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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Huge Weapon Mg Audio Issues

Tommaso Alvisi said:
Thanks David for your post, much appreciated and straight to the point.

Anyone has some updates about the internal mics extremely low levels??

Will this issue be resolved?

Thanks!
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RED has been aware of this since shortly after Stealth/Weapon CF, atarted to ship.

I recall, with a modicum of personal satisfaction, that when Dragon 1st shipped, there was a very perplexing Timecode issue, that RED and third party manufacturers, like Zaxcom, ultimately solved, albeit after some angina.

I, therefore, remain confidant that there will be additional options, to those cited above and hopefully, within the non hardware domain, for the problem at hand. I have been told that engineering, within RED has been looking at this very issue.

Thank you very much

Fury
 
Ive got a Magnesium Weapon and did a test shoot with a sennheiser MKE 600 battery powered shotgun and lectrosonics 401 into a wooden camera A box and got perfectly good sound. I am disappointed I cant used my Sanken cs1 as my on board camera mic (for doc stuff) anymore because its phantom powered but Im ok with this new system. I would much rather have a smaller lighter camera body than phantom power built in. As for the internal mics, yes they seem low but when I crank them all the way up they do what they are supposed to - get reference sound.
Also take note the Arri Mini has even less audio ability than the Weapon and requires a special cable to feed audio, requires a Line level, no Phantom power and there is NO way to even monitor audio, there is no headphone jack!

I plan on getting one of the new offhollywood modules with XLR's which will provide more than adequate sound capabilities and much more.
 
Matt Bass said:
Also take note the Arri Mini has even less audio ability than the Weapon and requires a special cable to feed audio, requires a Line level, no Phantom power and there is NO way to even monitor audio, there is no headphone jack!
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I hear ya, but the Weapon is a bit smaller than EPIC dragon and does phantom power take up that much more space? (i don't know, just asking).

I just feel with the form factor of Weapon and and expander with a couple of TA3 (mini xlr) would put weapon in a whole other class and offer that much more feature wise over Alexa mini.

I am always going to be a person who beats the drum when it comes to improving onboard sound. I have done entire films single system feeding mic levels through mixers into the EPIC while recording 48K audio onboard. There is no reason the R3D file can not be an excellent container for audio as well.

I would have liked to see the basic package audio have improved (cough, more professional via mini XLR) connectors on a base expander. I think there are many levels of production that would welcome this feature as part of a "basic" camera package.

I know the camera is "all about the images", but sound is an often overlooked part of the equation.

David
 
David Battistella said:
I hear ya, but the Weapon is a bit smaller than EPIC dragon and does phantom power take up that much more space? (i don't know, just asking).

I just feel with the form factor of Weapon and and expander with a couple of TA3 (mini xlr) would put weapon in a whole other class and offer that much more feature wise over Alexa mini.

I am always going to be a person who beats the drum when it comes to improving onboard sound. I have done entire films single system feeding mic levels through mixers into the EPIC while recording 48K audio onboard. There is no reason the R3D file can not be an excellent container for audio as well.

I would have liked to see the basic package audio have improved (cough, more professional via mini XLR) connectors on a base expander. I think there are many levels of production that would welcome this feature as part of a "basic" camera package.

I know the camera is "all about the images", but sound is an often overlooked part of the equation.

David
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Yes. Couldn't agree more.
 
Tommaso Alvisi said:
Milan, do you have an update? Thanks!
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The camera just came back, it was a faulty FLEX cable.

The internal mic levels are now even but still barely audible even with the pre-amp sliders maxed out. So I guess it's the way they are designed. I'm not sure what use they're for.

As for the base expander audio, it's still amateurish.
 
Th OMOD stuff looks promising, even there I wish they would have gone for smaller, lighter, more compact and also TA3. Now I know that mark would get all over my ass about "industry standard", but even the Zoom F8 shipped with a few TA3 connectors. To me it makes sense to make the camera small and make the connectors small the Audio quality of a TA3 and a "regular" big ass XLR is the same, one is more compact, lighter, at fits a modern camera design. IN terms of interface, a simple pigtail cable for old school full XLR.

