In-Line Preamp to struggle with poor quality preamps

[Ty Harper]

58 minutes ago, KnightsFan said:

I get a couple hours on the F3, max. Not enough to get through an 8-hour shoot without changing them. I mean it would be okay to use AA's exclusively, but considering the placement of the battery door, and my preference for completely solid rigging, it's sort of a pain to change them at all. I think I would be annoyed having to move things like @BTM_Pixshowed, and then tighten it back down and all (not to say it's worse, just that it's not for me).

This is my setup now. The F3 and battery plate are bolted onto a bracket with a NATO clamp on the other side. For all-in-one setups, I slide it onto the camera cage. For separate audio, I also have a NATO rail on the boom pole, so we can quickly move the whole unit from camera to boom. It would be nice to shave the NPF's weight but the ease of use wins out for me at the moment.

Yeah def gotta do what makes sense for your workflow. I get by np with this being the consistent core of my setups - so obviously very easy to swap batts out. 

[IronFilm]

15 hours ago, bjohn said:

It's very expensive, but the Sonosax M2D2 is a small, extremely high-quality preamp that has two mini-XLR inputs. It outputs line-level stereo analog to a camera; it also outputs a digital signal via USB or AES. It has some of the best preamps and converters available anywhere. It's powered by one battery and can run for hours even with phantom power on both inputs. Sonosax doesn't sell a camera mount for it but you can download a 3D-printable file for one from their website. I use it mainly for music recording (I recorded our last album with it) but might use it for video one day.

There is a Sonosax M2D2 on eBay I've been eying for a while, but I just can't justify the cost vs the AJA quadboxes I already have. 

Am glad ARRI went with Sonosax for the ARRI 35: 

https://www.arri.com/en/camera-systems/camera-components/aem-1 

 

  

11 hours ago, KnightsFan said:

@BTM_Pix how do you deal with the f3's short battery life? I have my f3 attached to an npf battery sled, but it's bulky. I wouldn't mind changing AA's every few hours, but the battery door isn't accessible when mounted like that.

If you're using V Locks, get yourself a D-Tap to USB-C cable? 

[IronFilm]

10 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Is the F3 better with batteries than a lot of other Zooms?  My old F4 will go through multiple packs with like 8 AA's in a day of shooting.  Now I just power it from a V-mount that's clipped to its shoulder pouch thing.

Are you Black Eneloops Pros? I wouldn't use anything else. 

Been a long time since the Zoom F4 was my daily driver, but I vaguely recall being able to get through to maybe nearly only lunch time or something like that if only on internal batteries. Because the Zoom F4 had exceptionally low power demands. 

Not that anybody should ever be running a field recorder/mixer without a BDS / external power!! That's just normal common sense for how to use them. 

The AA batteries just exist as emergency back up batteries (such as when doing a hot swap). 

[EduPortas]

What? No love for Tascam's DSLR recorder?

Menus are close to impossible to understand but lots of YT videos out there to make it work.  

[eatstoomuchjam]

7 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Are you Black Eneloops Pros? I wouldn't use anything else.

At this point, all of my rechargeables are older and I don't have any black Eneloops.  But at this point, I have external power so as you said, the internals are only to avoid having to shut down if swapping the v mount.

7 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Been a long time since the Zoom F4 was my daily driver, but I vaguely recall being able to get through to maybe nearly only lunch time or something like that if only on internal batteries. Because the Zoom F4 had exceptionally low power demands. 

Every time I used mine on a shoot, whether using alkaline or rechargeables, I seemed to get about 2-3 hours on a set of 8.  It might have been less annoying if rechargeable AA's didn't take so long to recharge.  😅

7 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Not that anybody should ever be running a field recorder/mixer without a BDS / external power!! That's just normal common sense for how to use them. 

For a sound engineer, yes!  But on shoot last year, the field sound person was in film school and brought their school's kit.  Part of the kit was a briefcase full of alkaline batteries.  It made me awfully sad thinking of how much waste their students generate!  😬

[IronFilm]

2 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

At this point, all of my rechargeables are older and I don't have any black Eneloops. 

If they're old they might have merely  half the battery life of what they had when new. 

And Black Eneloop Pros will themselves give perhaps double (or more!) the run time vs brand new lower quality AA batteries. 

