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Pix 970 - Delivered


Richard Lightstone, CAS

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On the other side of things;

 

On the Dante, just one point of failure takes out all the tracks.

 

Just playing devil's advocate.

Rightly so. That becomes the question really. Do you totally unwire a rig for the clutter and weight of analog to go digital all the way? What is the back up plan? Hopefully just one cable, but... like Philip says, all those cables are potential problem points but... All in all, I love the new tools, but they do beg many more work flow questions.

CrewC

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On the other side of things;

 

On the Dante, just one point of failure takes out all the tracks.

 

Just playing devil's advocate.

In live recording I generally find that most failures are due to human error--sometimes from patching, sometimes from cable failures etc.  To me, fewer cables= more reliable.  The more a rig is moved around (as in a location rig), the more the issue of large numbers of connections comes into play.  This is my experience anyhow.  I like the idea of fewer cables to check.

 

philp

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"I also wanted to get away from my dissatisfaction with Zaxcom, who have dug their heels in and refused to come up with a Dante or even Madi machine, after more than two years of the Sound Devices Pix brand."

 

Dear Richard,

We simply do not discuss our product development in public. Not that I can confirm or deny anything because as everyone knows we get criticized for announcing products too early. So maybe this time we are taking our time to make sure any new Deva that might come along is totally ready. A safe bet would be that we are innovating as we always have. I think this is evident in every aspect of every product we have ever put out.  A phone call to me will usually yield our direction on any product line we are involved in. It would be wise not to assume what Zaxcoms direction is based  on what has not been announced.

 

Best Wishes

Glenn

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Dear Glenn,

I couldn't wait anymore. Good luck, I'm sure that by the end of this year, or maybe at NAB 2015 that great new product will be unveiled.

 

On June 3, 2013, I posted this plea;

 

"This year there wil be many of us who will be migrating to Dante networking, specifically Zaxcom's major competitor with the Pix260i.

Over the next year there will be a lot of us faithful Deva users dumping our Deva 4, 5 and even 16's as they will not be able to compete with the ability to record 16 -32 AES tracks with a simple Cat 5E cable.

So I'm urging Glenn and company to build an upgradable factory retrofit of our Devas to the Dante specs. Think of the ability to use your Deva 16 with all 16 tracks via AES and not the current kludge of 8 AES combined with 8 analog.

I urge Zaxcom to explore this idea and if the cost of the new cards, licensing, labor, etc., is less than a brand new Pix260i - then it'a a win-win for us Deva lovers and Zaxcom!

You could poll all the currently registered Deva users and find out if you have a substantial number of customers to attempt this future-proofing of our recorders.
Otherwise, I foresee a major drop in Deva customers.

Respectfully,

 

Richard Lightstone, CAS

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On the other side of things; On the Dante, just one point of failure takes out all the tracks. Just playing devil's advocate.

 

Actually, there is a backup Dante ethernet connection. At the LSC Dante seminar a year or so ago, they demonstrated that if you have both ethernet cables connected, if you yank one, the other one will immediately pick up and not even drop a frame of audio or timecode.

 

I'm impressed with the idea of replace a dozen analogue XLR connectors and a timecode cable with one $5 CAT-5 cable. It does make the cart wiring very, very easy. If I did a system like that, I think I'd still have an "auxiliary" recorder like the 788 or an equivalent Zaxcom device just for bag use and as backup. It wouldn't help me if I was recording 16+ tracks, but it would at least get enough tracks and a mix down to get us through the day.

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Actually, there is a backup Dante ethernet connection. At the LSC Dante seminar a year or so ago, they demonstrated that if you have both ethernet cables connected, if you yank one, the other one will immediately pick up and not even drop a frame of audio or timecode.

 

 

 

 

Yep, Dante has full redundancy built in.  At it's simplest, 2 Cat5 cables from Desk to Recorder.  If you have other Dante devices in the system, you would have to have two separate switches for the primary and backup networks.

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RL: " Zaxcom, who have dug their heels in and refused... "

I think that is an unfortunate, and inappropriate characterization;  If Zaxcom had put their efforts into a new DEVA rather than MAXX, or the wireless modulation, or even Nomad, there would be bitter cries from the other (and bigger) side of this group.

I do not feel they have refused any challenge, or anything, although they have a different set of priorities they are following...

I find the sentiment " I couldn't wait anymore " much more appropriate, although the idea of " this future-proofing of our (old) recorders. " is also a non-starter in the current technological environment.

another thing about technological developments: no one company is always first with everything...

 

as always: you can please all of the people on jwsoundgroup...NEVER!

