What's your kit-list to attach various sound desks to your cam's XLR input?

[Shaun Roemich]

<SIGH>

Considering some SERIOUS heavyweights chimed in the last time, I strongly encourage you to check the previous post on the topic and keep ALL the information in the same place...

Mister Digges starts it off with some GREAT advice and a bunch of us other folks vamp on that...

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/all-thin...audio-guy.html

[Don Bloom]

All of a sudden the fifth slide hits and BOOM, audience members are knocked out of their chairs! Presenters can not be expected to understand normalization, but any audio guy that goes live without checking all his levels is an idiot.

Steven, I thought that guy was in my area and I was the only who had the luck to work with him.
The worst part....EVERYONE looked at ME because I had a feed from the desk to the camera. Yeah like it was MY fault! Trust me, that audio guy never worked any show I was on again. I called the boss at the AV company I was hired thru told him what happened and the next day one of the great guys was there.

[Steven Digges]

Don,

Long day of editing for me. Checked the board before retiring and once again you cracked me up. That is funny only because I know your pain. I hope it was not one of those gigs were the AV company took a classic short cut because they did not want to rent a sports lens. That is the short cut were they put you on a riser smack in the middle of the room full of people instead of the back of house where you belong? "Everyone thought it was me because I had a feed from the desk." Your lucky some guest did not throw a piece of bad ballroom chicken at you :)

Thank you Shaun. Peter, Shaun knows I am not a heavy hitter, I just have a sense of humor. It was everyone else that vamped in that made that a really good thread.

Steve

[Paul R Johnson]

Never xlr to jacks of any kind, balanced or unbalanced. Always a couple passive DIs to cope with mono or stereo. Then unbalanced ¼" to TRS wired only to tip and sleeve, so it doesn't matter if the output is balanced or unbalanced. I also have 2 x ¼" to 3.5mm for iPods, or computers, and 2x ¼" to 2x RCA phonos. This covers pretty well all bases. I also have a couple of old Sennheiser wireless receivers in case I need to 'steal' a feed from a wireless system that might be on the go! If the event is complicated then it means an extra person and lots more gear.

[Tim Lewis]

I have a 3.5mm to XLR lead that came with the camera. I went to use it the other day from the headphones port of the old desk at our church. I have a 3.5 - 6.5 mm adapter. All well and good so far. I added on an XLR lead to reach the camera, only to find I had the female end of the lead and the port on the camera is female.

Luckily I was setting up early. I raced off to the audio shop and got an XLR male to male adapter.

[Peter Dunphy]

Wow great posts! Thank you all so very much!

Came across this bad boy while scouring older threads:

XLR Audio Adapter - XLR-BP - PRO XLR Audio Adapter For Camcorders and Video Cameras

Anyone used it?

[Don Bloom]

Peter,
Personally I have not used that piece of gear but I know a couple of guys that have. Years ago they were using Sony VX2000 cameras and that of course didn't have XLR inputs. they picked this box up and swore by it.
I HAVE purchased things from the supplier in question and had really good service but keep in mind this was 10 to 12 years ago. I'll assume it hasn't changed.

Steven...Were you at that seminar? They rented a JVC HD250 with the Fuji 17. The client in their infinite wisdom decided that they wanted to record to tape. In the camera. Really? Why not rent a deck and run back to a DVCAM large shell tape at the desk so you're not changing tape every hour which on that camera takes about 30 to 40 seconds, and now your precious seminar is on 1 or 2 tapes instead of 6 which can be....wait for it! LOST! Yep you guessed it. they did lose 1 of the tapes. I gave them to the contact there at the end of the day they signed off for 6 tapes and sure enough the next day they only had 5. Once again they came to me and swore I only gave them 5. They shut up when I showed them the sheet they had signed stating 6. It was then (about 90 minutes before we were due to start day 2 - I'm a big early bird. Get there, power up, drink coffee, and back then smoke a cigarette or 5) I called the AV company talked to the guy that booked the show and told him to send a Sony deck and a few large shell tapes along with whatever cables needed to go from the Folsom to the deck. 45 minutes later it arrived and he and I had it going in about 7 minutes. Problem solved!
Going back to the audio I had it all set up the day before the seminar was to start and when I arrived on the morning of the first day my cable was GONE! I guess the audio guy needed 1 more cable somewhere and decided to "borrow" mine! After going to the road box and finding about another 1000 feet of XLR that he could of easily found, I ran the cable and taped it down in full view of most of the seminar attendees. when the presenters PPS decided to blow the wax out of everyone's ears, I swear...it felt like every eye in the place was on me. THAT'S when I decided I was going to spend time in jail for knocking off the audio guy. I had figured that I was going to hang him from the highest truss with a 25 foot XLR. Better judgment took over and I didn't do that as I wouldn't do well in jail...so I simply called my guy at the AV company and had him replaced.
I'd be willing to bet you and I could swap stories for a long time. Some funny, some sad, some stupid and some just unexplainable! ;-)

[Jay Massengill]

In addition to several Rolls DB25b for devices that only have mic-level inputs, I have several two-channel Ebtech Hum Eliminators and a couple of Ebtech two-channel line-level shifters for devices with line-level inputs.

