Audio Recorders for Filmmaking 2019: Choosing a Sound Recorder for Your Video Projects

in this episode we'll take a look at all the audio recorders I've used for filmmaking [Music] everybody has biases including myself I am a corporate video shooter and probably four to five times a year I also do a location sound job that is paid so that's where I'm coming from when I talk about recorders for filmmaking also keep your cool people if you own one of these and you disagree with one of my opinions on that let's say okay go ahead and leave your comments down below with your impressions we'd love to learn from your perspective as well first up let's take a look at some consumer grade recorders first of all the zoom h1 the h1 N and the tascam dr-05 now I call these consumer pros can use them as well but they're really kind of consumer grade devices in terms of how they're built in the past I mainly use my zoom h1 as sort of a replacement for a wireless lavalier system that is to say I plugged a lavalier microphone into the zoom h1 and recorded on the zoom h1 recorded with my camera separately and then I would sync them up and post that was kind of a very inexpensive way to get the equivalent of a wireless system without all the risk associated with wireless transmission and there are risks there and it did come with the cost of having to sync in post now syncing in post for the types of pieces I was doing then not a big deal it's really just about syncing probably 10 or 15 clips at the most now if you're gonna work on a long form narrative piece and you're going to come home with hundreds of clips then it can become more problematic that's when you're gonna probably want to have something more like PluralEyes to help you seeing things up faster all these recorders are really made out of primarily plastic and I think for their price that's okay that's normally what you would expect at this price and the case of the tascam a-- feels to me like it's a little better built than the original h1 the h1 in is probably a little bit closer to the tascam dr-05 in terms of build quality so I would give the build quality award to Taz cam in this case but overall I think they're going to be ok if you're careful with them now let me talk about my preferences here just a little bit if I'm going to record a lavalier directly to one of these recorders I prefer the zoom h1 or the h1 N and the reason for that is that they tend to have better preamplifiers than the tascam dr-05 3.5 millimeter microphone input so it was just cleaner there was less self knows sounded overall so that would be my preference for that use case now on the other hand these are also very useful for capturing ambient sound if you're trying to capture an environment and the ambience sound associated with that environment they all have inbuilt stereo microphones the difference however is that the zoom has cardioid stereo microphones and the tascam has omnidirectional microphones so I figure in this case the tascam is better suited for most of my purposes when I'm going to be doing ambient recording so I've actually turned to using that for that purpose and in the case of the inbuilt microphones that preamplifier seems to work pretty well in the tascam so that would be my choice in that case let's move up now to the next stage this is sort of a more prosumer type of recording device the zoom f1 now this is an interesting device because it can be used to record lavalier microphones like I used to use my zoom h1 but it can also attach microphone capsules like a shotgun microphone capsule to this to use it on top of your camera or even on a boom pole so I would say the f1 is a little bit more versatile it's obviously more expensive as well and if you have any question about the pricing on any of the devices we talked about today you'll find links down below in the description now the form factor on the f1 is a little bit different first of all in terms of build quality this is far more robust than an h1 or an h1 N or a tusk mdro v in terms of its build quality there's a lot more metal here and it really seems like a nice choice if you are recording from a lavalier microphone directly to a recorder this is a really good option in that case it is a little bit on the bulky side so if you're trying to hide it on a talents body say for example for a narrative film it can be a little bit more work to do that it's not impossible but if you're gonna be doing like full body shots and they're wearing tight clothes you might run into some problems with this now no device is perfect let me give you some of my subjective opinions on some of these things some of these things for just facts but first of all the preamplifier this is opinion the preamplifier sounded a little bit mid-range focus to me so that's gonna be fine for some voices for some voices that may not be the best sound in the world so one thing to keep in mind when I did my test with a shotgun microphone attachment from zoom I did get some RF interference that is to say it sounded like interference from my phone kind of doing some communicating on the network so that's going to be a consideration if you're going to be using this in really close to RF sources like phones and things of that nature on the positive side this can be used as an audio interface with your computer that is to say you can record from the f1 into your computer and it can be powered via USB as well overall I find this to be a really versatile piece of kit so if you're looking for something that can record from a lavalier microphone that you can put on top of your camera and uses a shotgun microphone or even on a boom Pole you've got a lot of options here so really versatile piece of kit now we haven't gone into all the detail in the world if you do want to get more detail I've put links in this corner up here for some of the reviews we've done on these previous gear if it's not up there because there's not enough room then we also have some links in the description below there are a couple of other recorders that work