I thought this was the best part about the RED ONE 4 professional audio inputs. I'd call TA3 more professional than 1/4 inch stereo.

David


Milan Spasic said:
The camera just came back, it was a faulty FLEX cable.

The internal mic levels are now even but still barely audible even with the pre-amp sliders maxed out. So I guess it's the way they are designed. I'm not sure what use they're for.

As for the base expander audio, it's still amateurish.
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TA3 is becoming huge again in the sound industry. Receivers use it, even sound mixer use it.

I bet there gonna be an "AUDIO BOARD UPGRADE" type for those crappy mics.

Pat
 
The nice thing about this whole thing is that because the system is modular it means more options. The camera is becoming more and more swiss army knife with lots of configuration options. So, with the third parties involved you could create a really nice package. Even one off's maybe.

The only problem could be that it gets to be a bit like firefox (nobody wants anything that gets so flexible its bloated and useless).

I think that opeing up the system has been great. WOuld like to see the small form factor move over to audio. I was sorry to see TA3 abandoned after the RED ONE (MX) because in this regard I think that RED was ahead of the curve, but there was a lot of bitching by dorks about TA3 connectors which was so easily resolved with a single cable.

So, maybe that is why I am beating the TA3 drum a little bit, because I always thought it was smart.

David
 
Tommaso Alvisi said:
I think they should consider fixing the internal mic unbelievably low levels under warranty...no?
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Was shooting 30 feet from 1000hp race vehicles (on the rev limiter) the other day- incredibly loud. It's still barely audible in camera and only at peak proximity, practically unusable audio with pre-amp sliders maxed out.

And this is after the"fix".
 
Milan Spasic said:
Was shooting 30 feet from 1000hp race vehicles (on the rev limiter) the other day- incredibly loud. It's still barely audible in camera and only at peak proximity, practically unusable audio with pre-amp sliders maxed out.

And this is after the"fix".
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I think you recorded the magnetic variation of that vehicle directly on the redmag. ;-)
 
Can't the audio gain be fixed by a firmware upgrade? It's only meant as scratch audio, it's not meant for real audio since it's recording where you probably operate the lenses and the fans of the camera get picked up as well very easily.
But getting the audio levels higher should be possible through a firmware upgrade, that way we have enough for scratch and sync audio.
 
David Battistella said:
Guys. No need to begin this kind of stuff.
Personally, I had mentioned, way back before weapon, that the base expander would have been great with two mini XLR inputs (yes, i'd actually like to see those brought back) with MIC/LINE swithcable in software. That with the two front mics would have "beefed up" the audio capabilities of the new camera and offered even more value to the upgrade. Many people, including myself, need a small lightweight solution with very decent audio capabilities onboard. I would have liked to see red move from mini stereo plugs to mini XLR because I think it is more professional. Maybe even offer a pigtail cable for Full XLR to mini XLR.
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OMG YESSSS!!!!

3.5" are fine too, I don't mind using my A-Box. But I really am not looking forward to asshole sound guys making snide comments when I ask them to plug in one little stereo miniplug to feed me sound. That's one of the couple things keeping me from upgrading. The Movcam stuff looks interesting though! But I agree with Milan that it's confusing and frustrating that Red would take away functionality that doesn't seem like it adds much extra cost/weight/space.

Daniel Kelly Brown said:
You guys see this upgrade to the A-box? http://woodencamera.com/NAB-2016/A-Box-Conversion-Kit-Weapon-Scarlet-W-Raven.html
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This is sweet, but it only solves half the problem, the part about avoiding flack from sound guys. I still sometimes shoot interviews where I need to run sound myself. I like my Oktava MK-012. I don't want to have to use some crappy self-powered mic.

Milan Spasic said:
I really grew to like the size of the Redvolt XL system (now that they fixed the charger and batt read out issues)
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How do you mean? Which issues? Last I heard you still have to wait for the batts to cool down before charging them.

(My charger just shat the bed and I'm hesitant to buy a new one b/c of the above issue)
 
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