These are great for isolating the line-level feed from ground-loop hum and converting to and from balanced to unbalanced in either direction.

The level shifter box does the same, as well as converting between -10db and +4db in either direction.

[Shaun Roemich]

Don, your story reminds me of so many of my own...

I've always said a GOOD audio tech is worth their weight in gold but that most A/V companies parade that around when they send some clown out who doesn't have a hot clue how to make an event work.

I had a guy last year argue with me for 45 MINUTES that the XLR line he was giving me "worked fine". I changed out five pieces of gear before I walked over and looked at the console. Yamaha digital. Threw some headphones on and I heard that telltale sound of digital AES audio.

Told the SENIOR audio tech to flip it to analog audio, if you please. He argues some more. I called the site manager over and told him what my findings were. Manager dude dismissed audio tech guy for a meal break and went into the menus and found that in fact the board was sending DIGITAL AES audio out of the XLR patches I was connected to. All of a sudden my sound was there.

Oh and five days later as I was driving through the mountains the manager dude called me up to ask "um... you were recording video of all that, right? Because our audio recorder messed up and we don't have the proceedings for transcription like we were contractually OBLIGATED to provide"

I said "So in OTHER words, the tech didn't flip THOSE outputs to analog either AND he didn't both to monitor the recorder"

Silence.

I don't mind covering someone else's butt but this was stupidity at it's finest.

I'm working in that facility again this fall. Guess who WON'T be behind the console...

[Don Bloom]

Stupidity and incompetence. I hate the latter more than the former. The former can be overcome with some books or OTJ training if the person is willing. The latter...well it can be overcome after they get over themselves and their stupidity.

That story of yours brought so many memories of stupid and incompetent people I've had to work with over the years, I almost want to cry.

[Steven Digges]

I will go for the obscure. As I have mentioned before, my kit is always growing, it will never be done. Last week I had an intermittent connection in a 1/8” output on a LANC control unit. When I went for my tool kit I saw my Dremel and thought mmmm. Sure enough, I found an all metal slightly abrasive bit with a perfectly cylindrical surface extending about ¼” down from the top. It looked to be less than 1/8” in diameter. Very carefully (with my fingers of course, not the dremal) I inserted it into the 1/8” hole. It was perfect! A couple of gentle swabs with it, then a squirt of Radio Shack contact cleaner and I was good to go. The bit now lives in my tech kit that goes everywhere with me, not back in the tool box. That Dremal is not even the real deal. It is a cheap POS I bought a Harbor Freight on sale for $8.00. That bit makes the 8 bucks worth it.

Disclaimer: The output I fixed is on a Manfrotto LANC camera controller that replaces the handle on a tripod. It is probably 10 years old. If it were to fail again, it would be an inconvenience, not a show stopper. I am hard a** about trying to make sure nobody puts ANYTHING intermittent in a mission critical place. If it failed once, it IS going to fail again. I did NOT repair it, I temporarily fixed it. That controller will now be used on sets where we are shooting in controlled circumstances, not on live event coverage. Most of the time we run CCUs for those anyway.

Shaun, your AES save was over my head, good catch! As I have said, I am not an A-1. The digital boards pose a problem for me. With analog boards, even I can trace signal until I find the problem. There is now way, at this point in my career that I am going to learn the programming on every digital board I see.

Yes, Don…the war stories. I would love to exchange them sometime. Many of mine were not funny at the time, but after all the bleeding stopped we laugh a lot.

Steve

[Shaun Roemich]

Don and Steven: any chance you guys are going to NAB this year? If so, first round is on me. Love to finally get to meet you both.

[Peter Dunphy]

Happy days, I got confirmation from the sound man that they use the following sound desks and I may find myself having to connect to any one of them.

"Midas pro2-c (digital) x 2

Midas venice x 3

yamaha M7 (digital)

Dynachord powermate

Allen and heath mix wizards

We use Midas for anything important as they are generally accepted to be the best availible. The ohter desks are used for small hires and rock and roll."


So, now I need to finalise a kit list that will grab microphone audio from any of the above and bring it into the XLR socket on a camera. Will have a careful read through this thread and assemble a provisional kit list for your viewing pleasure :o)

[Don Bloom]

Every year I tell myself, "I'm going to NAB this year" and every year something else comes up and prevents me from going. So not this year. Again. Sorry.
I have marked out all of next April since I don't know the exact dates of NAB in 2015 and G*d willing and the creek don't rise...I'll be there. 2015!

[Rick Reineke]

"they use the following sound desks and I may find myself having to connect to any one of them"
Any/all are easy to patch to. A competent operator is another story. A full split would be recommended, avoiding operator incompetence all together. Of course that entails a competent mixer for the recording and additional associated expenses, set-up time, ect.