very much like the zoom f1 the first one is a test cam dr 10 l which is sold in the United States and there's also a dr 10x which I believe is sold in other countries this is basically a very small recorder that is used for recording lavalier microphones but it looks like a body pack transmitter for a wireless system so it's very easy to hide it's smaller than the f1 and it's very similar to the f1 from that standpoint the only thing it doesn't do that the f1 does really is it can't take other microphone capsules so you can't connect for example a shotgun microphone to it so it's not quite as versatile from the standpoint that it can't be used as a shotgun microphone but it is very good at what it's intended for and that is to replace a wireless system and instead use a little tiny recorder that the person wears on their belt or hidden somewhere else there's also one from a company called electro Sonics they produce professional-grade wireless microphone systems but they also have what they call their PDR which is basically a portable digital recorder and again it looks like a body pack transmitter that you wear this one's very high quality in terms of its microphone inputs it's a lot more expensive it also has a timecode input that sort of works in an interesting way not exactly a timecode generator inside of it but an interesting thing to look at as well if you're looking for something that's a lot more robust its serviceable can be repaired by the company that produces it and you're okay spending a bit more money that's worth a look at the review as well next up let's look at a group of recorders that have been very popular amongst independent filmmakers in the prosumer realm he and I'm talking in this case about the dr-60d mark - from tascam the zoom h4n pro the zoom h5 and the zoom h6 now first of all why do I classify these as prosumer well they're generally plastic builds so they're not something that a everyday professional is probably going to want to use because it's not quite as robust as they need because again they're yours getting bounced around all day long use day after day after day however for independent filmmakers I think this is a really kind of a sweet spot and you can get some really great sound with these devices I think overall audio quality wise all of these are pretty close to each other the one exception is the zoom h4n Pro which is still very good but it can't supply nearly as much clean gain as all of the rest of them and so in that case that would probably only be a choice that I would recommend if you have a really good microphone with a very nice strong output signal so that means not the rode ntg-2 for example which is a common combination that a lot of people kind of gravitate to if you're going to get an ntg-2 which is a fine microphone I would recommend one of the other recorders and not the h4n Pro so I'd go with the H v eh6 or the tascam rather than the h4m Pro you'll just save yourself a lot of grief and fighting with noise floors and things of that nature another feature of these recorders generally is that you can send an output from them into a prosumer type camera so that's going to be any of your mirrorless or DSLR style cameras with 3.5 millimeter microphone inputs these are all really kind of suited for doing that type of thing where you can record directly to the camera but you're using this recorder as sort of an audio interface and it does the heavy lifting of gaining up or amplifying the signal from the microphone in a very high-quality way and then sending that to your camera however I would say that my preference is if you are planning to do that I find the tascam dr-60d mark 2 a little bit easier to work with from that standpoint because it has a high and a low camera output so you can really kind of match it to your camera a little bit more effectively again not everything is rosy here at the tascam in particular has a very plasticky build that doesn't hold up very well if it's dropped I think the zoom H 5 & 6 hold up a little bit better actually even the h4m Pro probably hold up a little bit better but again they're all plastic so just something to keep in mind there are a couple of issues that I've heard reported nothing that I have experienced personally but I think it's probably good idea to share it here number one for the tascam dr-60d mark - a lot of people have reported I've never had this issue with my copy and I've had mine for I think almost five years now that their XLR cable gets stuck in the input on the tascam so it never comes out once you plug it in and if it comes out again and I've heard that from a variety of different people so it seems like it's probably some sort of systemic issue again I have not experienced it so I don't know if there's some thing about the particular cables people are plugging in whatever the case may be just be prepared that's a possibility with the tascam I've heard two people report that the zoom h5 had a problem as well where the when the microphone was plugged in and it was being phantom powered and it got pulled out well it was still being phantom powered that it destroyed that preamplifier in the h5 I have not experienced that myself either so I don't I don't really have a way to confirm that but I have heard two different people report that to me as a potential issue and I don't know what the current status of that is so that's something to consider as well if you're careful I don't think it'll be a problem just don't go yanking the cable out while your phantom powering and you should be fine but know that it is a potential issue back to the positive side you can power all of these via USB so if you need to do a longer shoot you can connect a USB battery bank to each of these and power them for as many hours as your battery can handle it you can also use these as audio interfaces I should clarify only the zooms work as USB audio interfaces to your computer so you can record to your computer via your zoom so if you want to plug a professional level microphone into when your say