2 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

It might have been less annoying if rechargeable AA's didn't take so long to recharge.  😅

Get a better charge?? 

I use a ISDT N24 (honestly, I should probably get a second one of these... a 24x AA charger isn't big enough for me!). 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32959506834.html 

2 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Part of the kit was a briefcase full of alkaline batteries.  It made me awfully sad thinking of how much waste their students generate!  😬

They're pinching pennies, and being pound foolish. It's so very very expensive in the long run. Not to mention it works worse on set. 

Just get solid quality rechargeables!

9 hours ago, EduPortas said:

What? No love for Tascam's DSLR recorder?

Zoom F Series and MIxPre Series has been crushing Tascam I'm afraid. 

I'm sad Tascam is AWOL 😞

Want to see a Tascam DR680mk3! Or Tascam HD-P2 mk2, or HS-P82 mk2

[KnightsFan]

16 hours ago, Ty Harper said:

Yeah def gotta do what makes sense for your workflow. I get by np with this being the consistent core of my setups - so obviously very easy to swap batts out

That's not a bad setup. I'd like to swap my setup with a plug on transmitter with 32 bit internal recording. That would be even better as a quick-swap between camera and boom pole, and provide easy battery access. So hopefully my bulky setup is temporary anyway.

[KnightsFan]

12 hours ago, IronFilm said:

If you're using V Locks, get yourself a D-Tap to USB-C cable? 

I use npf (pic on page 1) with usb power. Honestly if the battery door were more accessible I would just deal with swapping rechargeable AA's.

[eatstoomuchjam]

4 hours ago, IronFilm said:

If they're old they might have merely  half the battery life of what they had when new. 

And Black Eneloop Pros will themselves give perhaps double (or more!) the run time vs brand new lower quality AA batteries. 

My rechargeable batteries most definitely don't have the same lifespan as they had when new, but at the time when they were new, they still didn't power the recorder for more than about 2-3 hours or so with phantom power to the mic.  Alkaline last a bit longer than they did when new, but not by a huge amount.  It's irrelevant now anyway.  D-Tap for life.  😅

4 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Get a better charge?? 

I use a ISDT N24 (honestly, I should probably get a second one of these... a 24x AA charger isn't big enough for me!). 

Sure, I've seen some NiMH chargers that claim charge times of an hour or less (vs around 4 hours for any of the chargers I have), but whenever I see them, I wonder how much that's compromising the charge cycles for the battery.  Meanwhile, I can just run the thing for just about half the day from a medium-sized V-mount.

4 hours ago, IronFilm said:

They're pinching pennies, and being pound foolish. It's so very very expensive in the long run. Not to mention it works worse on set. 

Just get solid quality rechargeables!

Don't tell me!  Tell them!  I was just an innocent bystander with a v-mount-powered camera.  🤣

[IronFilm]

10 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Don't tell me!  Tell them!  I was just an innocent bystander with a v-mount-powered camera.  🤣

I'll send them some angrily worded emails telling them off! 😉

[newfoundmass]

On 7/16/2024 at 1:37 AM, EduPortas said:

What? No love for Tascam's DSLR recorder?

Menus are close to impossible to understand but lots of YT videos out there to make it work.  

It's old and the pre amps are pretty crappy.

[EduPortas]

1 hour ago, newfoundmass said:

It's old and the pre amps are pretty crappy.

Better than most DSLRs, though.

[IronFilm]

18 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

It's old and the pre amps are pretty crappy.

The preamps are great for its (very low) price. 

Much better than the Zoom H4n, or DSLR preamps.

[newfoundmass]

3 hours ago, IronFilm said:

The preamps are great for its (very low) price. 

Much better than the Zoom H4n, or DSLR preamps.

Crappy probably wasn't the right word to use on my part. I wouldn't say they're great, though. 

There are better options out there for not that much more money, that have better preamps and features. The Portacapture line from Tascam are much better and competitively priced, for example. I have the x8 and it was a game changer for me as a one or two person crew. 

I wouldn't recommend the H4n (including the latest version) either. Zoom has essentially released the same recorders, preamps and all, repeatedly over the last decade plus with only minor improvements. To Tascams credit they've at least avoided that and just kept the same pieces of kit for sale. I can respect that, because at least they aren't trying to sell their customers the same recorder with minor feature upgrades every 5 years. Still though, can't say I'd recommend the DR-60 or any of that generation of recorder. Save up a little more money and get something better. 

