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Hi everyone! Finally I’m upgrading my location sound setup with new purchases and can’t decide which bag I should buy. I will definetly go with a K-tek one because I am using it with my F6 and definetly fantastic. Also tried some orca and doctor bags but I find the extra compartments of k-tek bags pretty useful in my usecase. I’m quite obsessive with the layout and I dont want extra gaps on the main compartment. I love tight setups. Also I want it to be future proof because kteks are not the cheapest ones, so I cannot buy another one easily.

Beside the extras, I’m sharing my main pieces that I need to put in the main compartment and let me know your advices, also the photos of your setup will be highly appreciated! I’m between the K-tek Stingray Small X and the old Medium one. The large one is gonna be too big for me and rest of them are gonna be quite small.

-Zoom F8n Pro
-2x Sound devices 2 channel Mix-pre (old field mixer made in 2000)
-BDSV4 power Distro
-3x Sennheiser G3 Reciever
-1x 3rd Gen. Sony Transmitter for IFB (dont have to be in the main compartments)

Potential buys
-Deity Spd Mini
-Deity Mini Rf Distro
-2/3x Lectrosonics SrB/SrC
-1x Sony 4th Gen. Reciever for wireless boom

I’m gonna use low profile cables at the all inputs and outputs to make it tighter. My main goal and concern is putting 2 sound devices mix-pre’s side by side. (14cm each of it) Does the small-X one got enough space for it? Or should should I go with the medium one? If so, how it is with the F8 in terms of width?

I was shooting a very run & gun documentary yesterday, crew was tiny. Literally just me, DP, director & producer. I love shooting this kind of stuff and would love to grow more into it in the future.

We were backstage at an event, lighting was horrible, literally one giant spotlight about 10-20m above us. I couldn't boom overhead as it would just create horrible shadows, so I just boomed from underneath pretty much the entire time for safety. Even when we moved to areas with softer lighting I was a bit nervous to boom overhead as I've mostly worked on narrative / commercial stuff where there's an opportunity to check frame to see whether there's any shadows etc, whereas this is obviously a lot more run & gun. I had the actor wired too, so was obviously relying on that a lot for the mix.

Is this best practice, or do I just need to get better at learning light patterns to predict shadows? Would love to hear some feedback/input from more experienced documentary sound recordists. TIA

Thank you to everyone who helped with this! I have changed the gear list to reflect your recommendations.

We are filming on the Pyxis 6k, entirely indoors, in a singular location, small (12 ft by 24 ft) and controlled. There will be three actors on set.

We do not need a smart slate. In lieu of a camera hop we will just be using the built-in mics on the Pyxis as scratch. An IFB setup could be nice, potentially, but we aren't sure how necessary it is.

Missing anything? Anything that would enhance convenience?

Thanks in advance!

Hello! Anybody know where I could find this (now obsolete) product or anything similar?

I am doing a shoot this weekend and the editor asked me to try and keep the boom the same distance as a medium close up in the close up. His reasoning is that even 1 foot of difference changes the reverb. I have always tried to get the boom as close as possible always pointing it center of chest. (Sennheiser 416). This is an outdoor scene. Is he correct? Are there any basic guidelines I should follow when booming? Any other resources I can get more professional how-to from?

I've been using a Zoom F6 for several years now and it's been great for me for the size of projects I work on. I am mainly a OMB videographer but I also hire myself out as a sound recordist for small doc or narrative projects (also OMB). I have 4 wireless channels: 2 Deity Theos and 2 Sennheisers (G3 + G4) plus I run a boom, and external timecode (Deity TC1). I currently use a 20000mAh powerbank to power the Deity RX, which I bongo tie to the shoulder strap. The F6 is powered by NPF battery. See photos for reference (and don't laugh, it's worked for me! The 2nd photo is the only time I've ever needed all 6 inputs.)

