Mixers for location sound

[laddie.music2]

I recently did a shoot,
I have an FR2, a allen and heath zed-14 Allen & Heath ZED-14 | Sweetwater.com

They had 3 red cameras, I fed timecode to all 3 from the FR2 via daisy chaining,

I had the outputs of the fr2 feeding my allen heath mixer,

from there I aux bussed a send to the intercoms....
a buss to a skype connection for a remote director,
a buss to camera A,
a buss to camera B,
and a buss to camera C....

buying the allen and heath seemed like the only way I could customize levels to 5 separate sends....

My question is..... every raves about SQN mixer, sound devices mixers etc etc...
but for my purposes, what are my options?, they will not be able to acomplish everything I 'need'

am I missing somehting, or is it just neccessary for my setup to own a traditional style mixer?

are there any purpose built mixers that have lots of buss's etc etc etc... like an allen and heath that are specifically made for location sound?

since it is not in the recording path, i didn't think it neccessary to spend any more then the allen and heath,

anyways, very curious and confused, like to hear your thoughts,

Laddie

[pan]

First: why would you need to send sound to 3 different cams if you already supply TCode?

Record your mics to seperate tracks via direct outs or directly (SDevices)

And send a Submix (even mono!) to whatever else is needed (Director, Intercoms )

I have the feeling, you overcomplicate things...

[philper]

Originally Posted by laddie.music2

I recently did a shoot,
I have an FR2, a allen and heath zed-14 Allen & Heath ZED-14 | Sweetwater.com

They had 3 red cameras, I fed timecode to all 3 from the FR2 via daisy chaining,

I had the outputs of the fr2 feeding my allen heath mixer,

from there I aux bussed a send to the intercoms....
a buss to a skype connection for a remote director,
a buss to camera A,
a buss to camera B,
and a buss to camera C....

buying the allen and heath seemed like the only way I could customize levels to 5 separate sends....

My question is..... every raves about SQN mixer, sound devices mixers etc etc...
but for my purposes, what are my options?, they will not be able to acomplish everything I 'need'

am I missing somehting, or is it just neccessary for my setup to own a traditional style mixer?

are there any purpose built mixers that have lots of buss's etc etc etc... like an allen and heath that are specifically made for location sound?

since it is not in the recording path, i didn't think it neccessary to spend any more then the allen and heath,

anyways, very curious and confused, like to hear your thoughts,

Laddie

It sounds like you did your job just fine to me. I don't like the idea of using the various tracks of multiple cameras as an audio multitrack (very confusing in post, and there can be issues when the tracks are mixed later), but there are still producers who think that way. (Did you record off the Zed digital outputs to anything?) The TC from the FR2 would be fine for the Reds if they were just jam-syncing to it each time they roll. The Sound Devices and SQN mixers are all meant for "over the shoulder" bag work--they top out at 5 inputs, and are not set up to bus the way you did w/ yr AH--they are really for a different style of production (more doco), and are great for that. If all your work will allow use of a tabletop mixer that runs on AC power, then you're good to go. There are mixers with more hifi mic pres etc, but to have them and the functionality you have re bussing etc you'd have to spend MUCH more money.

Philip Perkins

[laddie.music2]

Thanks very much for your replies,

The reason I am sending audio to camera to make sure lip sync is perfectly in to the subframe,

time code to reds does not always stay within the margin of error I have found

personally, my dream mixer would be 6 inputs with 6 pre fader aux sends, but i'm probably dreaming there,

Thanks again

Laddie

[Remoteness]

The only thing I would suggest is to consider using an audio DA (distribution amplifier) to handle your SMPTE TC and audio feeds to the cameras.

I don't like daisy chaining anything for obvious reasons.
I always use DAs for this sort of thing; I also add XFMRs to the outputs of the DA when applicable.

I totally understand using an aux send for comms.
I would have used the second aux for the Skye feed and kept the buss out puts for cameras.

That being said, I still would have fed a audio DA instead of daisy chaining the cameras.

I hope this helped;-)

[philper]

Originally Posted by laddie.music2

Thanks very much for your replies,

The reason I am sending audio to camera to make sure lip sync is perfectly in to the subframe,

time code to reds does not always stay within the margin of error I have found

personally, my dream mixer would be 6 inputs with 6 pre fader aux sends, but i'm probably dreaming there,

Thanks again

Laddie

You can have good sync w/ REDs w/ double system audio, I do it all the time. It requires using Lockit type boxes to feed both trilevel sync and TC to the cameras (jam synced to your FR2)--in fact that is the ONLY way to have the cameras be in dead sync with each other, let alone sound. It's great to have a guide track on the camera's files, but a stand alone audio recorder will sound much better than the Red ever will (all the RED hype aside).

Philip Perkins