[Richard Crowley]

For a TV series, with four guys around a table, we use something like https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10152724/
But we use lav mics on the guys, not something on a boom.

I would consider a table like that and drill a 2 inch hole in the middle. Then you can mount the mic boom(s) on a mic stand sitting on the floor. That will completely isolate the microphones from the table top.

We will be shooting the 5th season in a couple of months….

https://vimeo.com/70030114

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

The major reason people use “portable” enclosures is to isolate from ambient noise. But since you state that you don’t have ambient noise to deal with, then you are talking only about the internal acoustics of the space. As others have stated, this is rather a complex decision based on many factors not mentioned in your question.

I have found this interview to contain several useful gems of wisdom when designing a recording space:
https://youtu.be/GyRqGA32zj4

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

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[Richard Crowley]

Time code won’t do anything for drift. It will only document the drift. If you really want guaranteed lock, then you need to use genlock.

For the gear to go that far out of sync so quickly, and after working OK in previous productions, something must be dramatically wrong. It would appear that something broke.

You said you have three cameras, but you show only one. What about the other two? Do they track with the first camera or with the audio recorder? That will help you discover whether it is the camera or the recorder which broke.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

Can you identify which track is which?
Did all four pieces of gear (3 cameras, one audio recorder) go together or randomly.
Most of the clues one would need for troubleshooting are not included in your question.

Are you saying that it STARTED out-of-sync and then drifted into sync?
Can you put some numbers on this? Drift of a few frames in 10-20 minutes is rather common IME for prosumer gear that is not locked together.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

The backup recording would be of equal quality, etc. But it wouldn’t be sample-coherent. So, if you needed to replace the entire recording with the backup copy, or cut between them, no problem. But you couldn’t MIX the two recordings together.

Note also that because of slight imprecision in consumer-level gear, there may be some drift in audio/video lock after perhaps 10 minutes. So the longer the clip, the more likely to slip out of sync. Some people report no perceptible loss of sync even after 30 minutes, while some people see perhaps several frames of difference after 10 minutes. Typically this isn’t a great problem. Especially if you are editing video with B-roll inserts or other edit points where you can “pull-up” the sound/picture sync.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

You didn’t mention WHY you are recording to a second computer? You won’t get sample-coherent recordings, so you wouldn’t be able to mix them together.

If the second “recorder” is only for backup, then you could get something like a Behringer UCA202 to plug into the second computer. Then take a line-level analog out from the 2i2 and feed it into the Behringer UCA202.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

Used the front panel knobs only for setting recording levels. They are quite small for attempting to do any kind of “real-time” mix.
The noise-level was excellent. Broadcast quality. The the latest season is currently on the air.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

I did a TV season with a Zoom F8, probably again this summer.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

A common cause of that kind of noise is electrical leakage typically caused by foreign material (microscopic dust, etc.) in high-impedance, sensitive areas. I would use good-quality alcohol to thoroughly clean especially the internal surfaces of the K6 and up inside the ME66 as well.

In the USA, we have an adult beverage called “Everclear” which is as close as you can get to pure ethyl alcohol (ethanol) without any additives, etc. Pure alcohol (95%) will evaporate and leave nothing behind, while “denatured” alcohol has things added to make it unsuitable for drinking, but which also make it less desirable for super-cleaning as required here.

We used to use Freon for this kind of cleaning before “Global Warming” became the latest phenomenon. Never mind that just the sheep in New Zealand produce an order of magnitude more greenhouse gases than all the solvent Freon used around the planet. But apparently mutton chops are more important than electrical cleaning.

Microphone noise -> surface contamination -> cleaning solvents -> alcohol -> Freon -> anthropogenic global warming -> greenhouse gases -> sheep in New Zealand Does that cover everything? 🙂

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Richard Crowley]

What was he using before ? Why has it stopped working?
Did it stop because of an operating system change (to Windows 10, perhaps)?
What does the software vendor say? Is there a newer version? Some other solution or workaround?
It seems unlikely that your client is the only one having this problem.

———————————————————————————
Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.