Wireless vs Hardline to boom

[Jim Gilchrist]

"The West Wing", multiple nominations was all wireless, all Lectro! (WB supplied gear, incl Lectro IFB)

As we did shooting for them here including the episode Len Schmitz was nominated for, although it was our equipment not WB's. And Audio Ltd. radios for those days.

TWW shot mostly in parks or on the street here in DC. The NPS has some serious constraints about blocking access to the public for all but the most major stuff so we tend to go wireless boom for episodic and spots since parks are where a lot of the work is.

Back to the sample Philip posted from gearslutz, it sounds like the radio mic system used needs a tune up. A system that's working properly shouldn't sound like that even with too little gain. My 2 cents.

Best regards,

Jim

[Eric Toline]

I listened quickly, but there is a difference in quality between the left and right.  I hear more detail in the mids, upper mids and high-end on the right.  The left sounds muddier, and a little more closed.  However, the difference could be attributable to the actors voices, could be placement, could be orientation in the room.  Same mics I assume?  (If not, that is another big factor)

I'd say that the wireless is on the left and the wired is on the right.

I preferred the single voice track on the left in a some what echoey room. The track on the right with two voices , one a female were fine but I liked the left better.

Eric

[soundtrane]

Jon - Many thanks for your reply... Good to see you are confident with Lectro as you have used them all these years - I too feel the same.

Senator - not in the least, and i would not expect any great discerning ear out here anyways - only I and I alone could feel any difference - and usually it meant tweaking the Tx gain to adjust a little. As Jeff mentions - getting the mic in the best position does most of the job. Once that little electrical signal is in the line, we can only do our best to get it to tape (hard drive). Of course, it is an essential part of the job - and not easy in any case...

For me - in most situations - it is not a question of PURE fidelity - if that is what i wanted, i should be in a good studio... In the field - it is more of getting intelligible consistent and fairly clear (compared to the noise floor - if one can call it that out there in the field) lines... Out there i am listening to performances of actors in scenes - not performances of musicians in a studio. If i were to record Yo Yo Ma's cello i would do it in a great studio room.... 192Khz, 24/32/64 bit and whatever else possible.

-vin

[soundtrane]

Here is an audio sample recorded with two booms, one was a hardwire and the other was wireless.

Gabi, sorry - I'll certainly listen to your recording and comment about it later (it's 3.25 AM) - but this is really off-topic an exercise.

The question here is really about going with cable from boom mic or going wireless from boom mic.

-vin

[Mark LeBlanc]

Thanks to all for contributing to my original question.  After a call to Lectrosonics, they recommend a different cable to go from Denecke Phantom power to SMDa transmitter. I purchased the MC35 cable and put it to the test yesterday and I'm really happy to report it has done the trick in taming the spikes to the transmitter. I used it in a crowd scene with fireworks going off with lots of screams and had no overload issues with the transmitter set at Audio level 22.  I also purchased a closeout SR and had Lectro convert to the new SR with removable antenna, really nice.  I'm running in frequency block 470, not much traffic in that range so far..

Thx

Mark L