your zoom h5 that can be recorded directly to your computer via USB now if I'm going to be doing location sound my personal preference and again you can get great results with the others but my personal preference is the tascam dr-60d mark - I think just because it has the I like the fact that it has a lot of buttons you don't have to do very much menu diving what you do on the zoom H series recorders I also like that you have two different options for camera output so you can really kind of tune what signal it is that you're sending to your camera and get just the right level to your camera so I find that very easy to work with as well on the down side of course it does not work as an audio interface with your computer on the tascam side so if that's important to you as well then that's kind of a deal-breaker so just something to keep in mind moving on task cam has some newer generation recorders for example the tascam dr-40 new generation of recorder also works as audio interfaces just like the zooms do so that's a nice step forward I have not had an opportunity to use these yet I only have so much budget and I haven't had the money to buy one of these and so I haven't tested them yet I do have them on my list at some point I'm hopeful that I will get to test them there's one more recorder that's kind of unique and a little bit different than all the others it's the centrist mixer face R for R I want to talk about it for just a minute it's a different from the standpoint that it comes from a company that actually operates more in the music world they actually have a history of making headphone amplifiers for audio files but now they're also making this recorder and they also have a mixer version of it that doesn't actually record just for mixing so the R for R actually is a mixer and recorder has two XLR inputs and it's a very interesting device very very solidly built out of pure metal it uses no screen just buttons switches LEDs and knobs and so it's a very elegant design from my standpoint it records to micro SD cards I prefer SD cards but they chose micro-st to keep the unit a little bit smaller overall it's a really interesting device have a look at the review if you're interested in learning more about that one next we're gonna move up more into the pro realm and I want to talk about one recorder that I use for one tiny little project literally just a very short interview and I don't have a really deep feel for how good this recorder is but a lot of people have asked about it so let me just tell you what I do know about it and I don't even know if this is made anymore the roland r88 is the recorder I'm talking about so this is an 8 input recorder it is it seems very nice in terms of its overall layout and ergonomics seemed pretty good my very first audio interface wasn't and in terms of audio quality they seemed very very good to me the problem with it is it was very heavy and I recall I had it in a bad and it was an incredibly heavy recorder it seemed like so it's an older one I don't know if they still make it and just those are my impressions so far I think it's a very good recorder if you find one secondhand or used and you're considering buying it I think it's a pretty good deal so if you can if there's any way you can I would recommend trying it out before you actually buy it but it seems pretty promising to me all right let's move into the again closer to pro level this category is filled with recorders I have used and actually own all of these and that is the zoom F series so the f4 and the f8 and the f-18 as well as the sound devices mixed pre 3 6 10 T and they also have music versions of those recorders as well we're not going to cover as much here now what's interesting about these is that zoom and sound devices are coming from two different directions so zoom has traditionally worked more in the consumer space and are kind of moving up more and more towards the professional space where sound devices is coming from the other end of the spectrum they have for many years worked on devices that have been used in large budget films and television production and they're now producing the mix pre which is a device that is really aimed a little bit more at kind of sound enthusiasts people that may not get paid necessarily but that want the quality and reliability of a sound devices there's one other recorder that fits into this category that I am NOT as enthused about now is when I did my original review and that's the tascam dr-05 4 and f8 and the sound devices mix pre if that tascam dr-05 for it it's an okay recorder so again if you're using it you're getting good results that's great keep using it I'm not trying to convince you to buy one of these others however if you're in the market and you don't have one yet at this point in history I would probably spend my money on a zoom F series or a mix pre part of the reason for that is the Dr 701 DS preamplifiers are not quite in the same league as the zoom F and the mix pre and that's just that was my experience with it if they're good they're decent they're very much like what we talked about in the previous category with a dr-60d mark - and those h6 from zoom a little bit cleaner I would say in terms of producing the amount of self noise that they produce which is not much they just didn't have as much gain and overall I didn't find it as easy to work with as the zoom f-series or the sound devices makes Bri if you want the most features for your money I think that the zoom f-series is probably your best bet now that doesn't mean it's the best for every single situation but it is more aggressively priced for what you get first of all very good clean preamplifiers with 75 decibels of clean gain advanced hybrid look-ahead limiters to keep those unexpectedly loud sounds from clipping and distorting in your recording you do have a Hiroshi power input so you can add cinema batteries and batteries that will power you through a very long day that's one thing to consider is that once you start moving up into this category you're