Zaxcom DCiRX

[DustinSchmidt]

I recently purchased the Zaxcom DCiRX. Ordered from Gotham Sound the day it finally arrived at their shop and currently en route. Hoping to take delivery sometime early next week.

They sold me on the following promise: "The Zaxcom DCiRX combines receiver, recorder, mixer, and USB interface in one compact unit."

I have a variety of units that do SOME of what the DCiRX promises. But I'm trying to downsize and consolidate in a lot of ways. Hoping the DCiRX can be the Swiss army knife for audio. Let me caveat, I'm not a sound mixer, so when I say "Swiss army knife" it really means covering the scenarios that I personally find myself in.

Primarily I'm looking to use it as an on-camera preamp for powering a shotgun mic. This could be either on-camera or when booming for interviews. Cameras I'd most likely be using it with are the Alexa Mini and RED Komodo. Of course I have other cameras that have this capability built in, but I'm not always shooting on those cameras, or may not want to take them along just to help with audio capture.

I'm also quite interested in the DCiRX's ability to interface with the iPhone and capture professional quality audio on that device. I don't do a ton of that type of work currently, but if things do continue to shift towards mobile capture in that way, it's nice to have a tool that can accommodate those workflows. More testing there to come.

I would also love to offload my 2 sets of Sennheiser G3's and move over to Zaxcom transmitters to use the wireless receiver capabilities of the DCiRX sometime in the future. Having an on-camera shotgun and 2 wireless is pretty much the maximum sound requirements I find myself in.

Let me know if anyone here has any specific questions and I'll see what I can find out once it's in hand.

 

[Jim Feeley]

Cool!

Correct me if I'm misreading... You're saying you feel you'll get enough utility and use out of the DCiRX now that you're OK getting it before you have compatible transmitters? Or will it work with Sennheiser (and perhaps other) TX as some Lectrosonics and Wisycom RX will?

I'm looking forward to your field report!

 

[DustinSchmidt]

Cool!

Correct me if I'm misreading... You're saying you feel you'll get enough utility and use out of the DCiRX now that you're OK getting it before you have compatible transmitters? Or will it work with Sennheiser (and perhaps other) TX as some Lectrosonics and Wisycom RX will?

I'm looking forward to your field report!

Good question Jim.

Yeah, you're correct. At the moment I don't have Zaxcom transmitters, but I'm still ok getting the DCiRX at this time. The plan is to move in that direction as soon as I'm able regarding transmitters.

I still think there are enough other features of the DCiRX to make it worthwhile, it won't only be pulling duty as an on-camera preamp. Although that will be the initial use case.

 

[DustinSchmidt]

DCiRX arrived today. A few initial thoughts:

From a pure size perspective it's crazy how small this thing is. It fits under the top handle of my Mini easily, with plenty of room for a hand to still grab the handle.





Just sticking it on with some velcro at the moment. Which might be how things stay. Unfortunately the back of the unit doesn't feature a standard 1/4"- 20 but is instead two smaller screw holes of unknown size to me at the moment. I'm sure it's in the manual. Either way, velcro is holding just fine, again, due to the super small size and weight. The majority of the weight comes from the 3 AA batteries that power the unit.

I ran it for, I believe, around 5-6 hours with phantom power to an MKH 8060 before the unit died on me. I need to run some more scientific tests before taking it out in the field, but based on what Glenn mentioned and what I've seen so far, it should run all the way up to lunch and then a quick battery swap to keep things going till end of day. I was running 2700 mAh NiMH Powerex Pro's for batteries.

Haven't tested the wireless yet, thus, the no-antennas pics. I need to get ahold of a Zaxcom transmitter first.

If there are any Zaxcom users around here who have favorite transmitter recs, let me know. I'd probably want to stick to the AA powered options just to keep things simple. I don't need the absolute smallest size of transmitter really.

Software-wise the menu is going to take just a bit of getting used to, but nothing that some time spent reading up and practicing won't solve. These are the breaks when you're going for the absolute minimum in size.

Haven't tried it with a phone yet as well.

More testing to come. Just wanted to get it on my usual rig and see how it would work for running an on-camera shotgun and/or powering a boom mic for sit-down interviews. 4 stars for that usage.

 

[DustinSchmidt]

Some more DCiRX updates, that nobody is asking for...

I've been doing quite a bit of audio recording direct into the Alexa Mini, using the DCiRX as an onboard preamp driving a Sennheiser MKH 8060.

The sound quality is fantastic to my ears, although I don't have any technical specs to drop here for anyone like self-noise of the unit, etc. Suffice to say, it's doing its initial intended job.

I've been running the Mini's internal preamps juuuuuust above 0, at a manual setting of +02 dB with the DCiRX. Why not +01? I dunno, things are sounding good so far, so I've left it there. But I welcome the input of any of our more sound-oriented experts on here.

The menu is becoming more familiar with daily use, but I've yet to have an opportunity to work though the Mixer menu, which is probably where things will get more interesting.

I've been keeping an eye out for used Zaxcom transmitters so I can hopefully start to work that into my setup, but it's surprising how few I've seen out there. I'm open to suggestions on where to look. At the moment I've been checking the used sections of both Trew Audio and Gotham Sound, as well as Ebay.

I've also been testing the headphone output of the DCiRX feeding into various other camera bodies like my R5C and Komodo. Those two are the most ripe for also using the DCiRX in my opinion. I do have the Tascam XLR adapter for the R5C, that I picked up when I purchased that camera, but to be honest it really hasn't been used that much and I hate the form factor. It'll probably go up for resale once I get a bit more familiar with the DCiRX.

 

[Jim Feeley]

So great that it's working for you. A couple quick thoughts on audio levels: I can't tell from your post (no worries), but where you talk about setting audio at +02 dB, are you setting tone? You may be way ahead of me here, but just in case:

Your DCiRX can output tone at -20dBFS and +0dBFS. (Ya, I've been reading up on the DCiRX; it's interesting). I like that it easily outputs +0dBFS so you can tell if a camera's claimed -20 marker really is -20 (sometimes it's hard to tell if it's -20 or -18 or just a random mark). I don't think it has a limiter, though (could be wrong)

The Minis that I've worked on I think had an audio limiter; I can't recall much about it but the manual could probably clue you in. I'll guess the limiter is pretty good.

So have you tried sending line-level -20dBFS tone from your DCiRX and lining it up with the -20dBFS mark on your Mini, and then engage the Mini's limiter (I think it's optional)? And if you're worried at all, when you send your -20 tone, maybe dial back the gain on the mini to a touch below -20....Though really, I'd rather not do that if anyone else will be doing post...or if your posties are likely to ignore any camera/sound reports you find the time to create...

Anyway, all that might get you close to max-possible audio quality...Though it sounds like you might already be doing this...

Cool that the DCiRX is. working for you.