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SD442 preamps comparison


chrisnewton

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I hope Jeff can comment on this, as I notice in the new Trew magazine that he uses a 442 mixer in his insert car rig. To those mixers out there who use a 442 and also one of the larger desks (Sonosax, Cooper, AD), what differences are there in sound quality (subjectively) between the Sound Devices and other mixers. I understand there are major differences in ergonomics, flexibility etc. as far as using the different styles of machines, but what are the sonic differences? Headroom, susceptability to clipping etc.

Chris Newton 

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My gear is bit non-standard, but the comparison is germane I think.  My "bag" mixer is the combo of an SD 302 and a MixPre.  There are slight diffs between the MixPre and the 302 (I prefer the MixPre for boom mics), probably less diff between the 302 and the 442.  My cart mixer is a modded PSC M6.  The designs are very different--really apples and oranges.  The difference I hear between them is a slight increase in "body" in the sound of the M6 (possibly due the transformers in use), generally warmer sounding than the SD mixers without a loss of top end.  Noise-wise they are similar, with the small mixers seeming to be slightly noisier.  With headroom the small mixers have a slight edge due to their input limiters, but the ability to finely tune trim vs. channel fader on the M6 allows me to control the headroom pretty well without the input limiters.  When I still had my old Audio Developments mixer I had the same thoughts about "body" and "warmth" (again probably due to the transformers), but my AD145 had much less headroom and noticeably more noise.  (I'm not talking about specs, but what I actually hear.) 

Philip Perkins CAS

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I hope Jeff can comment on this, as I notice in the new Trew magazine that he uses a 442 mixer in his insert car rig.

Chris Newton 

Good question ... and I see we are getting some good answers and opinions. Before going into the specific comparison of the SD preamps vs. something like the Cooper, I want to make a comment about camera car work. We have all done a lot of work where we are set up in the cab of the camera car/tow vehicle, and this has always necessitated pulling some equipment off the cart, getting different equipment off the truck, or having a somewhat complete insert car "rig" with duplicates of certain equipment. For the last 10 years or so, I have opted to put the whole sound cart on the camera car when possible and not work from the cab at all. This solves a lot of problems and other than the difficulty, both physically and politically, of getting the cart up onto the tow vehicle, this has worked well for me. On "Elizabethtown" (picture of me in the cab with Deva II, Remote Audio DVD-RAM drive and Sound Devices 442) a crane arm was used on the camera car so it was not possible to put the cart outside.

So, in these situations I do use the SD 442 and just pull the Deva off the cart and set it up in the cab. There is always the compromise going this way (not having my main mixer to use, the Cooper 208) but this compromise is not so much in the area of the quality of the mic preamps (your original question --- sorry for the digression). Using any of the smaller mixers like the SD 442 in the insert car situation what I find lacking is the specific monitoring and routing that is often required for car work. Although the SD 442 is amazingly versitile for its size and price point, providing lots of I/O and decent monitoring, some of these things are not so easy to configure. In a camera car cab setup, I find that I have to add a few outboard boxes to the 442 and several adapter cables, just to feed the Comtek, the CarCom system, possibly a different mix for the AD, a dialog cue for the camera car driver, etc. These are things which are easily done from the main sound cart so when I am able to put the whole sound cart on the camera car I have everything set up just as if I were working "on the ground."

I like the mic preamps in the SD 442 a lot. They definitely have a different coloration from the Cooper mic preamps, but have a very decent sound all their own. I do miss the additional EQ I would have when using the Cooper --- again, in the car situation where I am forced to use the smaller mixer, it is often the sort of scenes where more flexible and full featured EQ would be useful, so the smaller mixer is a compromise.

The simplest answer and most direct (just ignore all the above if it doesn't interest you) is that I do not feel that I am making any serious compromise with regards to the inputs/mic preamps/limiters using the SD 442 over the Cooper. That said, I would not want to be left with ONLY the SD 442 as the main mixer over the Cooper 208.

Regards,  Jeff Wexler

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Guest Jeff Colon

Aside from my subjective opinions regarding the sound quality of individual pre's... I believe they are all good and if I could afford a Cooper or Sax over Yamaha and Mackie I would...

For a small package the 442 has great metering, a really nice sounding limiter with a very useful variable threshold, variable trim pots are also a nice plus.  Just those three features make it possible to optimize the signal path...  I see many eng efp mixers who IMO are unsure of proper levels and err to the conservative... negating the benefits of extended dynamic range and a low noise floor.

As my "insert car" experience is usually me in the back of the police car (should have stayed in school) the i/o capability of just a comtek out is usually enough.

Another nice plus on the 442 is the 4 direct outs, effectively adding four pre's to the Yamaha.

Jeff C

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