I just ordered a Zoom F8n Pro, maybe the last one in Canada at the sale price of $999 cdn and it'll be here soon. I got it mainly because: dual SD cards, ability to ISO specific channels (the F6 you have to cycle through them all), and lower price. I'm now looking for a bag that will suit my kit, and I think I'll need a power solution as well to power the recorder and the RX. I'm interested in small/light and ergonomics (I'm 50 now the body ain't what it used to be)...are there harness bags or do you buy a bag and attach a harness to it? Any recs based on what I just described? Bags, harnesses, power solutions?

Please don't tell me I need to buy Lectros or anything like that. This is the kit. TIA!

So I bought an instamic because it's waterproof and I was capturing footage on the water (efoil) and now it's a couple days later, I plug it into my laptop and nothing. Nada. Zero. I plug it into charge it, nothing. It's the USB C model and it's about 1 week old. I did use it one time, and the audio was decent (better than 360 cam) and now I need the audio off it except it is acting 100% dead, will not mount, will not blink when plugged into a charger, nothing. WTF. Tried updating the firmware, the indstructions say to hold the button down til the LEDs turn off. Mine don't even turn on. WTF do I do?

I’m shooting BTS/tour doc-style footage for a band about to go on tour. Think early jackass/cky-type production.

We’ll have a small shoot team made mostly of musicians who haven’t handled much video production gear. I’ll have one of them be a dedicated audio person for the day, but I want to keep the rig compact and foolproof. Essentially, I’ll set it up and build it out for them so they can just aim at the action: shotgun/hypercardioid on a pistol grip to the H4n essential. They’ll monitor with headphones.

Most of the shooting will be inside an empty music venue during load-in and set up, green room, maybe a restaurant, but with some exteriors during load-in and whatever else they impulsively decide to do outside.

I’m currently looking at:
Mke600
NTG3
NTG5

Priority is clean dialogue with a mic that’s forgiving enough to move between indoor and outdoor environments. What would you pick for the specific use? I’m open to suggestions beyond the three I listed above.

Thanks!

My kit currently consists of a F8n and a FRC-8. I have been contemplating selling them and switching to a mix pre 10 and a novation launch control XL. What could I realistically get from my current setup and would it cover the transition? Is there any pros and cons to both the mix pre and the f8?

Sound Devices 833 and Zaxcom Nova 2 both start north of $6k and pro wireless is $3-5k/channel plus microphone (which is another $300-850). A grand for a pole, a few grand for boom mics. A new bag for someone starting out as a pro freelance mixer is a significant investment.

Hypothetical question: if you were starting out today as a pro freelance sound mixer with a $50k gear budget but with the stipulation that you could only (cry once and) buy once. How would you allocate your budget? Sound Devices? Zaxcom? Who's wireless and how many channels? What boom pole? Boom mics? More channels of wireless or a backup mixer? What accessories would you buy? What do you consider essential? Invaluable? Would you buy new or cobble together used gear to stretch the dollars? Would you spend all $50K (assuming you get to keep what you don't spend but you can't spend it later on more sound gear.) Would you just keep the $50K and find a new career?

I am having trouble figuring this out from the manuals. It seems that the Voyage mic needs to be powered through its Dante connection. Can the 888 do that? Based off reading the manual, it seems like it might not be able to do that. Does anyone know? Has anyone used the 888 for this or other powered Dante situations?

I’ve been down the YouTube rabbit hole and would love to hear from people with experience with some of these. I’ve fought with shotgun mics indoors over the years and never considered just using a pencil mic. I love the sound profile of them and they seem like such a good fit for indoor interview setups. I’ve been looking at the Se7/8, Rode ht5, oktava mc-012 (though they seem hard to get now) and the Lewitt air.

I think the Se8 and Oktava are probably the best sounding from demos I’ve heard, and seems like the Oktava might be a fairly good choice for a wide variety of voices. Any thoughts and some education would be very appreciated!

We are filming on the Pyxis 6k, entirely indoors, in a singular controlled location. There will be three actors on set.

