On location audio preamp. FetHead

J

jramos

Active member
Hello everyone!

I own the Red scarlet and I usually use wired lav and shotgun for interviews.

I own few audio mixer and digital recorders but it gets crazy to bring all the gear to record one interview.

I was looking for an small preamp and I found the FetHead.

I'm not sure if this would be the best option to get clean audio to the red camera.

Any advice?

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The Cloudlifter is a better product, but either only adds gain to your current microphone preamp. This FetHead would add 20db of gain to the mic pre you are currently using to boost the signal of microphones like dynamic or ribbon mics which need higher gain than some mic pres provide.
 
I don't think there is a way to get decent audio with any RED. Practically ALL (professional) film sound recordists would only use the RED's audio for sync purposes. It may be better than a DSLR, but not much.
 
That review from a guy who puts all his monitors in the same field?

FWIW, the Cloudlifter uses a 3K Ohm input load and a discrete signal path.

The Fethead uses 22K Ohm input load.

Cloudlifter also has a model with variable input impedance if that is important to you.

But in all fairness, as a remote location preamp booster most folks will likely not notice a difference between the two.
 
Rick R said:
I don't think there is a way to get decent audio with any RED. Practically ALL (professional) film sound recordists would only use the RED's audio for sync purposes. It may be better than a DSLR, but not much.
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I have to disagree with this. I work with the Dragon and Scarlet constantly and I have zero problems getting excellent sound out of them with or without the pro i/o.
I do however ALWAYS run double system (clients pay for it) as I've known too many people (myself included) getting burned by hardware/software problems.


Even though I have multiple clients using those cameras I would say almost all of them at this point use the camera sound as their primary
and only go to the separate recording as backup.
 
Don't know about the Dragon or Weapon but the ONE, Epic and Scarlett input stage and converters suck big time .. reliability with the stock 3.5mm connector interface on the two latter' just ain't there either. If your clients are happy, that's fine I guess
 
Don't know about the later RED's but the original had a very audible whine in the audio. Fairly easy to notch out but troublesome that it existed in the first place. I saw this on three or four different cameras so I don't think it was user error. I would be surprised if they didn't fix trhis on later models though. I would also be surprised if the audio section on current ones was not at least at the level of profesional video cameras, which is pretty good.
 
Noiz2 said:
Don't know about the later RED's but the original had a very audible whine in the audio. Fairly easy to notch out but troublesome that it existed in the first place. I saw this on three or four different cameras so I don't think it was user error. I would be surprised if they didn't fix trhis on later models though. I would also be surprised if the audio section on current ones was not at least at the level of profesional video cameras, which is pretty good.
Click to expand...

Yea dealing with the Red One when it first came out was pretty bad. Definitely not good/usable quality. Glad I haven't seen that camera in years.
Between dozens of firmware updates and hardware improvements the newer cameras are just fine, but as I stated above I wouldn't trust that camera farther than I could throw it,
and I do wish I could throw it.. right out a window.

As far as the Scarlet goes, running direct into the 3.5mm jacks (balanced) and running mic level from a mixer has never been a problem.
So much so, that one client who owns the pro i/o for their dragon stopped putting it on (it's yet another pain in the ass that constantly has problems)
because they are happy with the results of me going into the 3.5mm's.

Would I want to record music into any red cameras? Of course not but the freq response of dialog makes it just fine.
 
Rick R said:
This comes to mind when mentioning the RED as well: :Drogar-Thinking(DBG
View attachment 104430
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I always laugh when I see that pic but important to mention, anyone with a newer red (scarlet dragon, epic dragon etc)
most likely have the new fans installed which keep the camera quiet at ALL times now.
Shoulda been there from the beginning but at least it's finally fixed.

(and just for the record, ANY red is my absolute least favorite camera to work with other than it always guarantees me a recorder rental and a lockit box rental so I guess
that's good. Other than that, garbage in my opinion.)
 
It kind of depends, if the AC knows the cam, the fans can be slowed down in the roll mode.
But way back when, shutter and film transport noise were an issue. What's old is new again I guess.
 
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