Product confusion: recorder/preamp/mixer

[Steve House]

I am not going to get a different preamp, mixer and recorder for every situation. Thanks.

Didn't say you should. But consider, if the audio you were recording was for on-location shooting of a network broadcast episodic like "CSI", a cart-based setup with stand-alone preamps, a mixer, and a multi track-recorder along with a heavy-duty power supply for the whole shebang would be a viable approach. OTOH, if you were doing run-and-gun doco work, like "Cops", you'd need gear that was light-weight and compact enough to fit into a bag along with its batteries.

If you want a top-quality rig that would fit into BOTH categories and could handle up to 4 or 5 mics should you require that in the future, how about a Sound Devices 552 mixer -- it has excellent integrated preamps -- feeding to a Sound Devices 744T recorder. High enough quality to fit on the location episodic or feature soundcart (and a very common sight on them) as well as reasonably lightweight and compact enough to go into a (large) bag for run-and-gun work. If you watch any broadcast television at all or every go to the movies, I quarantee you have listened to hundreds of hours of audio recorded with that combination. Or if three mono input channels or stereo is adequate, the same quality would be had with a Sound Devices 302 or used SD442 mixer and a SD 702T recorder. To ease the issues of synch in post, any of those mixers have multiple parallel outputs - send a feed from the "tape out" on the mixer to the DSLR and record a scratch-track in-camera, substituting the production sound from the recorder for the scratch audio during post.

 

[gpforet]

Difficult to work with, no. Stripping out the jammed channel is fairly straightforward. However, it does limit me somewhat if I'm asked to send sound to camera.

Unless by prior arrangement I'm asked to provide individual tracks for every input, my sound bag provides two channels of recording, channel 1 (left) gets the boom, channel 2 (right) gets the lav(s). This I record in my bag to a Tascam DR-100 (soon to be replaced with a Tascam 680). I also carry two Hirose cables with break-aways that I can feed to cameras. These have two XLRs and a stereo 1/8" for my confidence return. If I'm asked to send to a DSLR (which needs one channel jammed to override AGC), I can only send one, and I only get one return. For boom only shots, or lav mix, that's fine, I carry enough adapters to make just about anything work (although I don't carry HDMI breakouts). But as mentioned in your next post, these are all work-arounds.

In the 20+ jobs I've worked on recently shooting on DSLRs (D5, D7, T2i), I have never been asked to send audio to camera. We capture the scratch on the camera mics, slate the shots (always a good idea), and I roll audio in my bag. During breaks I sit down, playback the rolls, and log the shot and filename on a logsheet. At the end of the day (or weekend, or week), I hand over the SD card(s) and the shot logs. If I have enough time during breaks, I've even rename the files to match the slate. Either way, the editor can sync very quickly and I've actually gotten calls from editors with compliments on the record keeping.

It makes a little more work for me, but it also gives me confidence that the audio takes are clean, at proper levels, and remain at 24bit/48k when they reach the edit suite.

That is very relevant to my question! Do you find the DSLR audio files to be very difficult to work with, even when the AGC is jammed?