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Zoom F6 vs Sound devices MixPre II series Dynamic Range


Alex Weinberg

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39 minutes ago, Paul Isaacs said:

Has anyone done rigorous testing with the Zoom at 192k 10 tracks yet? Curious how many people in general use 192 kHz with 8 tracks or more and in what application.

 

Given the fact that many many more F Series recorders have been sold (just based on the much higher volume of discussion of them I see, and seeing more of them in real life too) and that they've been out for a couple of years longer, I've be shocked if they haven't had many users doing @ 192KHz running while running all the tracks.

 

I haven't myself, but I have done a whole feature film @ 96KHz with often my F series recorder maxed out the inputs. And never had any trouble with card speed. 

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I guess after decades of dealing with single-source media—various tape formats, Avid hard drives, SxS and P2 cards, and so on—I'm used to (or resigned to?) using approved media, especially if it's available at a non-extortionate price. I remember with the Sony EX3 XDCAM camera, in response to the high-priced Sony SxS cards, a company (from NZ or Oz?) made a little SD-to-SxS adapter that let you use off-the-shelf SD cards with yoiur EX3 camera. At first you had to choose your SD cards very carefully and hope for the best. Then the community figured out which SD cards worked best in the adapters and things worked OK for at least a some frame rates. Then Sony eventually said something like, those adapters work but we find they're only reliable at 24 & 30fps; we don't find them reliable for over cranked stuff. (I can't recall the limits Sony talked about; but they were helpful). Maybe Sound Devices will say something like that at some point.

 

At anyrate, while I don't think limited media options will be a purchase-decision-driver for me, I agree it would be nice to see more approved media options for Sound Devices recorders. 

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On 9/7/2019 at 1:27 AM, syncsound said:

AFAIK, they aren't segregated by their relative domains (ananog vs digital)

 

Yes, as I understand Sound Devices implementation, that is exactly what they did. 

 

On 9/10/2019 at 8:27 PM, Display Name said:

it would be very comforting for a lot of us to know which card we can trust because SD confirms they do work in their equipment!

 

You do know, it’s the card Sound Devices sell as their own. 

Sound Devices is a defacto manufacturer of SD cards now. Why do you expect them to effectively advertise for other manufacturers cards? It seems from Paul Isaacs comments that they might still be willing to, but I could certainly understand it if they didn’t 

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1 hour ago, Constantin said:

You do know, it’s the card Sound Devices sell as their own. 

Sound Devices is a defacto manufacturer of SD cards now. Why do you expect them to effectively advertise for other manufacturers cards? It seems from Paul Isaacs comments that they might still be willing to, but I could certainly understand it if they didn’t 

 

I am pretty sure it's not the case. The problem is, really, you can't blame them. Anything touching consumers nowadays (and SD memory cards are!) is a bloody jungle.

 

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On 9/9/2019 at 10:09 PM, Randy Thom said:

To Johnny Karlsson...

The ratio of signal to ambient noise (room noise) is exactly the same regardless of anything electronic in your recording system.  So it’s incorrect to imply that amplifying a -40 signal will somehow increase the ambient noise in the recording relative to what it would have been if you had recorded at 0.

 

I did not say that it would change the relative levels. If anyone read it that way, I would say exactly what you said here.

 

Self noise in any of the professional grade gear we use these days is extremely low. Especially AD converters... in 2019 they are the least of our problem.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 9/10/2019 at 11:42 PM, IronFilm said:

 

Given the fact that many many more F Series recorders have been sold (just based on the much higher volume of discussion of them I see, and seeing more of them in real life too) and that they've been out for a couple of years longer, I've be shocked if they haven't had many users doing @ 192KHz running while running all the tracks.

 

I haven't myself, but I have done a whole feature film @ 96KHz with often my F series recorder maxed out the inputs. And never had any trouble with card speed. 

 

If you ever get a day or night off set, it would be very interesting to see if your F8 can manage to record all channels in 24-bit at 192KHz.

Perhaps to a couple of ordinary SDHC/SDXC cards.

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I did quickly turn on my F8n and to do a quick 192KHz recording for you, but it is greyed out, tried a few things like turning off pre roll or turning off dual recording, but nope I can't seem to do 192KHz. I might need to actually read the manual to see what is needed to do 192KHz! Ha

Will have another look later when I've got time

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4 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

I did quickly turn on my F8n and to do a quick 192KHz recording for you, but it is greyed out, tried a few things like turning off pre roll or turning off dual recording, but nope I can't seem to do 192KHz. I might need to actually read the manual to see what is needed to do 192KHz! Ha

Will have another look later when I've got time

 

Manual says eight tracks at 192kHz, try leaving out the L/R mix in the Rec settings. Also need to turn off advanced limiting and automix. I'll give it a go later if I have time.

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4 hours ago, Allen Rowand said:

Also need to turn off advanced limiting and automix. I'll give it a go later if I have time.


Correct, here is the manual:
 

Quote

When 192 kHz is selected, L/R tracks will not be recorded. The Input Delay and Output Delay are also disabled. Moreover, Auto Mix, Ambisonic Mode, and Input Limiter > On/Off > On (Advanced) cannot be set.

https://zoom-na.com/sites/default/files/products/downloads/pdfs/E_F8n_1_0.pdf
That was the missing part of the jigsaw I left out this morning.

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