble a Cantar limiter with any adjustable limiting device.

Power:
After having seen some early IBC video I was a little scared about the power needs of X3, but they are within reasonable limits. On a normal 12-13 hs day without shutting down during  lunchbreak, X3 consumes an average of 3 NP1s, (rated 75 WHs,  new) plus one  of the 2 internal batteries, which makes a calculation total of max 275 WHs and will be less in fact. The internal batteries are rated 49 WHs each and power the machine for about 4 1/2 hours (about 2+ hs each). These values are for Dante and AES powered off and depend on the use. Aaton says they will improve power efficiency especially on STOP (no amplifiers work then) , but there is not much "STOP" position time in my current project anyway, except location moves and lunchbreak

Media:
For many the Poly file workarounds were a drawback of the former Cantar models. This has changed. Aaton still keeps it's mono BWAV philosophy, but now only one drive (regardless which) has to be filled with mono files, the rest can be freely chosen between Mono WAV, Mono WAV with separate stereo mixdown, Poly WAV, Poly with duplicate stereo mixdown or mixdown only in WAV, OGG, or MP3 format. Even OGG Polys are an option.
SSD and SD's are working great in rec mode. In this project I deliver Polys but will hand in Monos later to sound post. So I record mono WAV to SSD, a Mono copy to #1 SD for my backup convenience and Polys on SD#2 for picture syncing.
Not one moment when I felt Cantar was challenged by the different formats. It behaves flawless, no matter  which options are combined.
The only thing is that I have not made it to get the media USB port to work, but I did not test it properly yet. The 500 mA available might be not suffice to power my USB drives.  A USB3 cardreader failed to format a CF Card on Cantar. I did not go further in my testing, but I guess some time they will adress that too.

On the SD cards the internal media format is still FAT 32.  

Backup/Sound reports
X3 also provides a "COPY/BACKUP" section which is reliable and simple to use, but performs rather slow even on fast media. So better get your copies in real time during recording. COPY/BACKUP can also provide you with customizable sound reports (.pdf and .ale) to any drive in less than one minute.

Bag:
I managed to squeeze my X3 into my old KTS Cantar bag along with an Octopack, additional two 411'Rxs , one NP1, an RSM 191 matrix  and even two Senn G3 Tx with one additional KTS extension from another mixer bag.  Beware to carry that for the whole day, but the KTS Bag opens nicely on the cart providing access to all plugs and features. For locations that are non cart viable (car scenes, rooftop shots…) antennas and the small EQ/mixer unit get unplugged and the baby can be carried away maintaining its full functionality.  But make sure you find a place to put it down, the who thing including batteries comes up to 10,7 kgs total and you won't be carrying that for long.

Screen:
Very very cool. Sunlight readable. It was mostly a rainy week, but yesterday on a night scene I found myself realizing, that even before in the afternoon sun I had not thought of adjusting  the brightness, but stayed with a backlight value of 25 out of 256 steps. (256 is max)

Cons:
As said, metadata entries offer great possibilities, but the whole process is not yet consistent and far from being intuitive. It absorbs too much of my brain power to type a simple comment and change a few track names. But Aaton promised they will work on it and I believe them :-)
The metadata screen also seems to have a timeout, which means you lose your corrections if you let it stand for more than like a minute without closing it properly. Should be addressed too.
A pro within that: I first tested my X3 with the 2,1 GHZ wireless keyboard of my office PC and it worked seamlessly. So I got myself a small wireless keyboard with a tiny dongle, that fits right beside the headphone plug and it works like on a cable. With the big screen there is no need for an iPad or other devices.

more cons:
The mic pots appear with an ugly plastic coating, plus they are violet color, but they work splendid. Only thing is that maybe they move a little to easy so levels could be changed without intention in a bag.  
But a drawback for me is that Aaton skipped the pots for line input gains. There are solo knobs for each of the 4 analog line inputs and with the Solo+Jogwheel you can adjust levels on the fly, but it is not the same like having a pot to control the gain. I use a small 4 channel direct out EQ to adjust the lavs of the 4 most important wired actors. It provides line level and I find myself wanting to adjust those levels within dynamic takes.
So I am trying try to talk the software engineers  into inventing some overlay for the Mic pots to adress the line inputs, thats maybe just my thing, but I would really like to see that happen.

Overall:
X 3  is the coolest portable multitrack recorder out there at the moment, regardless of it's early software stage.

At least if you think of a mighty multitrack unit with a miniature footprint compared to its handling, mixing and connection capabilities. Right at the moment inputwise I go analog only, with two wireless booms, up to 8 wired actors plus sometimes a stereo ambience apart of the mix.

I will keep my Cantar X1 for the demanding over the shoulder gigs, because it is 3 times more energy efficient and I love it's amber eyes and the full metal retro haptics attached to my chest ;-) For less track count, second unit and no downmix needs, an early  Sonsosax SX-R4 model also stays concurring for my love. But I guess X3 will stay for long time on my cart.

 

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