going to need to buy more support gear like larger batteries and things of that nature so it's something to keep in mind the Zoom f4 and the f8 cannot be powered via USB they can act as a computer audio interface to your computer that is to say you can plug a professional level microphone into the zoom f4 or f8 N and then you be a USB record that directly to your computer and at the very same time that you're recording to your computer you can record to the SD cards in the zoom F Series recorder you have dual SD card slots on both the f4 and the f8 which is really nice there is the F control add on mixing surface so this is a really nice control surface that allows you if you're working from a desk or a table to have a little bit more control with controls that aren't quite so cramped together on a tiny little front so that makes it a little easier if you are for example not operating from a bag a sound bag but instead have the recorder on a table or desk and are recording something like a concert or perhaps a panel discussion both the f4 and the f8 and f8n have inbuilt timecode generators and they're very high quality time code generators that you can rely on through the course of an entire production day that is to say 12 hours and you should still be in very good sync if you're not familiar with timecode I've got a variety of different videos we'll link to those as well now there is a mobile app to control the mixer or the f8 on the f8 n the f4 does not have that option and the app is for iOS it is not for Android so that's a kind of a sticking point for some people but I just wanted to lay that out here the headphone output is a quarter-inch and the headphone output is okay the amplifier it's decent and it can work fine as long as you're using headphones that are rated at less than 100 ohms generally if you're using anything with more impedance than that then you're probably going to have a rough time hearing just getting enough volume out of them to really hear what's going on I will say however that the headphone knob and the menu knob encoder are both placed on the front of the unit in a very ergonomic position which is fantastic the channel fader and gain trim knobs are a little bit crowded on the zoom f8 and the f8 ends so it's difficult to operate them especially if you're going to be actively mixing while recording that's not something that most of us really need to do in most cases I think really most of us just need to set up the game from the start but if you are planning to do some sort of active mixing I think that those knobs and buttons are just really kind of crowded together on the f8 on the f8 n not as much of a problem on the f4 as of the time of this recording all of the F Series the f4 f8 and the f8 n all have the auto mix feature that is to say yet actually automatically mixes when you have multiple people speaking into multiple microphones so what that does in practical terms it was actually fade back the person who's not currently speaking so that their microphone isn't picking up a lot of room sound and contributing that to the overall recording really nice feature the only problem with this auto mix feature is that from my perspective there are no settings you can either turn it on or off and it doesn't doesn't work very aggressively so the good thing about that is that it doesn't usually cut anyone off and when they are speaking the problem with it is it doesn't attenuate their microphones very much so it's not really helping the overall mix as much as I'd like it'd be really cool if zoom at some point could add some settings to allow you to kind of tweak how aggressive that auto mix works you have both balanced and unbalanced outputs on these which is really nice on the f8 and the f8 n the screen is really top-notch it's bright it's colorful it can also be seen outdoors in the bright sunlight works great on the f4 it's a much lower resolution it's monochrome and it can still be viewed outdoors in the Sun which is good but they can't fit as much information on the screen so I find that a little bit limiting in some ways it's not a huge deal I still like the f4 but it is a consideration where the zoom was really good in terms of features for price I think the sound devices mix pre-series is really good both in terms of high quality reliability and very good support the sound of Isis mix pre line is a little bit more extensive because they have the mix pre three the six the ten t as well as similar versions for music recording now let me just talk about the music recording versions of these alot of people are tempted to buy those because they're a little bit less expensive than the non music recording versions and I would advise against that the three six and ten t are really made for recording for video the three m6m and 10 m are made for recording multitrack music and that's a very different kind of approach to doing things and it's not just the fact that the 3 M 6 M and 10 M don't have time code generators built into them it's also that their UI is completely focused on recording multitrack music what I mean by that is that it sets up a project so that when you press record each time you press record jury the recording to a new track on top of tracks that are already there overdubbing on top of tracks that are already there and a punch in and punch out to from a punchin to punch out point or things of that nature you're not starting a new clean recording and that's typically what you need when you're doing films you need to actually start a new independent clip so the 3 M 6 m and 10 M are very good if you want basically a digital audio workstation without a computer that's what they're for for musicians if on the other hand you're going to be recording sound for video you really want to go with the three the 6 or the 10 T the mix pre have very very good clean preamplifiers with 76 decibels of clean game and they sound to me ever so slightly warmer than the zoom now it's not a night and day difference you really have to have good speakers or headphones