Cordless Monitoring With Headphones

B

bigmouthmedia

Active member
HI all...

I have a Panasonic GH4 & Atomos Assassin setup with a Zoom H6 and two wireless lavs plus a boom (corded, will soon be wireless). I'm trying to find the best solution for my sound operator to be able to not be tethered to me for the sound monitoring so he can walk away with the boom at a distance.
As far as I can see, a solution might be (and this is where I'm looking for suggestions otherwise !) is:

* Bluetooth transmitter attached to 3.5mm headphone out of the Zoom (I'm using Line Out to go to the Assassin HDD recorder)
* Bluetooth receiver wired into the headphones we already have (or alternatively, bluetooth headphones) worn by the sound op and pairing them together

We are on a tight budget, so any massive ticket items are out of the question.

Also, if anyone is in Australia and has used the above solution (or their own), where did you get the parts from ?
 
If you're on a budget, then forget quality wireless. Get a duplex cable (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/393646-REG/PSC_FPSC1044_Boom_Cable.html) so your boom op can have both mic and headphone through one cable. Better yet, get a Rolls PM50s and a BC17 belt clip. The mic goes into the PM50s allowing the operator a monitor, without affecting the signal sent to the camera. Or, even better still, have the boom operator carry all the sound gear and sync in post.
 
Bluetooth is no good for monitoring as it has a latency delay and restricted bandwidth.

There is no cordless option that I know of that is of good enough quality for proper monitoring.

A high quality stereo transmitter and matching receiver is needed - but most of these are designed for in-ear monitoring and only come with a mains transmitter.

A Sennheiser SK 100 transmitter and EK 300 IEM receiver would do the job - but it would be mono sound only, and not exactly cheap.
 
You can't be on too tiny a budget if your buying all those wireless systems. Depending on the make you might just get another one and go reverse to the operator. Some of the ones with 1/8" jacks are set up to be able to put out a signal strong enough to drive headsets.

Quality is an issue that is probably only solvable with $, but latency is a killer. Bluetooth, IME, has mostly sucked for audio anyway with weird dropouts etc. Plus you don't get a lot of range.

Since some decent monitoring is rather critical I would put that as a higher priority than a wireless for the boom.
 
Maybe I'm missing something here, but if your boom operator is also your sound guy, and you're already recording to an audio recorder, why not just have all the audio feed to your sound guy/boom op who will be recording it? Monitoring then is easy as he's plugged in directly. Your camera would then just be recording a scratch track to synch up to.
 
Yes that is the alternative - I haven't done it on a shoot yet and would rather do tests first - and unfortunately we've been hitting the ground running since we got the kit !
 
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