Sound Recording Tips - DR-100

[trueindie]

Alcove this is for you

I'm going to be shooting something in a closed room, 15ft by 20 ft. Two people will be speaking looking at a camera.

Sound equipment I own:
- Sennheiser lav mic x1
- AT8035 Shotgun mic x1
- Tascam- DR100 x1
- Zoom H1 x1

None of the people can be lav'ed.

I was thinking the following:
- I am going to have all the microphones hanging from the ceiling.
- lav and shotgun will go into one of each inputs into the DR-100
- Zoom H1 will also hang from the top as backup

What should the Tascam - DR100 settings be?
Right now the input settings is on
- Stereo
- Low Cut = Off
- Level Ctrl = Auto (What is this??)

Record Settings is on
- Format = Wav 24bit
- Sample = 48k
- Size = 2g
- Pre rec = on
- Delay = Off (What is this??)

In the back
- Mic Gain is on High
- Phantom power is on
- Auto / Limiter is off (heard somewhere it should be off. Don't know what it is)
- Speaker off.

Am I doing things right? Any advice on what settings to change?
Thanks so much. Who needs to go to film school when you have indietalk
Best,
Aveek

 

[CamVader]

I've put all sorts through my Tascam but never had problems.
Had your card been anywhere near a mac perchance? Only ask because something similar happened to files on my 550d. 4 files showed up as 0k (of course they were the 4 most important files, the rest were just background stuff. Had a good look at the file structure and erased the folders macs like to put on to cards. Files were fine after that.

No, just a PC. I'll never forget that feeling when I realized nothing was there. I contacted Tascam and they were aware of the problem with certain cards and it was a random issue. They said the only way to guarantee it wouldn't happen again was to only buy cards from the approved list.

I learned my lesson. That same card recorded multiple things just fine until it didn't.

 

[brianluce]

There is no setting for the DR-100 limiters, it's either on or off. In dialog recording we learn to avoid hitting the limiters if at all possible. The limiters are there to save you, that's all. Hitting the limiters is a bad thing, not a good thing, but a necessary evil to save the take.

Appropriate levels for dialog is -20 to -16 with peaks around -12 to -9. Hitting the limiters will deminish the dynamics of the sound, although it's not as bad as what happens when you hit beyond digital zero.

Yeah sorry about that, I don't what made me type "Limiters", I meant keep the mechanical level dials located on the side set fairly high for dialog. Otherwise it'll be faint.

I recorded some dialog yesterday that had an ear piercing scream. So I'll have a good report to give on the efficacy of DR100 limiter -- and this time I really mean limiter.

 

[brianluce]

aha. Now my past experience with it makes sense.

A funny thing, all the experts here I work with would ask me:

"What are you recording on?"
"DR100"
"Oh that's very good. Philip Bloom recommends that"
"Oh"
"Yeah,... yeah... you see that red light? It means it's peaking"

Nobody once checked the setting. I never checked the setting. We're all filmmakers. Hilarious

Thanks Brian.
Aveek

I love that little red light. It has saved me more than once. It's an idiot light, as if the DR100 is saying "Hey idiot! Lower my levels! Better yet, Hire Alcove or Gp -- they at least know wtf they're doing!"

 

[brianluce]

Good to know. -20 to -16 and -12 to -9 it is. Thanks for reinforcing that in my head

I actually have this taped on the side of my Tascam.

 

[brianluce]

While you're hot on the trail here, I had a bad experience with my DR-100 and non-approved SDHC cards.

Imagine this: Everything appears to record fine with no error codes, but all I ended up with were new files with 0KB recorded. It was strange. Since then, I've stuck with the recommended SanDisk's and everything has been fine.

We had to re-shoot the whole damn afternoon. Some forum members may remember the incident.

What brand was it?

 

[CamVader]

What brand was it?

PNY 4GB

 

[Alcove Audio]

By the way, that DR-100 I started with will be working hard this weekend, wearing Rycote wind protection, and sitting on a tripod 6 feet from the side of a dirt track where 18 super late model dirt track race cars, each putting out 850 hp, will go ripping around turn 1, accelerating to 120 mph, while I grab track to driver communications, announcer, and crowd and pit sounds on my DR-680. Can you tell I'm stoked?

That's the fun stuff - I'm jealous.

 

[gpforet]

Update:

The good:
Tracks recorded from the track official to car communications via a Raceceiver worked great. The transmitted signal is highly compressed (kinda like a cell phone), but very intelligible and was very clean.
The announcer audio was recorded with an Avantone CK-1 with hyper cap and Rycote softie pointed at the loudspeaker from about 30' away. Not ideal but captured the authentic sound of the announcer and crowd noise, but was drowned out as the cars roared past. I am more and more impressed with the Avantone CK-1.

The bad:
The big dissapointment was the DR-100's internal uni mics being used to capture car sounds. I was attentive to the levels and only rarely lit the peak light, and yet the sound was not very rich and almost dull. I was using a Rycote windjammer over the stock foam windscreen. I had the limiter turned on, and think maybe the limiter was kicking in before the peak light would light. Of all the audio recorded, this was the weakest in sound quality. Monitoring with M-Audio IE-30 in-ears (26 db isolation) sounded good, but no doubt I was getting some leakage since the cars were only 10 feet away and my innards would vibrate as they roared by.

Next trip to the track will have a pair of Avantone CK-1s with the cardioid caps and softies on a X-Y stand for the car sounds and try to get a direct feed for the announcer.

That's the fun stuff - I'm jealous.