Am I wrong about this?

B

bobafet1

Active member
So, I'm trying to justify spending $3-$4k on a decent field recorder/mixer because everyone says I must have one to do professional sound recording. Honestly, wouldn't it be cheaper to just plug my laptop into a Mackie 8 channel mixer and use that setup to record just as good of sound? I understand that I will be sacrificing mobility but that isn't my concern for now. I just want to know if I can get the same/better results using the proposed setup vs. a super expensive field mixer??

your thoughts?
 
Are you looking to get paid by other people to do production sound? If yes, then the appropriate gear is basically mandatory.

If you're just looking to do sound for your own things, then you can work around less than ideal equipment.
 
A dedicated field recorder like Sound Devices is much easier to use, has better features and will give better sound quality than the laptop rig you suggest. How much better the quality it is from your standpoint, how much you appreciate the convenience and reliability and how much you want to pay for it is your choice only.
 
It really depends on mobility. Using a mackie mixer (like the Onyx with the firewire out) has been done. It's not beyond the realm of possibility. Just keep in mind unless you get a DC mod for it, you have to run off AC. Mackie's aren't bad mixers. The first mixer I ever learned was a 1604, and they are quite capable units. I had a mackie in my old video game sound design studio for temp dialogue, music playback, and routing my main monitors. Having a mackie can serve many different purposes for you in the long run. If it works for what you are doing, go for it. My only beef with them is that they don't really use separate channel strips, so if a channel goes bad, you have to send the whole board in, you can't just pull out a channel like on a high end field panel mixer like a cooper or sonosax. But again, they are quite capable, and inexpensive considering what they can do.
 
FWIW,

I have a Motu Traveler Mk3 FW interface which costs well under a grand. It has four pretty decent pre-amps, is like a audio swiss army knife for inputs - outputs, drives my edit suite monitors, has about the same footprint as a laptop (stackable) and it can be powered via 12v, AC, or firewire. Now this is no bag mixer, but if your levels aren't jumping around and you don't need mobility, this is a decent choice for laptop recording at a much nicer price if you already have a laptop. One note: the included software is powerful, but kinda kludgy, so expect some learning curve time, but all the same functions can be adjusted with the physical controls, which are equally difficult. Everything is there, it just takes some practice.

Grant
 
recording is not what you get, is how you use it. Mic placement, mic type is the first to consider and heavily change according to what you are recording.
Mics will induce "color" of sound, and you could get a technically perfect recording with the wrong color, and it will sounds bad.
then there is the preamp that will induce noise. So usually good preamp is a must and is found only on high quality (expensive) equipement.
But if you record hard rock band, there are chances you can do that even with noisy preamp.
And preamp must be matched with mics, low signal mics need the preamp to work harder, then more noise. So an average preamp with a high level mic could be better than
a weak mic with an good preamp set at maximum.
after that , usually all is digital and do not makes difference. A small recorder like the H1 ($99) should be as good as the most expensive device at several thousand $ at throwing bits on a memory card.
So invest in good mics, eventually in a good preamp, and then you can feed the line level signal to any recording/mixing device.
 
nosys70 said:
A small recorder like the H1 ($99) should be as good as the most expensive device at several thousand $ at throwing bits on a memory card.
So invest in good mics, eventually in a good preamp, and then you can feed the line level signal to any recording/mixing device.
Click to expand...

Best field recorders give 120 dB dynamic range and S/N ratio, cheap pocket recorders struggle to get 90 dB S/N ratio, even if they record an additional 8 bits of trash to give "24 bit resolution". There is a reason why the best AD converters cost several thousand dollars per channel, thinking that the $3 ADC chip in H1 can match that is preposterous.

Naturally this difference in quality will be and often is lost with bad mics, bad miking, bad material, bad post processing, bad lossy compression and bad reproduction systems are used, but it is there in the beginning.
 
Petrus said:
Best field recorders give 120 dB dynamic range and S/N ratio, cheap pocket recorders struggle to get 90 dB S/N ratio, even if they record an additional 8 bits of trash to give "24 bit resolution". There is a reason why the best AD converters cost several thousand dollars per channel, thinking that the $3 ADC chip in H1 can match that is preposterous.

Naturally this difference in quality will be and often is lost with bad mics, bad miking, bad material, bad post processing, bad lossy compression and bad reproduction systems are used, but it is there in the beginning.
Click to expand...
Correct me if I'm wrong but provided you feed the recorder with line level, and even assuming you use the best preamp out there, even the best mics' self-noise will make that difference in SNR pretty much irrelevant, at least with the small-diaphragm condensers used in dialogue recording (for instance Schoeps MK41 has a 79 dB SNR).

That's not to say that there isn't a difference between a $100 recorder and a $10000 one but I agree with nosys70 that with today's digital recorders there are many elements in the chain that have a much higher impact on sound quality than the recorder's converters.
 
