Danny Grizzle
Forum Replies Created
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Are you sure the LaCie LaCinema Rugged HD will not loop? I just purchased one, and my initial impression – from the manual, not confirmed by testing – is it will loop. If not, we need to hammer LaCie for a firmware upgrade.
At any rate, I just published a mini review on the LaCie in the Creative Cow Corporate Video forum. If someone is certain looping cannot be enabled, I need to update the review to avoid misleading people.
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My Tascam DR-100 was delivered Friday. I immediately rigged it with a Rode NT-4 stereo mic w/Rycote Mini Windjammer, mounted on a Rode Mini Boompole, and setoff for the high school football game, where my son is a senior in the marching band.
Although a bit larger than most portables, this is a great little field recorder. It can easily be held in a single hand. Build quality far surpasses the Zoom H4, as well as design. I don’t have a Zoom H4n for comparison.
The Tascam DR-100 has large input level adjustment dial with concentric left and right channels. This is very easy to use, and a very welcome design that sets this unit apart from all other portable field recorders.
Dynamics at a high school football game are completely unpredictable, especially spontaneous drum cadences the band may do in response to action on the field. I found the Tascam’s limiters to be highly effective at controlling digital overs. Further, I welcome the peak LED instead of more conventional peak hold metering. In live recording, it is very difficult to meter successfully given the tiny size and poor illumination of screens on most portable recorders.
Recorder controls were large and easy to use. Dedicated buttons and a smart design placing important secondary switches on the back of the recorder, make this portable recorder a joy to use.
Football game audio is not my intended application, but the results obtained were incredibly realistic. I have not yet tried the built-in microphones or done any interview recording, my primary application. But so far I am very pleased with the Tascam DR-100 recorder, so much so I gave away my old Zoom H4 the next day.
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There’s a lot to like about everything in the Sound Devices product line. But I think they missed the mark on the 552. 5 tracks of audio would be plenty for me, but the lack of discrete record channels is a deal killer. A puzzling product, actually.
BTW – I am no total Tascam fanboi. I do own a Tascam HD-P2, and before that a Tascam DA-P1 portable DAT. I’ve produced good work with both, but I will note the build quality of the HD-P2 was far lower than the DA-P1, which was (and still is) a beautifully built piece of equipment.
The HD-P2 has been great, but it seems disposable and not built to last. Specifically, the metal XLR connectors on mine are rusting, even though it has been well cared for and stored in a Pelican 1550 case. I have no clue how this happened, and none of my other gear operated in the same conditions has rusted.
People don’t rave about Tascam mic preamps, but I guess I’m not all that sophisticated. When my stuff is projected on the big screen to audiences of 200-300 or so, it sounds 100% Hollywood.
I’ve been around since open reel multitrack days, and Teac and Tascam were always semi-pro gear, not something you would find in Abbey Road Studios. Still, I think Tascam is on par with RED and Sony EX1/EX3, and certainly Canon EOS 5D Mk II.
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Sound Devices is the holy grail of location audio. Really a different class altogether. I got interested in handheld portable recorders for documentary production in situations where a full professional rig would call too much attention or intimidate non-professional talent.
So far, the Edirol R-09 is the most inconspicuous dedicated recorder I have used.
The Zoom H4 sounds nice, but the controls and build quality are terrible. I like the XLR inputs.
The Zoom H4n is supposed to correct most problems with the original. It is featured on the Zacuto website as part of their DSLR video product offering.
The iPhone with iProRecorder is actually the most inconspicuous of all.
I’ve never seen a Tascam DR-100, but I’ve been told it is built like a tank. Plus the reviews say the control layout is simple, and the display is large. It can be operated without constantly going into software menus. It has XLR inputs. Basically, this sounds like perfection of the Zoom H4 concept. I bought one on a one day special for $299 through Sound Professionals. B&H now lists them for $329.
The Tascam DR-07 is an attractive, well built recorder that would be of interest to podcasters. It is small, but still a bit large. Recently, Sound Professionals offered a one day special on the DR-07 for $99 — a stunning low price.
Yamaha makes some interesting recorders in their Pocketrak line. I live in the outback of Texas, so I have to buy this stuff to see it. Due to size, the Yamaha might be ideal for ultimate stealth.
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I should also mention iProRecorder by BIAS – an iPhone App. For only $2.99, this is an amazing value. It has already saved my bacon in a couple of extemporaneous occasions!
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That’s the weird hole in WAVES security system. No matter who got the dongle, they will have to gain access to the actual software from WAVES, probably in the exact version I had installed, then I suppose install and activate it in some way.
Surely WAVES has serialized the dongle in some way. So there you have it — they meet their new customer! Maybe they can get him setup on WUP, sending them a check every year like I did. Buying upgrades (I went from WAVES Gold to WAVES Platinum to WAVES Diamond…)
I don’t think so. The 5 dongles I lost in the laptop bag look exactly like a bunch of cheap USB memory sticks, the kind given away at trade shows. I would bet they were tossed into the trash.
