A20 Nexus field reports

[Derek H]

Inviting anyone who has shoot experience with the new A20 Nexus system to share their thoughts here. 
 

I’ve read the material, watched the videos but I know I have questions that only time can tell things like…

 

- Stability… does it ever crash?

- Bugs?

- A20 battery life? Is it practical to get 5-6hrs from these if you’re actively managing them?

- Nexlink Interference to other film gear?

- Transmitter durability

 -Range!

 

 Sound mixers only please! Thanks!

[rich]

i havent used mine as much as id like, but...

 

the only not quite crash i have had is when i was finding what didnt work when using wisycom LFA antennas. as far as i am aware team SD are aware of the issue, and hopefully a firmware fix will be available soon.

no issues with stability otherwise.

 

tx battery life when managing with Nexlink would easily get to lunch. about 25-35% left most often.

couldnt comment on nexlink interfering with other gear. but i imagine it to be no worse than a set full of peoples phones with bluetooth on and any other frequency hopping 2.4GHz tech.

i have had 6 A20 minis since they were available. i have had to replace one battery catch in that time. thats all.

range is fine. but again i havent had enough time with it to work out how to get the performance from it that i feel i could get with my A10 receivers in an A10 rack. though i am waiting on the aforementioned firmware fix for the wisycom antennas before getting to far into testing again. 
and thats not to say range is poor. just in walk tests i did initially i didnt get as far as i could previously. maybe 10m difference.
though i felt i needed to use 10mw output, rather than the 2mw i was using previously.

 

[Ben B]

1 hour ago, rich said:

the only not quite crash i have had is when i was finding what didnt work when using wisycom LFA antennas. as far as i am aware team SD are aware of the issue, and hopefully a firmware fix will be available soon.

Thanks for your review. I will be using the A20 Nexus for the first time in a real world situation next month and i also have the LFA antenna. In the test i did at home i didn't notice anything. Would you care sharing what your experience was?

[rich]

there is a bug when using the cascade outs and the wisycom LFA remote control function.

the antenna behaves normally in terms of RF. but when using the cascade output, the remote function is buggy.

if you arent using the cascade out, you will be fine.

[Ben B]

I will be using the cascade out for that film. But if it‘s just affecting the remote control functions of the LFA it‘s a problem i can live with for this film. 
If the system works well on this project i‘ll be fully switching to the A20 so won‘t be using the cascade out anymore.

i‘ll be happy to report after a few weeks of using the Nexus, A10 Tx and A20 mini.

[Derek H]

Please do!

[rich]

1 hour ago, Ben B said:

I will be using the cascade out for that film. But if it‘s just affecting the remote control functions of the LFA it‘s a problem i can live with for this film. 
If the system works well on this project i‘ll be fully switching to the A20 so won‘t be using the cascade out anymore.

i‘ll be happy to report after a few weeks of using the Nexus, A10 Tx and A20 mini.

please dont make the same mistake that i did, and remember that when you use the cascade out, you lose 3.5dB from the system. so you will need to add an additional 4dB of gain to your antennas to compensate.

[Ben B]

11 hours ago, rich said:

please dont make the same mistake that i did, and remember that when you use the cascade out, you lose 3.5dB from the system. so you will need to add an additional 4dB of gain to your antennas to compensate.

Will do.

My goal is to primarily use the A20 mini. I kept 4 channel of Lectro as fall back solution that i know very well and for the occasional higher channel count scene. 

The 3.5 dB loss would affect only the 2 SRc plugged into the cascade out, am i right?

My setup will be LFA into Nexus, cascade out into a RF Multi then into the 2 SRc. So far in the testing i did at home i have good range. I'll try a walk test this weekend.

[rich]

1 hour ago, Ben B said:

 

The 3.5 dB loss would affect only the 2 SRc plugged into the cascade out, am i right?

 

no. that was the mistake i made. it also affects the signal to the Nexus.

it does say so in the manual. but i failed to notice that. repeatedly.

[Ben B]

i see. i'll put 4dB of gain on my LFA and will get back to reading the manual then.

[Ben B]

It seems the fix might already be here on version 1.30!

[thope]

On 4/13/2023 at 3:13 AM, Ben B said:

I will be using the cascade out for that film. But if it‘s just affecting the remote control functions of the LFA it‘s a problem i can live with for this film. 
If the system works well on this project i‘ll be fully switching to the A20 so won‘t be using the cascade out anymore.

i‘ll be happy to report after a few weeks of using the Nexus, A10 Tx and A20 mini.

Hi Ben,

 

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the using the system, now that you've been at it a while?

