[Rodney Morris]

I picked up this little Tascam unit to record transcription. Accepts line or mic level (menu selectable) input through the 1/8″ jack. Also has manual level adjustment.

https://www.guitarcenter.com/TASCAM-DR-03-Solid-State-Recorder-106205669-i1562926.gc

Rodney Morris
Freelance Sound Technician/Mixer

[Rodney Morris]

With all due respect Bouke, this is what is wrong with our industry – we are letting the clients dictate the price. Clients NEVER want to pay more, they always want to get something for less. And when they dictate the price, it will ALWAYS go down in the long run. It may work for short term profit, but is completely short sighted (and damaging to everyone else in the business) in the realm of long-term sustainability.

Rodney Morris
Freelance Sound Technician/Mixer

[Rodney Morris]

Yes, there is a way to make them sound less different, but it would involve bringing the studio/booth audio “down” to the location audio. In other words, you could EQ and add the appropriate “room” reflections to the booth audio to make it match the location audio, but the other way around is nigh upon impossible. Unfortunately, you do NOT want to do that with radio. I did something similar a couple of years ago, when a client hired me to fix a scene in a corporate video. There were two actors on screen but one of the wireless lavs didn’t get recorded, so the dialogue was recorded on only one actor’s mic. To make matters worse it was in a very reflective foyer of a house. I was asked to make the dialogue match. So instead of trying to make the off axis dialogue sound better (ie, trying to remove room reflection), I made the on axis dialogue sound less direct (by adding room reflections from a reverb plug-in and some subtractive EQ). The result was a track that matched but sounded like it was recorded by an overhead boom. The client wasn’t pleased with the result because they figured that since I was an audio professional that I could make the crap sound like gold. Sometimes you just can’t win.

Rodney Morris
Freelance Sound Technician/Mixer

[Rodney Morris]

Thanks for looking at this. I have Cubase LE and Audacity loaded on my computer and I’ve loaded the file into them to see what level I was recording. Unfortunately, the metering in Cubase is not a digital scale. The metering in Audacity isn’t precise enough to get a correct reading. I’m much more accustomed to ProTools (I was a ProTools engineer in a broadcasting department many moons ago), but unfortunately my version of ProTools LE no longer works. If someone could import the file into ProTools, set the input mixer fader and the output faders at unity gain and tell me what level the reference tone is reading, I would be very grateful.

Rodney Morris
Freelance Sound Technician/Mixer

[Rodney Morris]

Akeline, please email at rjmhotrod@yahoo.com. I live in Sarasota, FL and may be able to help you out with some on site evaluation if you are close enough.

Rodney Morris
Freelance Sound Technician/Mixer

[Rodney Morris]

If I’m understanding you correctly, you are stating that you currently have equipment that you have used in the past at this camp and that this equipment has failed at some point and has needed repair. Is this correct?

Firstly, any gear will fail if it gets hot enough. It’s a fact of physics that you can’t get around. Mackie, Bose, QSC are all good quality manufacturers. If the problems you are having are due to overheating, then you need to find a way to keep whatever gear you own cooler. Perhaps covering them with a pop up tent – not the speakers necessarily, I’m thinking more of the mixer, eqs, amps, etc. Make sure that the amps have plenty of space around them for ventilation. If they are mounted in a rack, then perhaps leave a full rack space width between the amp and the next piece of gear in the rack, so that air (the primary coolant for gear) can easily move around it.

Again, I’m assuming that your equipment failure is due to overheating. It’s possible that it could be due to something else entirely, such as dirty/poor power, etc…

Peavey makes fine equipment. I don’t know that it’s better (or worse, for that matter) than Mackie, QSC or Bose gear. In other words, the equipment manufacturers that you have now should be sufficient, especially compared to Peavey.

Rodney Morris
Freelance Sound Technician/Mixer

[Rodney Morris]

I brought the clip into audacity for a quick look and listen. Yes, there is some distortion on the word “um”. I’m not going to assign any blame on your sound guy because I don’t know what his setup procedure for this was. But I will say this – this is the same kind of distortion that I run into with the Zoom recorders when I feed line level signals into the line level inputs. Distortion occurs only on the loudest transients even though the levels appear to be fine on the recorder display. I set my reference tone at -20 at the recorder, I run the mic through my Sound Devices 442 (with limiting set at +14). I know the set up is right and yet I get this type of distortion. However, if I run a mic level signal into the mic level inputs of the Zoom (reset reference tone at -20, microphone running through 442 with limiter set at +14) this distortion goes away.

The DPA 4060 is a very good mic – not much limitation with it. But I’m not a big fan of the Zoom recorders for this very reason.

Rodney Morris
Freelance Sound Technician/Mixer

[Rodney Morris]

I’ve never seen oDesk before, but there’s an ad on there currently looking for an audio editor to edit an interview that’s 40 mins long into 10-20 segments and it needs to be done within 36 hours. Budget= $10. REALLY…$10? Please tell me I’m reading something wrong…

Rodney Morris
Freelance Sound Technician/Mixer

[Rodney Morris]

Frank, that was pretty much my pricing for the gear ($800) plus $500 day rate = $1300/day. Most reality TV shows that we get called for here are in the $500-600 flat rate range. No thanks.

Rodney Morris
Freelance Sound Technician/Mixer

[Rodney Morris]

Thanks Eric. The more of these that I see and get called for, the more I begin to question the integrity and relevance of my pricing structure. Thankfully, most of the A-list sound mixers in my area are all of similar mindsets to mine.

99% of CL job listings fall into the low-to-no pay category. I did get an actual, no-fooling, real paying job once off of CL – that was several years ago.

I pretty much don’t do reality TV shows anymore. I’ve done a couple – they were NOT fun and I ended up hurting and sore for a couple of weeks afterward. Pay is never what it should be and the hours are laughable. The majority of the reality shows that we get calls for around here are all pilots, and so the producers are almost always insecure, trying to prove that they can produce a hit show.

A couple of years ago I was called for a pilot reality show that was working around big cats (tigers, lions, etc…). A contract was sent to me to sign before I accepted the job. In the contract, there was the standard no liability clause in case your equipment is damaged or you are “injured, maimed or killed”. Then there was a line that stated, in no uncertain terms, that we HAD to do whatever the producer asked us to do! The red warning lights in my mind went off immediately. I refused to sign the contract and therefore did not take the job.

I’m sure most of us have similar stories with reality TV shows. Feel free to share.

Rodney Morris
Freelance Sound Technician/Mixer