In my real life, one hat I wear is IT Director. The worst part of my laptop theft was a data migration I had in progress, 750,000 customers and every interaction ever conducted with each one (email, phone, office visit). Our CRM is now on Salesforce.com.
I feel stupid to let my laptop get stolen (“It will never happen to me…”), but it is not like there were no precautions. I was obsessive about keeping backups, encryption, and all behind a non-trivial 12+ character alpha numeric logon password, and that behind a hidden user name. The only reason the laptop was in my car was because – Thanksgiving – too many kids loose with food & drinks at my sister-in-laws. Lucky I didn’t also pack my 1TB Mirrored RAID external drive!
I am convinced nobody could do anything with that laptop except wipe the hard drive.
This experience is not something you would wish on anybody. As luck would have it, the thieves also got my Palm Treo, which contained a synced version of my extensive sysadmin passwords, also Blowfish encrypted. This they tossed out the window less than a mile down the road, where it was found a few days later. Long story.
Point being: no matter how well you think you are prepared with backups and encrypted passwords and redundancies and insurance, it is *never* enough when the crisis occurs.
BTW – another bad thing to report: Apple makes no effort to keep a clearinghouse database of stolen Mac laptop serial numbers. Duh…
Law enforcement on stolen laptops is a joke. The security video clearly showed the getaway car license plate. The cop ran it and it came back good, but “It is registered to an address on the other side of town. We don’t have time to go check.”
My brother-in-law, a Houston P.D. sergeant, watched the security video provided to me on CD by the retail store. He said it was obviously professional thieves, and likely the car was taken from a repair shop or would be discovered stolen by someone returning home after the Thanksgiving holiday.
Sorry to relate this sob story on this list, but maybe my tale of woe will be warning to others. A year later, and obviously I’m not over it yet.
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None of us can get our jobs done without multiple tools from multiple vendors.
The part about the license agreements that become unworkable in practice is Vendor 1 pays lawyers to construct a legal contract that puts all kinds of stipulations on a product *after the sale* – “or return this product for a refund.” Of course, Vendor 1 reserves the right to change license terms at will, or to amend them in upgrades to subsequent versions. Then Vendor 1 holds training meetings so that their employees and technical support may or may not accurately know and characterize what is going on. WAVES is probably better versed in this because their company is reputed to have a long history of adversarial customer relations.
Then, from the consumer’s viewpoint, factor in Vendor 2, Vendor 3, Vendor 4, Vendor 85.
At some point, the consumer begins to appreciate the need for some kind of “Implied Warranty” law, defining seller obligations. Because the consumer side of these agreements are usually, “no warranty express or implied” followed by language that the software is not guaranteed to work or perform in any way, now or in the future.
I actually try to read the license agreements and TOS that now pervade my world, but I find them grossly one sided and onerous. In effect, suffocating — no individual or company can possibly be in compliance or even aware of all the obligations demanded by the runaway, self-absorbed lawyers of the software industry.
Anybody who starts reading these agreements instead of clicking through will be horrified. For instance, I will no longer stay in Hampton Inn because their WiFi TOS essentially gives them authorization to access and full rights of ownership to all the contents of any computer and any attached disk drives that access the hotel network.
Corporate lawyers are paid paranoids who draft conceited agreements which they suppose to be air tight, framing customers as adversaries. This is ludicrous, one-sided and out of control. The only possible remedy is market rejection of companies and products that engage in such heavy-handed practices. Especially when the company in question, like WAVES, is a known tough enforcer. Their reputation caused me pause before I became a customer and parted with over $4,000… now I know why their reputation is deserved.
To be literal, was the license on my WAVES iLok key? Yes. Is there a remote chance the thieves or their fence sold the WAVES iLok key on eBay? Maybe. But my question is why WAVES ever engineered a copy protection scheme that subjects their customers to these kinds of dangers?
Even the new TLC program requires too many hoops and hitting too many marks. There is a very high cost of ownership, simply in compliance overhead (my time is worth something).
But my time is not worth hiring a full time lawyer to monitor every “Accept” button I am forced to click to access software I have paid for. In fact, I would readily assert that, at my $100+ million company, perfecting compliance with every software vendor license would cost more than our entire payroll. That’s how out of control things are.
The way this shakes out in the real world is to turn and burn on bad actors. Reputation, reputation, reputation. We all take our lumps, fire employees who don’t do what they are supposed to do, and cut off vendors who do not meet expectations. The bad cases get blacklisted, “Not eligible for rehire.”
At some point, somebody is going to have to rein in software license agreements. I’m more in favor of market forces than state or federal consumer protection laws. But obviously, there are boundaries to what is acceptable. For instance, these license agreements generally do not incur obligations of slavery, though the people who draft them rarely exclude any possibility.
Whether protected by law or not, there is an implied warranty. That is, if I pay for something, I have the reasonable expectation that I will get fair use of what I paid for.
