Bluetooth for monitoring

roxics

roxics

Veteran
So here's my situation. These days I'm a one man crew running around city streets and construction sites with my GH4, tripod and a couple of Zoom H1 recorders and wired lapel mics. The most I can realistically carry myself while also shooting and cramming myself and gear into golf carts to get to different locations on job sites. It's not at all ideal, but it's where I find myself. Pretty much just praying my audio comes out fine. I've been very lucky that is has every time... so far.

Last month I did a shoot outside when it was pretty windy. I advised against it since we had done all of our other interviews inside that day, but the guy running the show wanted that nice outdoor shot/interview in front of the Capital building for our last interviewee. Luckily the lapel mic picked up great audio without any wind. But the wind was coming from different directions because of the building placements so it was hard to judge where to position the interviewee. I couldn't hear a thing during that interview. I really hate those situations.

I'm looking for a low rent solution since I don't have the cash right now to buy/rent a proper wireless lav setup. I do have a pair of bluetooth headphones (over the ear) and was wondering if I added something like this to the H1 recorder in the talent's pocket, if that would allow me to monitor the audio.
 
You can but it will all be delayed compressed due to the bluetooth codec and out of sync.

You can only monitor one recorder too so if you have two out one will be unavailable.

It's all about the right tools for the job and time after time people hit the limitations of DSLR and remote audio shooting.

Personally I still have my ten year old HPX301 P2 ENG camera with two sennheiser G2 radio mics an AT875r and a camera mic.
It does most jobs fine and shoots very nice AVC intra 100 1920x1080 pictures in true progressive. No 4k or 8k and searching for focus shallow DOF but it does the job I need it too and I can listen to all four audio tracks as I wish.
 
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There appears to be a new version of the device that offers lower latency...for the price it would certainly be worth a trial... 65ft range and a few other improvements claimed. "TaoTronics 65ft Bluetooth" Transmitter

Edit: receiver needs to be compatible with the new low latency aptX scheme to gain this benefit.

Edit 2: might want to check out the TROND BT-DUO S , a device that is both transmitter and receiver, with two of these you can enjoy the benefits of aptX low latency with standard headphones or non aptX Bluetooth headphones...(rated 44ms) cheers, as always check out a few reviews for real-world experiences! Latency test: https://youtu.be/MVKSwhc-sGA
 
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I guess it would help give you a very rough idea to see if there are any immediate MAJOR issues, but dunno if I'd want to listen in while rolling.... it might drive me mad if I had to listen to that latency for too long!

Ideally you should get some actual wireless, such as the excellent for the price Sony UWP-D11
 
I don't think I would trust Bluetooth in a mission critical situation. There is the delay/latency that would be the biggest draw back for me and Bluetooth can be unreliable. There are times when my expensive Sony Bluetooth headphone I wear at the gym will just disconnect or unpair with my iPhone, even though they look connected and say they're connected(they have voice prompts), then you have to spend time re-pairing them, or at the least, shutting everything down and then booting back up. Not something I want to be doing under the gun in an already time-crunched situation, especially by myself with 12 other things to worry about, as it sounds like you are doing. Bluetooth is fine for leisure use, but not for audio in a professional environment with the demands associated with it.
 
Thanks everyone. I realize it's not ideal. I figured it's worth a shot for the price though. Worse case scenario I just hook the thing up to my stereo receiver and listen to that with my bluetooth headphones.
In time I'll pick up a proper wireless set.
 
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