to hear that difference and it does impart a little bit of a flavor if you will but I really like that sound that's opinion in case you were wondering all of the mix pre series have very high quality analog input limiters which are cleaner than those in the zoom F series the Zoom F series does some kind of digital magic to make the limiters work these are actually old school analog limiters and I think this would be my preference here in terms of using limiters now I don't want to overstate the importance of limiters they are a really nice tool to have for professional workflows they are not absolutely critical in every case if you learn how to use your recorder you won't need a limiter all that often so that's just something to keep in mind I think a lot of people kind of blow that out of proportion oh my gosh I need upgrade from my zoom f4 to a mix pre because they don't have analog limit ourselves you met four no I don't advocate that at all all I'm saying that is if I have a choice I would much rather have analog limiters and that is what it is but don't make a purchasing decision on that factor alone now here's where the mix pre-series gets a little bit more there's a little more differentiation between them let's say and you have to kind of investigate a little bit more closely to see which of these are going to work for you number one the mix three three and six do not have time code built into them that is to say they don't have time code generators built into them however they do have a time code input so if you're not sure whether you need time code or not I think the mixed pre three and six are two fine choices and if you do decide or find that you need timecode later you can always buy something like a tentacle sync external timecode generator and it will integrate perfectly with your mix pre three or six and of course the mix pretent II has an inbuilt timecode generator with both inputs and outputs the mix pre three and six also only have an unbalanced 3.5 millimeter output so that is to say they're really kind of made for working with DSLRs or mirrorless cameras or hybrid cameras with 3.5 millimeter microphone inputs so they're not really made for more professional workflows where you need to feed audio to a camera with an XLR input just something to keep in mind you can do that you can do the adapters and things of that nature but not really made for that purpose now in terms of external power the mix pre three and six being probably a little bit more closer to the consumer grade can be powered via USB C so if you have a USB C power bank that supplies enough amperage you can power these and I'll put a link down below for a battery buy anchor that I use to power my mix pre six when I have that the mix pretend T has a Hiroshi input so you can use a lot of professional-grade batteries and that's going to be things like cinema batteries or np-1 batteries or high Q batteries of things of that nature so you can use a power distribution system and all of that good stuff again you're getting into some cases where it's gonna cost you a lot more to get everything set up but it gives you a lot more flexibility for long shoots where you need a more professional style workflow because you're working with a larger team of people one really nice thing about the mix pre-series is now you can add third-party MIDI controllers to use as a control surface so this is nice from the standpoint that you have more options than you do on the zoom F series and those options are less expensive so it's kind of an interesting play between the two devices between the zoom and the mix pre that you now have more options on the mix pre than you did previously of course you can use the mix pre as an audio interface to your computer so you can record to your computer via USB and the mix pre and you can also record on the mix pre at the same time that you're recording to your computer now in terms of limitations all of the mix pre series have a single SD card slot so they don't have that redundancy I don't generally find that to be a problem I've had very good luck if you buy quality SD cards I've never had one fail for an audio job yet I did have a CF compact flash card one time kind of trip up I was able to recover everything off of it eventually when I got home but it was the file system got a little bit corrupted and so I couldn't read it in the actual camera that I was using at the time so I've had pretty good luck with these but the something to keep in mind if you are looking for that level of redundancy to some people that's very important the mix pre only has a single SD card the one differentiating factor though is the mix pretend t has a USB port that you can plug a thumb drive into and on a near real-time basis it's actually copying any of the files you recorded from your SD card to the thumb drive there are mobile apps for the mix pre-series to control the device remotely using an iPad or an iPhone and also there is an Android version so if you're an Android shooter that can make a big difference for you if you need to be able to have that mobile control via a larger screen then the mix pre can do that with either Android or iOS while the mix pre has only a 3.5 millimeter headphone output I find that it can drive better headphones it actually is a better headphone preamplifier than on the zoom series so that is a really nice feature as well the reason I say that's a really nice feature is it is absolutely critical when you're recording to be able to hear what's going on so you can identify if there are problems during the recording so you know if you have to do a retake or if you know you need to solve a problem before you continue on so headphone amplifiers matter on field recorders and now that we've gotten up into this pro level I think the mix Prix is probably the least expensive of the recorders we've talked about so far and they're not cheap at this point that has a really good headphone amplifier I think all of the other devices we've talked about up until this point have kind of