What's the next level for sound

R

robbailey

Active member
Right now I have a tascam 40 and a friend has a zoom h4. Both have worked well for film making but I'm ready to go to the next level and get better sound. Would something like an h6 fit the bill or is that not much of an improvement? I'm def looking to get into better pre's without breaking the bank too much.
 
Better quality has a cost.


Start with a quality mixer. BTW, you haven't mentioned what mic(s) you have, so perhaps an improvement could be made there. Another area that probably needs an upgrade is accessories like a boom-pole, blimp, etc.

Of course, and improvement in knowledge and your skill set may help as well.
 
Currently using an ntg3. I may look into getting a mixpre and then use the current recorder that I have. Wouldn't that offset the weaker pre's of the recorder and basically act as a bit bucket? Or should i upgrade recorder also if I get mixpre?
 
What aspects of your current recordings are you seeking to improve? Do you have a prioritized top 5 list?
It is quite possible that "better sound" would require different techniques or different microphones.
If that is the case then you will be wasting your money on preamps, mixers and recorders.
It would be irresponsible of us to encourage you to buy something that may result in NO improvement.
We just don't know enough about your situation.
 
robbailey said:
I'm def looking to get into better pre's without breaking the bank too much.
Click to expand...

Better preamps are absolutely worth persuing if you want better sound quality; in low end systems preamps are often the weak link. The reason for this is fairly obvious to me. It's that camera makers are preoccupied with video quality, while recorder makers are preoccupied with recording to the media correctly. The only people worried about preamps are the field mixer makers.

Unfortunately, the bottom end of good field mixers is still pricey. I found a used SD MixPre-D. Major improvement in my sound quality even though I'm still recording to camera; I can feed the camera a high enough signal level that camera gain is very low, so I don't hear hiss from the camera preamps anymore. And that's just the beginning of the better sound.

For me, a field mixer was my biggest-bang-for-the-buck. Clearly, YMMV.
 
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$ = experience. If you spend $200,000 on gear, you too can get a job recording sound on big budget films working with your favorite actors!
 
The chain of gain - once you determine which bits of your kit add the most noise, you can modify your system to be working at it's optimum, with the cleanest gain stages working harder than the noiseiest ones. I'll also throw in my usual quest of developing the best mic technique - in terms of choice and use. Whenever you see topic on the forum complaining about noisy audio that have images to go with them, very often you can see the problem. Poor aiming and too much distance being the common ones. A good friend of mine just made a new series of kids programmes on a budget. He's been used to broadcast for years and convinced himself he could replicate the process. He forgot totally the sound, and his new DVD is to me unwatchable because he's used a boom for everything, including all the really wide shots, and everything indoors is boxy and reverberant, and everything outside is swamped in location noises. He hired the best kit, so the performance, noise wise, just made all his other mistakes so evident.
 
Rick R said:
$ = experience. If you spend $200,000 on gear, you too can get a job recording sound on big budget films working with your favorite actors!
Click to expand...

I'm going to assume that was a joke. For $200,000 you can probably get an "executive producer" credit. $ never = Experience and $200,000 in gear won't get you on any decent set with out the experience to use it.
 
The good thing is that I'm only doing sound on my own projects, although I still want the best sound I can afford. Is something like the tascam 680 a lot better in terms of pre's when compared to like the dr40, dr100 zoom etc?

I've been overall happy with the sound but I know I can improve it and better pre's should help.
 
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