My SD442 return has echo or stereo effect .....!!!

H

Hiro Nakamura

Active member
Hi guys,

I have a problem with my SD442, recently I rented out to a friend of mine who is a soundman for 5 days, after came back, I didn't touch it until this week, when I use it, the returns through the earphone has a weird effect, like very echoey, like stereo pair sound, which makes me can't make my own adjustments on the return if it's ok or not, I did asked my cameraman to play back the audio, it sounds fine.

Now I am on a shoot for 5 days, everyday, I just check if there is a return ...then I don't listen the return anyway, because of the sound is not what it supposed to be.

I did go in to the setup menu reset the default setting by menu to 18, choose -20, restart the mixer, but it doesn't change anything

What's wrong , does anyone know ?

Here is my setup

NTG-2
Oktava MK012
Lectrosonic + B3 wireless

As input mics

442 mixer

10 pin breakaway cable to a DSR450 camera,
XLR outputs on the 442, hooked up with a H4N for backup

OUTPUT mixer 442 set to LINE

Camera side, LINE in, Tone is right ....


What did I do wrong ? or the 442 needs a maintenance ?



Thanks in advance


Hiro
 
What camera are you using it on?
and is it the same type of camera the other guy was using?

Certain types of cameras have a delay in certain modes because of
the processing involved to the picture.
Example would be Panasonic cameras.
The Varicams have little to no delay in 24p, the SDX900 has a decent amount
and the 200 has quite a bit.
 
Using DSR 450, is a DVCAM cam with proper lens and camera body.
M/S switch ...where is the button? is that in the setup menu?

Hiro
 
M/S stands for Master Stereo ... on the front control panel, the monitoring options? If that's the place, I have always used Master, Stereo , or L or R.... never put on M/S.....

Or is there any other places???

Hiro
 
No it stands for Mid/Side
It's a stereo mic'ing technique using 1 cardoid (or similar)
and one figure 8 mic split into 2 feeds and you reverse the polarity on 1 of those 2 feeds.

There is a switch on the side of the mixer
that creates that 2nd feed and flips the polarity..etc. (encoding)
If you have just a standard mic going..you'll hear a funked up sound like you're mentioning.


The M/S switch on the headphone side of things lets you "decode" so you can hear what the final product will be.
 
And to go into detail just a bit more.
As I mentioned you need 3 signals to create M/S.
1( (mid) cardioid
2 channels of a single figure 8 mic. 1 channel a polarity flip of the regular channel.

The M/S switch on the side of the 442 does all that.
Flips the polarity, places them on 1 channel..etc.

If you use this switch..the final Left and Right output of the mixer will be
a "Stereo" (finished) feed to camera. No need to monitor in "M/S"

If you want to keep the 2 microphones untouched so post can combine and create
the M/S signal you would just pan 1 mic to Left 1 mic to Right keeping
the mic's untouched as far as processing.
If you do it this way you still need to monitor a "fake" M/S signal at the mixer
so you know what you're doing.
In this case you would flip your headphone monitoring to M/S which ONLY creates
that signal in the phones.
 
The other possibility is your set to listen in the "safety" mode (or whatever SD calls it). There is a way to set up the monitoring so that you are listening to playback off the disk rather than the inputs. On tape decks this gave you a few milliseconds of delay and was very weird to listen to if you were not completely isolated from the source. On the SD recorders it's MUCH longer (a second or two) and sounds more like a long delay line. Though I think Ripple's suggestion sounds more like what you are describing.
 
Noiz2 said:
The other possibility is your set to listen in the "safety" mode (or whatever SD calls it). There is a way to set up the monitoring so that you are listening to playback off the disk rather than the inputs. On tape decks this gave you a few milliseconds of delay and was very weird to listen to if you were not completely isolated from the source. On the SD recorders it's MUCH longer (a second or two) and sounds more like a long delay line. Though I think Ripple's suggestion sounds more like what you are describing.
Click to expand...