Missing anything? Anything that would enhance convenience?

Thanks in advance!

Hello all,

Just testing some equipment for an upcoming job and it seems the A10TX remote app isn’t available on the App Store anymore. It’s a pity, as it was quite handy for changing settings without bothering talent. Anyone know why it’s gone? I am in the UK if that makes any difference.

Normally LTC is limited to 30fps, as that limit exists in the bits allocated in the packet format.

Recently I discovered this online analyzer which mentioned two different methods of encoding 50&60fps, namely 'Wide_LTC' and 'Frame-Pair'.

https://github.com/macswg/timecode_greenalyzer/issues/75

I have coded up these schemes in my own project, the output decodes in the analyzer but I have not found 'commercial' tools which can read the resultant audio LTC...

Does anyone here have experience in this, and can they validate the audio files which I posted to ticket?

Thanks,

Simon.

I was going through a few uses and options with TXAdvance to manage the few RF boxes I have, and I have discovered there is no apparent simple way to unlock the frequencies of the MCR54 to set them manually (like, those suggested by the TXA app).

Internet searches seem to say that the only way is through the use of the wisycom manager, which though only seems to work with windows, and I don't have a windows machine. Bluetooth and the wisycom app seem to take me nowhere.

Is there anything I'm missing here?

Thanks

So I spent a whole morning trying to find a solution for this, and in the end I decided to ask this valuable sub, it always has solutions. And of course 20 seconds after I wrote the post I found the solution in the "Wisycom Frequency Plan" document, which seems the only place that this is mentioned (of course in the mcr54 manual there is no mention of this).

But I'll leave it here if anybody comes up with the same problem.

Apparently this is different depending on what model you have. But in every frequency plan there should be a free group. For instance in the EU version, the one I have, group 39 is the free group. So you need to set all your RX channels to group 39 then you'll be able to manually assign frequencies from there.

I want to use with moleskin sandwich, I just don’t wanna spend a ton of money on the wrong size. Heard this stuff works wonders. I’ll take any tips as well! Working with lavs

Found this used mkh416 for $522, the seller looks legit and so does the mic, any opinions?

With many of the new transmitters having the ability to record and/or transmit, I'm curious how many are using or interested in this capability? If you are using this capability, how are you managing the files from the boom/lav? Is this something you've wanted to do but the patent restrictions preventing your hardware?

I’ve been seeing some old vhf systems for sale online and they’re pretty cheap and I was wondering if they are any good compared to today’s technology?

I’m a longtime dialogue editor / re-recording mixer, and I’m pretty sick to death of the limits of RX, SpectraLayers, and the usual restoration tools.

I’m doing some early experiments around a different approach to dialogue restoration — using newer generative audio methods to see whether badly damaged production dialogue can be reconstructed while actually preserving the original actor, timing, inflection, emotion, and performance.

I’m looking for a few short examples of genuinely troublesome production dialogue to test with.

Things like:

• traffic or machinery masking part of a word
• wardrobe/lav rustle over dialogue
• wind hits
• RF or wireless artifacts
• clipping
• boom off-axis / ugly room reflections
• impacts directly over speech
• background voices
• anything that made you think, “We may have to ADR this.”

Ideally, I’d love examples where you also have a cleaner alternate mic, alternate take, or original reference, because that gives me something real to compare the reconstruction against.

This is very early-stage testing, not a commercial release or a data-harvesting exercise. I’m mainly trying to answer one question: can current generative audio technology repair damaged production dialogue without changing the performance?

Please only send material you recorded yourself or otherwise have permission to share for private testing.

If you’ve got 5–20 seconds of nightmare dialogue sitting around, I’d love to hear it. Happy to send back the experimental results so you can hear what worked — or didn’t.

I’m in need of a C.link cable to link a 788T to a 702T but it’s no where available in my country. Can the cable be made or is it something proprietary to SD? I wanted to record 10 tracks on location combining the two recorders.