It is true that other things matter more than the quality of ADCs in the recorder. Still, the recorder is NOT just throwing bits to the memory card, it is also making up those bits with its ADC. It would be different it the recorder was fed with digital signal, then it would be just a bit bucket. But cheap recorders have no digital in.

About mics self noise. With strong signal the S/N ratio is 79 dB like you say in your Shoeps example, but that is within the signal. If there is no signal or the signal is low the mic is much more quiet. Basically what happens is that mic is as quiet as a 17 dB SPL signal without a signal (or something, = mic's self noise figure), when signal is fed to it it kind of drags the noise floor up 79 dB below the peak, which could be somewhere 140 dB SPL (did not bother to look up the exact figures for the said mic).
 
Sorry Bobafet,

Back to your question, what are you recording? Live Events, Bands, TV Commercials, Films, Documentaries?
 
Soundie76 said:
Sorry Bobafet,

Back to your question, what are you recording? Live Events, Bands, TV Commercials, Films, Documentaries?
Click to expand...

I'm recording commercials and short films. Up until recently I've been a boom op and so now I'm considering kicking it up a notch and investing in some decent equipment. I just figured if I'm going to bring a sound cart in then why not use the setup I had suggested. If it is junk, then that is one thing. But, if it will work and all I'm sacrificing is mobility then why the heck not. I thought going this route might streamline the process since I can organize all the sound right from the laptop and dump it on a portable hard drive for delivery. I would think it would be easier to just set up a cart and run cables to a boom op and have all my wireless units along side me. I could be wrong about this though???

I'm still learning though so I'm not sure if I'm on to something or if there is error in my ways. At any rate, I appreciate all/any info that you guys offer!

BTW, what mics do you suggest? I've been doing a bit of reading and it seems like most people are using B6's for lavs, G2's for trans/receivers, and SD for the mixer/recorder.
 
THere are a number of "answers". First since you have boomed you probably realize this but for other newbies that may be reading this, the "quality" of the sound recordings have a LOT more factors involved that the mic and the recorder. The experience and knowledge of the mixer and the boom op have much more to do with what you end up with that the equipment they happen to be using. So having X box or mic will not get you "professional" sound.

However I think your question is more about what it takes to do sound professionally, ie what you need to bring to the table to be seen and get work as a professional.

That's kind of a different thing. And it depends a LOT on your clients. Low budget films tend to be more flexible and more results oriented. Ads are going to be more about the toys in that you will have a bunch more folks who don't know much but have an opinion and a lot of them have a say. For them your life will be easier if you have equipment that is familiar and more "standard". Others who actually do a lot of that can give you more details, I'm usually there to record FX and that is a totally different set of rules.

Quality wise, going from a mixer that has a Firewire out into a computer running BoomRecorder is a very high quality solution, depending on the mixer. You get really nice sound reports and post will thank you (well twill think kind thoughts anyway). This is a setup that has been used on a fair number of larger budget shoots and "professional".

A dinky recorder is not going to pass the scrutiny test on many/any paid gigs except as a safety backup or plant mic, maybe. Sound quality wise most of them are OK. There is so much other noise coming in in most cases that even if they are not the best there is probably not going to much of a practical difference. The BIG difference is in functionality. If your supposed to be a professional squinting to try and find the right tiny button to press just doesn't cut it. You also have to think of the impression. You don't want to show up with an equipment package you could buy on a few days wages, it just looks bad.

The other big ? is mobility. Battery operated gear costs a LOT more as a rule than boxes you can plug in. Low budget films may require you to go over the shoulder and that isn't going to happen with a laptop.

So the real answer to your question comes from you and who you think your client bas is going to be starting out. You can always add as your client base grows.
 
Noiz2,

you are right on the money! For now, my client base is mainly grad students from USC, UCLA, Chapman, AFI, etc. Since I've made friends with most of them I get called to boom on their "student gigs" or for production work they got hired for. I've done a feature and several commercials already and so I've noticed I've been getting a lot more requests for sound work since word of mouth spreads fast. As you said though, I want to be seen as a professional and would like to move up a bit. I don't want to be that guy who just gets by. As the old saying goes, "anything worth doing is worth doing right". So, this is why I'm considering investing in better equipment and trying to learn all I can about the subject.

I got away with borrowing a friends 702 for the time being but that well may dry up soon. I figured I can just piece together a sound cart with my laptop and a high quality mixer for less then it would cost for a field mixer/recorder and still get the same/better results. Heck, I can probably even clean up some of the audio during the long breaks. I'm sure the post guys would appreciate that level of service. I understand mobility is a factor and so that is why I thought about piecing something together that was somewhat compact.

I've been looking at a few SD mixers and it seems as though it may be more difficult adjusting the tiny dials/buttons on several channels while the action is happening. It seems as though it would be easier doing it on a larger mixer.

