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A20 Nexus field reports


Derek H

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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!

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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.

 

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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  • 1 month later...
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

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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.

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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

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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. 

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  • 2 months later...

Hi all,

 

So i finished my first shoot using the Nexus and A20 mini along with SMQv.

 

Overall i am still very impressed by the Nexus/A20mini combo. The range was a bit less good than the test i did at home but that was to be expected. The A20 mini were doing pretty much as good as the SMQvs. What i really liked was the Nexlink. It worked perfectly and i was able to control the A20 mini at all time on set. It's very reactive and gave me the opportunity to switch off, change rf power in a blink of an eye between takes. 

 

I was using 2mW as my default setting which covered maybe 60% of the situations. I pushed the A20 minis to 10 or 20mW every now and then and rarely used the 40mW setting (it did save me from moving the antennas closer to set a few time). I did notice that the A20minis had a tough time going through metal (car, fences and so on). In these situations the SMQv were definitely better.

 

I used the Nexlink a lot. Mostly to change rf power, turn the units on and off and name them. I didn't change the frequency than often but when i did it worked perfectly as well. The only small drawback is when you turn a unit on for the first time, it take a bit more time to be "online" and useable as a SMQv. No problem for the start of the day or in between scenes but for the quick last second decision Plant mic for example, it took some getting use to. I usually started rolling and by the time the clap was clapped and action was yelled, the mic was working.

 

The battery was a non issue for me. I used the NPBX1 from Sony and with some battery management (turning on and off with Nexlink) they lasted me until lunch 99% of the time. When the did not, i changed them and we were good to go. So basically i used up to 3 batteries per unit per day.

 

Gain forward is definitely a game changer for me and i can't wait to have all my Tx with this feature.

 

I kept 4 channel of SMQv but switched now to an all SD wireless as i was really super impressed by them. I would grab my A20 mini first and get the SMQv for the scene were i needed more than the amount of A20 mini i had. 

 

I can only recommend this system. For narrative shoot where you work under a controlled environment, it the perfect tool. For a documentary shoot, with unpredictable condition, access to the person wearing the Tx, etc, then maybe less (although with the battery doubler the maybe yes).

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For this project i was using the folowing:

 

SD 888 with the Nexus on top

2 Lectro SRc into a rf distro then into the cascade out of the Nexus

2 Wisycom LFA with a +4dB gain to make up for the cascade out loss.

 

I did remote my antennas a few time using my cable roll of 25m BNC. It worked perfectly. The only thing which was not working yet was the remote control of the LFA while using the cascade out. Apparently it's a known bug and SD is working on it, at least that's what they told me when i wrote to support.

 

I did not use Dante or analog connection since the Nexus was plug into the 888 through the Quickdock.

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On 8/5/2023 at 3:16 AM, Ben B said:

I was using 2mW as my default setting which covered maybe 60% of the situations. I pushed the A20 minis to 10 or 20mW every now and then and rarely used the 40mW setting (it did save me from moving the antennas closer to set a few time). I did notice that the A20minis had a tough time going through metal (car, fences and so on). In these situations the SMQv were definitely better.

Wasn't using a Nexus today, but a different digital system (Sony DWX Digital Wireless) and I noticed something quite similar. 

There was a shoot inside a car for the first scene of today, and although it was inside a car I thought I'd be perfectly fine with range using my wips while sitting inside because I was right next to the driveway where the car was.

 

But... nope! While my two Lectrosonics bodypacks on the talent, and my plant mic hiding in the visor (also going into a Lectrosonics) were totally rock solid with perfectly fine reception, the boom audio (my Key Boom Op was inside the car in the back seat, hand holding a MKH50 with a Sony DWX transmitter) was a little bit edgy with minor drop outs. But running a single BNC cable out the window, and putting one Lectrosonics SNA600a dipole antenna outside and on the other side of the bedroom window immediately fixed that issue. 

 

Quote

I was using 2mW as my default setting which covered maybe 60% of the situations.

Ditto about a very low mW being enough for many scenarios, a couple of weeks ago I did a simple little short film by myself, and I used 1mW for the entire film! (because I was booming it myself, of course my boom transmitter was always very close to my bag! Thus 1mW was all I needed, and thus I got to enjoy great battery life)

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  • 2 months later...

So I'm 10 weeks into using the system .. mostly  happy.

 

 

I'm having an issue with the a20 minis.. I'm finding that they randomly turn them selves off !  Happens maybe 5 times a week. Almost certain it's related to the wireless lighting control system.

Had very minimal contact back from SD... would like to know if this is happening to others..

 

 

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8 hours ago, thope said:

So I'm 10 weeks into using the system .. mostly  happy.

 

 

I'm having an issue with the a20 minis.. I'm finding that they randomly turn them selves off !  Happens maybe 5 times a week. Almost certain it's related to the wireless lighting control system.

Had very minimal contact back from SD... would like to know if this is happening to others..

 

 

Happy to trouble shoot this with you offline. It'll have nothing to do with the wireless lighting control because NexLink is a protocol with its own proprietary command set and packet format.

Feel free to reach out to me or Danny, Laura, Zach or Dennis at SD.

 

Paul

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On 10/18/2023 at 1:53 PM, Paul Isaacs said:

Happy to trouble shoot this with you offline. It'll have nothing to do with the wireless lighting control because NexLink is a protocol with its own proprietary command set and packet format.

Feel free to reach out to me or Danny, Laura, Zach or Dennis at SD.

 

Paul

Quick update on this, Trevor. We have clarified that this is NOT a NexLink control issue since transmitters are not powering off, they remain on and continue to record fine. This is mostly likely an RF issue which could be caused by a myriad of different environment or setup reasons. We need a lot more info before we can determine what the cause is. Someone from SD support should be reaching out to you pretty soon.

 

Paul

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Hi Paul,

 

Thanks for the update. Have you seen the video I sent through via my dealer? I'd be surprised if it was just an rf issue. I've had 2 actors standing next to each other in a scene and 1 of the packs will just totally shut down and the other will still have full RF. If I don't do anything then the pack will just come back on its own after about 20 seconds. If I turn it on again via the nexus it comes back quicker. Problem is always worse when the ratpac wireless dmx is in use. 

 

Thanks for your help so far

 

Trev

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12 hours ago, thope said:

Hi Paul,

 

Thanks for the update. Have you seen the video I sent through via my dealer? 

 

Trev

 

We're still waiting for your dealer to pass the video on to us. We'll chase them up. Let's take this troubleshooting off line now - there are too many variables to do this via text.

 

Thx

 

Paul

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