mediocre headphone amplifiers where you're gonna need to use headphones with a lower impedance rating that is to say I would ideally choose something with 75 ohms or less on the zoom F series I think you can push it to about a hundred ohms but you really want to keep it lower than that so using your audiophile headphones that require that have a rating of 300 ohms probably not a good idea until you get to the mix Bri on the not-so-good side the knob on the side which controls the headphone volume and allows you to scroll through some menus is on the side and that's kind of the worst place to have it if you're recording with the recorder set into a sound bag and I just haven't found a good bag that works well with that set up and also the headphone output jack is very close to the knob so that kind of gets in the way so that's the one thing about the mix Prix that I don't love so I thought you should know on the other hand the individual channel knobs that is the knobs that control the either the fader or the gain trim for each of the input channels these are much better knobs and I found on the zoom f/8 for sure and they're better than those on the f/4 as well they're not a lot larger than the f-4s but they are I think a lot easier to work with and they've combined the button and the knob into one thing so it takes up less space on the front of the unit on the mix pre-series you can record up to 192 kilohertz 24-bit with the exception of the mix pre 3 which goes up to 96 kilohertz on the zoom f series it also can go up to 192 kilohertz but only in certain situations as soon as you turn certain other features on that drops down to 96 kilohertz or in some cases even 48 kilohertz so you'll want to look at the specs if recording at very high sample rates is important to you to me I never need to really record a higher than 96 kilohertz and in fact when I'm recording dialogue I almost always record that at 48 kilohertz so I don't know that's a super critical thing but for people that are interested in that and that is important to them there's your information now the mix Prix has a much smaller screen and it is a touch screen whereas on the zoom F series it's not a touch screen so at first I was concerned about that I thought this is gonna be very difficult to work with and there are a few cases where it's not ideal but overall I think the implementation is quite good it makes it pretty easy to work with and the buttons or you know the little areas where you need to tap on the screen are large enough that it's not a problem to do it for most people so that's one thing to consider also on the mix pre-series the apps work on both Android and iOS so you can always go to the app if you need a little bit more room for typing things in so that's really nice now both the f-series and the mix pre both also will allow you to enter metadata and the apps allow you to do that most effectively because you have a bigger screen to work with especially if you're using an iPad but that's one thing to consider as well if it's important for you to enter metadata that is to say names of the scenes and little notes like this is a good take or this was a bad take and airplane flew over or whatever these apps make a big difference in helping you to do that and the mix pre allows you to connect a USB keyboard directly to the mixer on the zoom f-series to connect a keyboard you'll want to use the F control add-on control surface now which one of these should you buy the Zoom F series or this sound devices mix pre and I don't think there's a clear answer to that and anyone who tells you that there is a clear answer to that you don't think they're being fair I think that it can you can make great recordings with both of these fantastic recordings with the zoom F Series fantastic recordings with the sound devices makes pre-series I think what it really comes down to is what features do you need which features are most important to you how are you going to be working what are you going to be recording and so based on the features I just talked about there you can make that decision for yourself and you're the only one that can make that decision also if you already own one of these and you're listening to this and you're wondering whether you should upgrade to the upgrade to the other one or cross grade to the other one if you're getting good recordings and you're happy with how it's working just relax enjoy and get out there and make some good stuff don't keep fretting about this stuff and thinking you're maybe if only I had a mix pre instead of a zoom F series I could make better if only I had a zoom f-series with the Hiroshi input I could use professional level batteries instead of this USBC battery with the plug that can actually pull out of the recorder at any time I would quit worrying about those things if it's working for you it's working for you get out there and make something cool now all that said people are still gonna ask ya yeah but Kurtis which one do you take with you which one do you use most often because I do I own those f4 the f8 the f8 n and the mix pretend T honestly when I'm going to do a paid job I always want to have a backup mixer with me now we'll get to my primary mixer in a little bit but which one do I choose I almost always take the sound devices makes pretent II now keep in mind that's an $1,800 recorder mixer and in terms of the way I work that's the one that works best for me it doesn't mean that's what you should buy it doesn't mean that that's the best one it's just the best one for me and that's again the specific types of shooting that I do so don't freak out don't use that as anything other than a g-wiz piece of information it's just a data point it doesn't mean that that's what you have to do all right we're moving into a little bit more of a bonus section here a lot of people on YouTube are not going to be as interested in these because they're so expensive but let me tell you a little bit about professional level recorder mixers and that's gonna be things like the sound