[Richard Crowley]

The FOUR guys from BlackMagic whose pictures are at the top of this forum are deafening by their silence. That is pretty disappointing.

[Richard Crowley]

“Two months ago I spoke with one of BM’s reps at a trade show about the lack of reasonable manuals; the response was that I don’t need manuals, that it was an emotional attachment that isn’t relevant today.”

The sure sign of a non-technical sales gerb. 🙁 I try to avoid those people. Lets hope BM their act together if they want to sit at the adult table and sell high-end products.

[Richard Crowley]

Thanks, Jeff. Now if only we can convince BlackMagic that this is important information that should be given prominent place in the documentation (and even the online specs, IMHO). None of the photos are clear enough to see exactly how the four BNC and four HDMI connectors are labeled on the back panel of the hardware.

@BlackMagic people, please remember that this information is not only necessary for configuring the equipment during installation, but it is (perhaps more importantly) vital information for planning systems and even selecting what products to buy and what will play with what. As Mr. Roemich has demonstrated, you can make errors amounting to $1000s because this kind of information is missing or ambiguous or hiding.

[Richard Crowley]

If you want to make your own, instructions are on my web page here:
https://www.rcrowley.com/CamAdapt.htm
Or you can have them made for you from vendors like Redco
https://www.redco.com/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=126&cat=Design+Your+Own+Custom+Cable

As others have observed, your adapter cable is not wired properly for the kind of application you are describing.

Alternatively, you could simply throw out one of the channels, and just use one of them. But that would require re-trainig all your editors :-(.

[Richard Crowley]

I have found Adobe Audition to be very convenient for doing batch processing. I don’t have specific experience with using VST plugins with batch, however.

[Richard Crowley]

An increasing number of consumer devices (mostly smaller and more portable ones) feature advanced digital diddling of the signal, often with venerable “name brands” attached such as “Dolby”, et.al. The attempt is to give you a “better sound experience” by doing wierd things (like combining low frequencies into mono, processing it and then playing through both speakers, etc.) This kind of thing could very well cause symptoms as you are describing in some (but not all) situations.

Note that listening to out-of-phase channels on headphones will never give you the cancellation you will hear when playing through a pair of speakers through the air. Unless you have a big hole through your head.

This kind of out-of-phase problem can also come from trying to use the wrong kind of adapter when coming from an XLR microphone into a stereo 3.5mm mini-phone input, etc. Indeed, there are a dozen different things that could have caused your symptoms, and we don’t know half enough about your details to hazard a guess at what it might have been.

But good on you for testing playback on a variety of devices to discover this problem before publishing the final mix.

[Richard Crowley]

1) Everything sounds tinny through computer speakers. By definition.

2) Are you sure you aren’t combining the channels to mono (and possibly causing partial cancellation)?

You gave no details about HOW you recorded this audio. Have you used this particular combination of microphone, cable, adapter, recorder, etc. before? Did you combine L+R, or just use one (or the other) channel?

[Richard Crowley]

That “preset” recommendation is severely misguided. Your preference for staging levels for optimum performance at each link in the chain is the proper way to handle it.

You don’t want ANY stage to be operating “down in the mud” at less than optimal signal-to-noise ratio. OR clipping against the top at the other end and severely distorting, either. The metering system on a mixer is there to help set optimum channel gains, mix levels, subs, and master output levels, etc.

How much front-panel gain any particular power amp needs to produce the desired SPL in a room is NEVER a “preset” kind of adjustment. Ever. I recommend taking no further advice from that clueless source.

[Richard Crowley]

Re: Radio Design Labs ST-VP2 Automatic Ducking Module

Yes, IMHO, that is the kind of thing you seem to be looking for. You can locally “duck” the audio from the far end when someone is speaking at the local end.

Assuming you have one of these at each end, the very real problem is that if both sides are talking at the same time, neither of them are hearing the other. It will require some good control of the proceedings to designate when each end is free to talk.

Whatever you end up using, it seems to me that each end is producing a “mix-minus” feed by default. As long as they don’t take the signal from the far end and mix it back into the feed back to the far end.

[Richard Crowley]

https://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20031023_hodes.html