 

 

Thanks in advance 

 

Trev

[Ben B]

So far i've only been doing test at home. I did some walk test from my building with my girlfriend wearing one A20 mini on one ankle and one SMQv (100mW) on the other. I chose ankle because that's a placement i use a lot on drama and i think it's also one of the worst placement RF wise. Setup was the A20 mini into the nexus and the SMQv into an SRC in ratio mode connected to the cascade out of the nexus and nexus connected to 2 LFA antenna with 4dB of gain at the antenna. I was on the first floor with antenna through the window. Clean and coordinated frequencies for both Tx.

I had the A20 on 2mW to start, but quickly had to increase to 10mW (as soon as we had a couple walls between us), and then 20mW when she got further away. The SMQv dropped out first and i pushed the a20 mini to 40mW and got more range. I had line of sight pretty much all the way. About 100-120 meters away (still had range on the A20mini) she got around a corner of a building. The range dropped significantly but still had clean audio and when she got on the other side of the building i had heavy drop outs. There i still had connection to Nexlink. I did all the changes on the A20 mini while she was walking away and they took effect very fast. So pretty much as advertised by SD.

I am pretty impressed of the range of the A20 mini. I know my SMQv pretty well and they always got me enough range to do 99% of the jobs so it was a good surprise to see the a 20 mini go further. But that test wasn't on set with all the RF crap we have spraying around.

I can see the 2mW being useful when the cart can be pretty close to talents and otherwise use the 20mW to cover 90% of the situations. But that is yet to be proven on set. 

The nexus performs flawlessly so far beside a bug on the antenna control when using the cascade out. The bug has been reported to SD and they should be working on it i guess. I'm using the combination of Nexus and SRc only for that film, i'll transition fully to A20min and A10Tx for the next film this year.

 

I will start my first feature with that setup on Monday so i'll report back after the 6 weeks of shooting. We'll shoot indoor, outdoor, city, mountains, cars and all that so it will give me a good array of different situations. I'll report back then.

[thope]

52 minutes ago, Ben B said:

So far i've only been doing test at home. I did some walk test from my building with my girlfriend wearing one A20 mini on one ankle and one SMQv (100mW) on the other. I chose ankle because that's a placement i use a lot on drama and i think it's also one of the worst placement RF wise. Setup was the A20 mini into the nexus and the SMQv into an SRC in ratio mode connected to the cascade out of the nexus and nexus connected to 2 LFA antenna with 4dB of gain at the antenna. I was on the first floor with antenna through the window. Clean and coordinated frequencies for both Tx.

I had the A20 on 2mW to start, but quickly had to increase to 10mW (as soon as we had a couple walls between us), and then 20mW when she got further away. The SMQv dropped out first and i pushed the a20 mini to 40mW and got more range. I had line of sight pretty much all the way. About 100-120 meters away (still had range on the A20mini) she got around a corner of a building. The range dropped significantly but still had clean audio and when she got on the other side of the building i had heavy drop outs. There i still had connection to Nexlink. I did all the changes on the A20 mini while she was walking away and they took effect very fast. So pretty much as advertised by SD.

I am pretty impressed of the range of the A20 mini. I know my SMQv pretty well and they always got me enough range to do 99% of the jobs so it was a good surprise to see the a 20 mini go further. But that test wasn't on set with all the RF crap we have spraying around.

I can see the 2mW being useful when the cart can be pretty close to talents and otherwise use the 20mW to cover 90% of the situations. But that is yet to be proven on set. 

The nexus performs flawlessly so far beside a bug on the antenna control when using the cascade out. The bug has been reported to SD and they should be working on it i guess. I'm using the combination of Nexus and SRc only for that film, i'll transition fully to A20min and A10Tx for the next film this year.

 

I will start my first feature with that setup on Monday so i'll report back after the 6 weeks of shooting. We'll shoot indoor, outdoor, city, mountains, cars and all that so it will give me a good array of different situations. I'll report back then.

Thanks so much for your reply.

I did a very similar test last week and had similar results. The nexlink did indeed extend to double the range of the audio stream.

 

Really keen to see how the transmitters hold up after a shoot. The battery door looks very breakable to me.

 

Trev

[rich]

56 minutes ago, thope said:

Thanks so much for your reply.

I did a very similar test last week and had similar results. The nexlink did indeed extend to double the range of the audio stream.

 

Really keen to see how the transmitters hold up after a shoot. The battery door looks very breakable to me.

 

Trev

I’ve had A20s form as soon as they were available. Since then I have only had to replace one battery door clip. 
and since they changed the seal on the door so it doesn’t disintegrate, there have been no other issues.