devices 600 series so that's a 633 the 664 on the 688 it's also gonna be things like the Zacks comm max Nomad and Deva so these are a lot more expensive and we're talking about here for example the Zacks comm max runs at about 3000 dollars that's just for the recorder and you're going to buy other stuff to get it working in a usable kit form and the sound device is 633 runs about $3,300 u.s. so these are a lot more expensive and I think the first thing that a lot of people assume is yeah but they must sound so much better than the others and the reality is is if you compare them and in fact we have a comparison video if you want to go check the link for that down below we have a comparison that includes one of the zoom F Series recorders sound devices mix pre 6 and the sound device is 633 and to be honest hearing the difference if you're using a high quality microphone between those three there's a difference I can definitely hear a difference from the 633 to the other two in particular and I can't hear a tiny bit of a difference between the mix pre and the zoom F series but not much and most audiences are not gonna notice it so that's not really from my perspective the main driver it's a driver it's a feature but it's not the main reason for spending this much money on these types of recorders and you have to also keep in mind that professionals for them this is something they're using almost every single day and it's getting a lot of use it's getting bumped around yes getting beat up it's getting used day after day after day they also have a higher standard for reliability and for consistent physical build quality for immunity to RF interference and electromagnetic interference and things of that nature and that's where these recorders really sort of shine they've really been over engineered in a lot of ways to withstand all those rigors of day after day after day use now they also have additional features that allow them to be more flexible in different types of workflows so professional workflows where you're shooting a film with a crew there are very specific roles that the sound person has to fill in those cases it's not like a indie film where it's just you and a couple of friends maybe shooting with your DSLR or mirrorless camera or the 3.5 millimeter microphone input when you're working on a project with a budget time is money and so the considerations become very important and the last thing you want to do is you don't want to be the sound guy that holds up the production and ends up costing the production more money because you're paying say for example an hour late rate for some of the crew you don't want to be that guy you don't want to be the one that messes up because your gear couldn't quite handle the situation or you know whatever the case may have been so that's where these types of recorders kind of have a set of features that you generally won't find on the prosumer gear or the consumer-grade gear of course the preamplifiers are top-notch they also generally will have analog limiters or in the case of Zacks comm they've taken a different approach where they have dual analog to digital converters which avoids the whole issue of clipping and distortion all of them have inbuilt timecode generators now the sound devices do something interesting where they have more extensive RF shielding built into the unit itself so the body is she made out of carbon fiber yeah but they also have some more extensive internal RF shielding that even covers across the seams and things of that nature so they're really really built to prevent that RF interference from getting in and messing up a recording and having to do a retake which again cost the production more money they also generally have wireless control features in the case of sound devices they integrate with slot systems for wireless receivers so you can actually control those wireless receivers from the mixer itself and on the Zacks comm side they actually have our own set of wireless systems for wireless microphones and you can actually control some of those from their higher end recorders like the Nomad and the diva and that makes it a lot easier for you to kind of get everything dialed in and set up without having to again stop the production run up to an actor change some settings on their transmitter run back and say okay we're good to go again on the sound devices 6 33 and 688 you have Dugan auto mixing which again is just very much like I described before but it works more effectively than on the zoom f-series and on the Zacks comm max you also have an auto mix feature you also have add-on control surface options that are very very high quality using top-notch linear faders and things of that nature they're very expensive on the sound devices that I believe they're about $2,000 to start on the Zacks comm side they even are more extensive and some of them actually have automated faders as well so these options here really if you're gonna be operating from a sound cart where you have room for a linear fader control surface but you have lots of options there again because they all have her OC inputs for power you have a variety of options for battery distribution systems and using much larger scale batteries that are like Sooni batteries or batteries that are integrated into sound cards or np-1 style batteries or high q-- style batteries they also have AES digital inputs and outputs and you might ask yourself what is that for what does that matter well some very high-end microphones are actually digital microphones that is to say they actually convert the signal the audio from analog to digital in the microphone and then they send a digital signal the nice thing about a digital signal is that you're not going to get any sort of interference over the cable in addition to that these mixers have digital outputs which makes it very interesting for workflow where you do have to send audio to say for example a backup recorder or two cameras that have AE s digital input so for example my Blackmagic Ursa mini Pro has XLR