Edited by studiomprd
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I've just sent this request in to SD regarding the 970; I would like to stay in the main record window, push an "f" key on my keyboard and immediately be able to either toggle to the next slate letter, or input the new scene and take. I need to be able to do this quickly and efficiently because there are only a few seconds between the time I hear the slate and the director says action. I also may have to add info to the note field and I don't want to move out of the main screen if possible.

Also, I have used Boom Recorder with good success for many years. How could I take the Dante output of the 970 and run Boom Recorder on a Mac with virtual sound card. has anyone tried this? thanks, Patrick

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Richard, this makes me wonder... My 970 doesn't turn up till next week sometime and I've been unable to confirm from the manual whether the 970 and other pix units output audio (from whatever port is assigned to each track) while in record or record standby - as opposed to playback. That would be required if Ramsay wants to pass Dante onwards through the 970, if the original audio coming into the 970 is from Analog, AES or MADI inputs. I assumed it did, but as you have one, can you confirm that either way? If it does, does the track have to be record-armed, or simply have an active input patched to pass audio to it's output (which Ramsay - and I - would need to feed LTC from a 970 analog input through to Boom Recorder via Dante without recording it on a 970 track).

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Nick,

I'm unclear what console Patrick is using and how he plans to route his audio. First I would never want to daisy-chain my audio from one recorder to another. For example, routing audio out of my console into the Pix and then the Pix audio to Boom Recorder. (We'll leave TC out of this discussion as I answer that here: ).

 

If the Pix fails then no audio would pass through to Boom Recorder. I'd prefer to route the audio to each recorder separately, so I have redundancy. Of course if the console goes down - well, yell CUT real loud.

 

In Dante, the Controller is how you will be patching your audio into a device and out of a device. Location Sound held a great symposium over a year ago, entirely on Dante. Here is the link. 

 

 

In regards to the Pix audio pass through. The short answer is that audio is not muted to an output of the Pix. Muting and un-muting a channel only affects whether that track will be recorded.

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Ramsey: " there are only a few seconds between the time I hear the slate and the director says action. "

Many of us are used to knowing the slate information before the AD says:"picture is up"... well before.

 

RL: " if the console goes down - well, yell CUT real loud. "

even then, I would not use the "C" word, although I would be making some noise!

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Thanks for the reply, Richard. I'm very familiar with Dante controller, and routing for redundancy - but I was planning the same sort of routing that Ramsay was as regards using the 970 as the master timecode generator, and also as an interface to get timecode into the Dante world so it reaches boom recorder - just as you describe in your recent reply to his other post. Thinking about replying to him made me realize I wasn't sure it would pass through a track that wasn't record enabled. From your reply to him, it seems all will be well. I'm willing to risk TC not making it to the backup recorder in case of a problem with the 970 - audio will still get there from my 01v96, directly routed via Dante, assuming the Dante ports on the 970 are still daisy-chaining. There's no real redundancy available with a computer running DVSC as it can only exist on a single Dante path - there will always be single points of possible failure whether daisy-chain or star topology is used.

cheers,

nick

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Thanks for the replies. I use the Sonosax SX8D as my console. I'm wondering how Boom Recorder would pick up the TC from the Dante feed from the 970? The 970 being the master clock/recorder. Senator, in the world of series TV, the camera assistants are sometimes asking for the slate number as we we are rolling camera. Times have changed.

Now on to an even more complicated idea I had. I'd like to create a FOH setup where I can be far from the smoky set and use a dante feed from the set using the Bob system Lectrosonics makes. I'd like to send the feed from all my radios into the BOB, Cat 5 it directly in to the 970, take an analogue pass through feed of up to 8 channels into my Somosax, mix the scene and output my mono mix back to the 970 all in real time. This is a bit complicated and just a mental excercise at this point, but I'm wondering if it would actually be possible, as we wait for Dante consoles to appear. Cheers, Patrick

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Now on to an even more complicated idea I had. I'd like to create a FOH setup where I can be far from the smoky set and use a dante feed from the set using the Bob system Lectrosonics makes. I'd like to send the feed from all my radios into the BOB, Cat 5 it directly in to the 970, take an analogue pass through feed of up to 8 channels into my Somosax, mix the scene and output my mono mix back to the 970 all in real time. This is a bit complicated and just a mental excercise at this point, but I'm wondering if it would actually be possible, as we wait for Dante consoles to appear. Cheers, Patrick

 

You'd be glad you did it, when you draw it all out on paper it doesn't look quite so hard after all.  Now, where is that Venue w/ Dante ports?

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