While this was the case with DAT machines and analog video cameras
I dont think many of the recorders these days give you a true "off the heads" monitoring.
Unless im losing my mind there is no option for that on the Sound Devices
recorders, but I definitely could be mistaken.

Since the 442 is just a mixer we'll have to pretty much stick to the m/s issue or delay in processing in the cameras headphones. (or a switch on the camera
to monitor off of heads like Noiz said but I have no experience with that camera to know whats avail or not)
 
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Ran into this with the return from a Panasonic DVX100 with the HP MODE in the Menu set to "Tape" (or maybe "Recording") instead of "Live". When set to "Tape / Recording" sometimes hear what sounds like a delay / echo, setting to "Live" did the trick. Maybe a menu setting like this?
 
dano said:
Ran into this with the return from a Panasonic DVX100 with the HP MODE in the Menu set to "Tape" (or maybe "Recording") instead of "Live". When set to "Tape / Recording" sometimes hear what sounds like a delay / echo, setting to "Live" did the trick. Maybe a menu setting like this?
Click to expand...
You're hearing the processing delay the camera has.
If you run the camera 60i there is basicly none, more if you use 30P..and
even more at 24p.
Next time you have a DVX100 and a monitor..while watching the monitor very quickly swing your arm into frame.
You'll see that the monitor is a number of milliseconds behind "live".

The varicams for some reason have a drasticly reduced delay
but most of the camera out there these days have it.
So much in fact that when you're a sound guy sending a feed
to video assist the audio is a number of frames early (because its a live analog feed)
compared to the video side and either WE (the sound mixer) or the video assist
guy needs to throw a delay into our audio to match.
 
Duh, Yes the mixer is not going to have off tape listening... Well actually it probably does in the form of a return monitor, the MixPre does.

And yes the SD recorders do have a confidence monitoring mode, even the PMD-671 has one (though not if your recording at 24 bit.

The reasons are the same as for tape, to reassure your self that something actually got recorded. The catch with digital is that it takes a LOT longer to wright and then read of the disk than the time between the record and playback head of an analog deck so the feature is near useless because of the lag time. On the SD 722 it's more than a second (I want to say three or four), the Marantz is faster but since I'm always in 24 bit.

From page 23 of the user guide

"Track Monitoring While Recording (Confidence Monitoring)
The 722 can monitor actual recorded audio written to the internal hard drive or CompactFlash during recording. This is commonly referred to as “confidence monitoring”. To monitor recorded tracks during recording select one of the track monitor modes. Because of the record buffering topology of the 722, a delay of up to 12 seconds can be expected before recorded audio appears at the output. "



Rippie said:
While this was the case with DAT machines and analog video cameras
I dont think many of the recorders these days give you a true "off the heads" monitoring.
Unless im losing my mind there is no option for that on the Sound Devices
recorders, but I definitely could be mistaken.

Since the 442 is just a mixer we'll have to pretty much stick to the m/s issue or delay in processing in the cameras headphones. (or a switch on the camera
to monitor off of heads like Noiz said but I have no experience with that camera to know whats avail or not)
Click to expand...
 
Hey noiz,
I just looked on the sound devices forum
and found a thread talking about confidence recording.

Someone asked about it for the 788T, here was a quote.

'you're not missing anything, there is no confidence monitoring feature on the 788T.
Joe Ramos
Technical Support Specialist
Sound Devices, LLC"

Funny though, its only been a couple years since I owned the 744t
and totally don't remember it having that function.
Ah, I love getting old.


"Yes the mixer is not going to have off tape listening... Well actually it probably does in the form of a return monitor, the MixPre does."
I don't see how a return input monitoring section could be called "off tape".
 
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If they can't get the latency down to a 1/2 frame or so it really isn't any use, and that may not be possible with HD recording. Ironic that analog had the feature and it WORKED ;~)


It's the good part about the internet, you don't have to put your teeth in to talk! 8~O

Cheers
SK
 
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