microphone inputs that can also operate in AES digital mode and what that means is I can actually do the recording to my sound devices 6:33 and also send a digital stream of that audio over to the camera so I'm not relying on the cameras analog to digital converters for audio at that point and cameras are infamous for having very bad audio quality generally and so if I can bypass the camera's microphone inputs basically by using a digital signal instead I've gotten myself a lot farther ahead in terms of the amount of work that needs to be done imposed all of these recorders also support extensive metadata and allow you to connect a USB keyboard so you can do all the different note-taking and essentially create a sound report in the recorder itself and then produce a PDF sound report at the end of the day you can also do that in the zoom F series and the sound devices mix pre-series although not quite as extensive now if you are in the market for a pro level recorder how do you choose which one I I can't tell you which one to use I ended up with a sound device of 633 that's my primary mixer he is not the right one for everyone there are plenty of people who love their zachsk um Max and Nomad and diva recorders as well so it really comes down to you need to try them I think I would characterize them this way I really find that sound devices probably has a larger portion of the market share if I had to guess I see a lot more sound devices mixer recorders out there in the world and they're incredibly reliable they have fantastic customer support and that's another thing that's very very important to professionals is if something breaks they need to be able to get that serviced and they need to be able to get it serviced quickly and they need to not be futzing around with trying to figure out if it's still in warranty or not they just need to be able to ship it back to the manufacturer get it fixed and back out to them so then get back to work and I think you're going to definitely see that from sound devices I've experienced that with sound devices I think Zacks comm is about the same way on that front the thing that I really kind of strikes me about Zacks comm is they are very very innovative they do some very unique things and they've created sort of an ecosystem for the location sound mixer and the large budget film sound mixer that makes it so if you buy all their gear their wireless systems and so on and so forth it integrates very very nicely and you can do some things that are really unique and make things work really nicely in the end for example that whole never clip feature that I talked about earlier where they have dual analog to digital converters so instead of using a limiter and squashing their really really loud parts as they come in to prevent them from distorting and clipping instead what they do is they record all that dynamic range way more than most microphones can handle and then in post you get to choose how you want to handle that which is really kind of cool they also have a lossless audio recording format called marf I'm not going to get into all the details of that but these are the examples of the types of innovative type things the Zacks comm does so on the other hand I have heard some people complain a little bit about buggy firmware and things of that nature from time to time generally they're reliable I know that sound devices is very on top of that stuff they are very good about testing the one situation I found where they released a firmware with bug they fixed it the very next day so they tend to be very very good about addressing those and really focusing on reliability and something you can depend on I think what Zacks comm does is they push the boundaries a little bit more and so there's a little bit more risk of having bugs in the firmware but this is all just based on impressions so if you're trying to decide between a sound devices and a Zacks come I would highly encourage you to go somewhere where you can actually get your hands on them and actually see them up close and see how they work and get a feel for each of them to see if it kind of works with your style the way I did it is I went to the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas which they hold once a year in April they both have booths there so I was able to go up and actually see the gear the 6:33 and the Zach's Macs and kind of get your hands on and see all the different features they have and you can figure out for yourself which one resonates better with you which one probably will work better for you if that's not an option you can also rent there are dedicated outlets for sound mixers they're mostly based in Los Angeles there's some in Atlanta and some in New York as well but this is going to be places like Gotham sound sound Department location sound corporation true they all have locations that you can rent from you may have to actually have them shipped to you if you're farther away but it may be worth it if you're gonna make that big of an investment so there are some ideas for you on how to choose between those so overall there's a look at all of the audio recorders and mixers for film and video that I've used over the last several years hope that was helpful for you if you have any questions go ahead and leave those down below and if you've not already subscribed make sure you do that and be sure to get your more great videos on how to improve your lighting and sound for video talk to you soon [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Curtis Judd

Views: 580,774

Keywords: Audio, Sound, Video, Film, Sound for video, sound for film, recorder, mixer, Tascam, Zoom, Sound Devices, MixPre, F4, F8, F8n, DR-60DmkII, H1, H1n, F1, DR-05, DR-10L, Centrance, Mixerface R4, Mixerface R4R, H4n Pro, H5, H6, DR-701D, Sound Devices 633, Sound Devices 688, Sound Devices 664, Control Surface, MIDI Control Surface, MIDI Controller, Zaxcom Maxx, Zaxcom Nomad, Zaxcom Deva

Id: hqgCZCEq0_8

Length: 43min 18sec (2598 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 24 2019