LOCATION RECORDING
more people are willing to argue the toss on audio forums and you could spend the rest of your life balancing claim and counter claim, be my guest. This week I’m mostly recording with the preamps of the CS104 and the Nagra LB.
TWO-TRACK RECORDING
Speaking of the LB – what about two track recording? Suppose you want neither mixer nor multi-track, but just two tracks of pristine stereo. Well, the LB is hard to beat. Nagra preamps, milled aluminium finish, FTP server and client on-board, really nice physical format, made like a Swiss watch – it is a thing of beauty. However, you may prefer the Sound Devices 702/722 range – the units have more of an industrial feel and are very reliable, probably more useful in a fight, but then the Nagra has not one, but two colour screens – tres jolie as we say in Cardiff. Mind you there’s a multitude of handheld recorders on the market these days. I’ve had Rolands and Zooms and Olympus versions, and all have been a pleasure. Personally I think they are built on the same chipsets – just look at the control layouts, all suspiciously similar to me. I do like the Olympus just for their approach to finish. Shiny works for me.
HANDHELDS
Step up from the standard handheld mob and there are some interesting options. Yellowtec has picked up the baton in baton-shaped recorders from HHB with its iXm. I like the format, except I couldn’t see the meters on the HHB while recording. The iXm doesn’t have meters so don’t worry about that (its DSP system takes care of levels for you). Nagra has some mid-range mobile phone-type machines of which the SD looks the most interesting. Fostex has the now venerable FR2-LE and more recently has taken up the challenge of DSLR recording with the very interesting looking DC-R302. I’m cheating a bit here as it has a three- channel mixer but in one cute little package. And maybe Fostex is onto something – a whole new market maybe? Tascam now has the DR-60D billed as a DSLR recorder and Audio Developments offer its AD071 DSLR mixer. A little further afield, I recently reviewed a very
8 August 2013
well engineered DAC from Swedish outfit Marenius (see Audio Media August 2013, page 46). It too has a Compact Flash recorder and some high-spec battery-powered mic amps.
MICROPHONES
Finally we come to microphones. If people are talking outside get a Sennheiser 416 and a Rycote windshield system, and make sure you get their lyre mic mounts as these will actually make you a better location sound recordist. There’s quite some choice in gun mics – DPA, Schoeps, and Sanken all have their fans. Why not hire some from the Richmond Film guys before you buy, that’s got to make sense. Going indoors? Grab a hypercardioid. The Neumann KM 185 sounds good but watch out for handling noise. Again Schoeps probably has the best reputation. No one ever got shot for buying a Schoeps, unless it was by the accounts department. The Sennheiser MKH 50 has a lot of followers too. Omnis – again it’s the usual suspects. DPA and Schoeps look good in front of musicians. My last word on mics is ribbons for figure of eights, Royer Labs and Coles. Small is now officially beautiful. With Les Mis being done on personals, anything is possible. DPAs were used on that production but if you’re into docs Trams has a great rep. I
Fostex FR2-LE
use Sanken Cos11s. Mind you, I was very impressed by the Sony ECM 88 when I reviewed it many moons ago.
BATTERIES
Which brings me finally to the most important thing on location: batteries. They say naïve photographers argue about cameras, those in the know about lenses, and real professionals about tripods and heads. Well, in audio terms, that means newbies debate microphones, pros the mic preamps and old lags the batteries. I reviewed the Audioroot battery system recently and it is a work of genius, really, genius.
Sanken Cos11
Olympus’ new LS-14
Broadcast Audio – An International Buyers Guide 2013
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