The bottom line is that I'm still learning about all this so I appreciate all the advice, even if its not what I want to hear sometimes.

Thanks
 
One option could be to go with something like a mackie as a front end with boom recorder on the laptop. I remember when boom recorder first came out and I was pretty impressed with it. I would still run something smaller, like an H4N as a backup, because computes are well....computers. They fail. Even a Mac can fail (it pains me to say that, as a mac user).

The thing is, are you going to be needing all that? If are going to be doing low budget stuff, and commercials at the start, I would go with just a few channels of wireless, a small field mixer, a good short shotgun mic, wind protection, boom pole, a good recorder, and bag to throw it all in. The thing with doing a panel mixer and laptop as your main rig will really limit the jobs you can do. With a capable "over-the-shoulder" rig, you can do just about anything, and when you are just starting out, you need to be able to work on just about anything (as long as it pays).
 
bobafet1 said:
Heck, I can probably even clean up some of the audio during the long breaks. I'm sure the post guys would appreciate that level of service.
Click to expand...

Are you sure about that? If by "clean up" you mean getting rid nonsense files and double-checking your file organization, then perhaps. But if you're actually talking about signal processing, forget it. How do you know that what you're doing is what the post engineer is going to need? Plus, that kind of work on-location through cans or small field monitors does not leave you equipped to listen the way you need to - or the way that some one in a post-suite/mix stage is going to listen. Focus on recording as clean as you can on the front end, and leave any and all post-processing to the post folks.
 
C2V said:
Are you sure about that? If by "clean up" you mean getting rid nonsense files and double-checking your file organization, then perhaps. But if you're actually talking about signal processing, forget it. How do you know that what you're doing is what the post engineer is going to need? Plus, that kind of work on-location through cans or small field monitors does not leave you equipped to listen the way you need to - or the way that some one in a post-suite/mix stage is going to listen. Focus on recording as clean as you can on the front end, and leave any and all post-processing to the post folks.
Click to expand...

yes, I meant organizing/labeling all the files. That alone is a PITA.
 
davefisk said:
One option could be to go with something like a mackie as a front end with boom recorder on the laptop. I remember when boom recorder first came out and I was pretty impressed with it. I would still run something smaller, like an H4N as a backup, because computes are well....computers. They fail. Even a Mac can fail (it pains me to say that, as a mac user).

The thing is, are you going to be needing all that? If are going to be doing low budget stuff, and commercials at the start, I would go with just a few channels of wireless, a small field mixer, a good short shotgun mic, wind protection, boom pole, a good recorder, and bag to throw it all in. The thing with doing a panel mixer and laptop as your main rig will really limit the jobs you can do. With a capable "over-the-shoulder" rig, you can do just about anything, and when you are just starting out, you need to be able to work on just about anything (as long as it pays).
Click to expand...

You have a good point. Sometimes its nice to just run and gun. So far I have all the items you suggested I get. Except I just ditched the H4N due to reliability issues and I just didn't feel right using it. I figured I would have a friend of mine boom for me while I was on the main panel mixer handling all the lavs and wired mics. Maybe I'm jumping too far ahead then. I guess I can bite the bullet and pick up a good field mixer/recorder and then think about more channels as the gigs get more complicated.

Any recommendations on any decent mics (lavs, boom, placement) for less then $500.
 
Hey I have a nice sounding mobile setup that is both versatile and very high quality without getting into the crazy priced SD recorder realm, yet it kicks any H4N or DR-100 setup in the butt.

Aside from whatever mics you use, maybe just look into a simple SD MixPre to get 2 channels of quality optical limiters and low cut filters, tone for calibration etc. And for a recorder the Tascam DR-680 is a very sweet recorder that is bag friendly and has great pres out of the box (though I got mine modified for 300.00). It's an 8 track field recorder with 6 analogue inputs that supply phantom. It gors for 800.00, and the MicPre goes for 665.00. So you are well under budget, and mobile. You don't need a preamp for everything, so a 2 channel will probably handle most things, but when you need more tracks, say if you were to lav up 5 more people, you'd be good to go.

MixPre 665.00
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/292988-REG/Sound_Devices_MIXPRE_Mixpre_Portable_2.html

DR-680 803.00
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/673541-REG/Tascam_DR_680_DR_680_8_Track_Portable_Field.html

Battery for DR-680 99.00
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/503090-REG/Tekkeon_MP3450_MP3450_myPower_ALL_Universal.html/

Then you are mobile. Sure you can work on a cart for a lot of stuff. But what if the director wants to head up to that tree 200 yards away? I'm not saying NOT to use your laptop, but it's cool to be untethered, and fully charged - able to walk to where you need to be without holding up production.

Here's a nice Bag to hold your stuff: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/686614-REG/Petrol_PS602_PS602_Deca_Eargonizer_Bag.html
 
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