Most cameras today have "good enough" preamps, I think. I use the XLR adapter on my S5s and S5II X and am quite satisfied with it. There are obviously instances, especially with older cameras, where the camera preamps are bad but we're actually quite fortunate that they've gotten as good as they have. We're a long way from the T3i.

[IronFilm]

12 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

Crappy probably wasn't the right word to use on my part. I wouldn't say they're great, though. 

There are better options out there for not that much more money, that have better preamps and features.

Yes... but also no. 

What if a person wishes to spend less than $200 new? (or the equivalent lower amount, if buying secondhand) Let's also pretend too that 24bit matters to the user. 

Is there anything better than the DR60D?

Nope!

What if you go up to $300? $400? 

Nope. (assuming you don't need the extra channels of a DR70D)

It takes spending six hundred dollars before you truly get something better than the Tascam DR60D I'm afraid. 

For some people that's "not that much more money", for others that's "a lot". 

12 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

The Portacapture line from Tascam are much better and competitively priced, for example. I have the x8 and it was a game changer for me as a one or two person crew. 

Handheld recorders though are poor ergonomics for on set usage. 

But yes, I can't help but wish, what if Tascam had put the guts of the X8 instead into the form factor of a DR701D / DR680 / HD-P2 instead??? 

12 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

I wouldn't recommend the H4n (including the latest version) either. Zoom has essentially released the same recorders, preamps and all, repeatedly over the last decade plus with only minor improvements.

Ehhh... that's true for the H Series from Zoom. 

But Zoom has been doing fairly well in continuously improving what's on offer with the F Series. (but I do wish a F4n existed! And I wish there was a big leap in improvements from the F8 to the F8n Pro) 

12 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

To Tascams credit they've at least avoided that and just kept the same pieces of kit for sale. I can respect that, because at least they aren't trying to sell their customers the same recorder with minor feature upgrades every 5 years. Still though, can't say I'd recommend the DR-60 or any of that generation of recorder. Save up a little more money and get something better. 

Sadly Tascam has discontinued most of their recorders from the pre / early F8 era. 

The only field recorders they've kept are the Tascam DR60D (the mk2 version) and the DR70D. 

Wish they'd kept the DR701D, it could have undercut even the cheapest of the Zoom F Series (the F6). Perhaps they could have released a DR701D mk2 that added the buzzword of "32bit" but otherwise kept mk2 identical to mk1. 

Or maybe a Tascam DR680mk3 that was identical to mk2 but added timecode support. 

Or kept around the Tascam HS-P82 but kept on slashing the price, if they priced it at say US$2K then it maybe could have still competed in a niche against the Zoom F8n Pro and Sound Devices MixPre10. 

Or updated the Tascam HD-P2 to a HD-P2 mk2 (or perhaps it should be an "HD-P4", as I'd imagine the mk2 should simply add a couple more channels of recording to make it relevant in the modern world of today. As two channel recorders are not much use now). 

12 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

Most cameras today have "good enough" preamps, I think. I use the XLR adapter on my S5s and S5II X and am quite satisfied with it. There are obviously instances, especially with older cameras, where the camera preamps are bad but we're actually quite fortunate that they've gotten as good as they have. We're a long way from the T3i.

Panasonic is kinda the exception, they don't prioritize audio, but at least they usually treat it a bit better than some other brands do. Such as Canon, who still don't have any XLR accessor yet at all for any of their mirrorless cameras. 

 

[IronFilm]

5 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

It takes spending six hundred dollars before you truly get something better than the Tascam DR60D I'm afraid. 

Wanted to add "...without having to compromise in some other area" but the editing time ended seconds before I could submit. 

[eatstoomuchjam]

9 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Such as Canon, who still don't have any XLR accessor yet at all for any of their mirrorless cameras. 

No first-party accessory.  From what I remember, they always just tell people to go buy the Tascam CA-XLR2d-C.  That always seemed to me like a smart move on Canon's part - don't invest R&D time into making a niche audio accessory, but just partner with an actual audio company to have them make one.

For Tascam, it also makes more sense to build it since they can build the same accessory for multiple cameras which gives more opportunity for sales, even for a relatively niche product.