Imagine if Sears attached a license agreement to every hammer they sold.
WAVES has cleverly tied their software to a hardware dongle. Like a stolen hammer, their point is basically, “Buy another one.” OK, fine, be that way.
I was whining before about onerous licensing and TOS agreements. That was before I considered educating my insurance agent about them.
Not even Microsoft is hardcore like WAVES. I wasted more time than it was worth (30 minutes), but after the theft, Microsoft reauthorized Vista Ultimate on my replacement MacBook Pro.
As I said, market awareness is a fair force to bring to bear. In my opinion, not only is WAVES copy protection practices and customer service track record a bad reflection on WAVES, it is also a stain on retailers who choose to sell their products. Several pro audio sales guys have told me horror stories similar to mine and noted that they actively steer customers to competing products as a result.
This post is probably wandering because I had to compose between all the other activities of a busy day. But if anybody would like to scan a list of my software losses as a result of my laptop theft, I will be glad to send a copy. What you will see is an embarrassing variety of high-end software involving media production, web design, database, programming tools, … on and on. Enough so to dwarf the value of the brand-new 17″ MacBook Pro and external HD (also in the bag and stolen) upon which all this resided. This laptop theft was the worst thing that could happen to me short of something involving loss of my wife or children. From the long (very long) list of companies and software vendors, my experience was definitive. As a result of a theft like this, you learn things you don’t want to know. In my experience, WAVES has been the absolute worst of the worst. The “worst” behavior list was, thankfully, short, despite license agreements from many other companies who could have been as legally correct as WAVES in tough enforcement of terms.
For most people and most companies, being reasonable trumps being right.
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BTW – I elected to purchase a t.c. electronic PowerCore X8 in lieu of doubling up on more of the same with a second copy of WAVES Diamond Native Bundle. If the PowerCore gets stolen, at least the cop can understand it was a physical theft, and the insurance agent can understand it was a hardware loss. Not to mention it is a superb product where the hardware is actually designed for my benefit, to add performance and results, not simply to do damage to me in case of loss or theft.
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After I posted, I read the Wave TOS on the new “TLC” program.
I’d rather fill out a rebate coupon, cutting and glueing a UPC bar code from the box, than to comply with this labyrinth of eligibility requirements. For instance, WAVES will not honor a theft claim in the second half of the annual maintenance contract agreement.
What kind of stipulation is that? After reading the long list of other legal exemptions, you come to realize even if you jump through all their hoops, they have a clause where, essentially, they will come through only half the time during the annual paid contract!
I bought WAVES through a major national retailer, one who purchases multiple pages of ads in every pro audio magazine. To their credit, they have gone to bat for me several times over this issue, but still WAVES will not budge.
In the past, they fought other battles with WAVES over the WUP maintenance program. WAVES did relent on some issue on that matter. I think the problem was high fees, and no renewal after a lapse. Now WAVES will renew WUP after a lapse, without requiring payment of back fees.
I’ve heard nothing but good about WAVES product performance, though I do think their bundles are grossly bloated and overstated. Anybody can include 40 processors instead of 8 if they count Versions 1-6 as 6 separate plug-ins.
BUYER BEWARE: WAVES is a company who regards their customers as thieves. Between the cop who investigated my theft to my treatment at the hands of WAVES afterwards, I feel totally violated.
BTW – I am not adverse to dongles. Before this theft, I liked the fact that they allow me to use my software on multiple computers, something generally not possible with challenge-response copy protection. But I was always troubled that WAVES opted out of the iLok key replacement program.
My attitude is about the company, not about the product. But I am learning a lesson I’ve heard the president of my company express about vendors many, many times. Price is not the most important factor, and neither is quality. There are some people who are not worth dealing with just because of who they are. WAVES is like that – at this point if I were to win back my Diamond bundle, I don’t know that I would find space for it on my hard drive, and I don’t have enough regard for the company that I would wish them on somebody else via eBay.
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I know better than 4-5 feet. On the other hand, if I start brandishing my MKH 60, I’m afraid people will walk off.
30 years ago, I lost a great interview with my wife’s grandmother because of holding a mic near her face. A great aunt, on the other hand, let me record stories her grandfather told her from the Civil War, the first time, after she was grown, to see an automobile and an airplane, experiences in the Great Depression, etc.
Today, I still have an uncle living who began life before automobiles were common. He tells how wagons used to be parked in a river ford in Sulphur Springs, Texas, while doing business in town. That way, the wooden wagon wheels swelled up and tightened inside the steel wheel rims.
Anyway, I’ve always wondered if I should have a Crown PZM in my kit, and it sounds like maybe no.
Maybe I would be better off hiding a Sanken COS-11 on my person, then stand too close to people talking.
Speaking of which, the Sanken comes with a little rubber mount intended to be taped to a surface. Any experience with this? It is certainly smaller than the Crown, but I wonder about using a lav in this way.