Scarlet and Redmote Interference with wireless mics...

[Jarek Zabczynski]

So, noticed some weird things on my last shoot. Was running my Scarlet with WC A-Box with a pair of Sennheisser G2/3 wireless mics. One lav and one wireless boom. Noticed some audio noise before we began. There was some interference noise in the audio. Would be worse when hitting record. Also, increased noise when firing up and using the REDMOTE. Had one receiver on the back of the cam and one jammed into the hand strap of the side handle. After playing around with it we put the boom back on wired and ran an xlr from the lav receiver and placed it on a table 10 feet from the camera, all audio issues went away.

Anyone else have similar experiences? I know the G2/G3 series mics aren't the best in the word but I consider them pretty industry standard. Never had these problems running on my Panny cams.

 

[Arnold F.]

They are beginner/intermediate mics, not the standard in production. Lectrosonics are more or less the industry standard with Zaxcom and Sennheiser following on the higher, and lower end, respectively (and some Sonys out there as well). I've never been on a professional shoot where Sennheisers were used, although they were my own starter mics and I even still have one set laying around.

Obviously, there is some kind of interference and you may not have had that problem with your "panny" (which I'm guessing means Panasonic !) because they don't have wireless remotes, at least none of the ones I've dealt with. Wireless systems can sometimes not play nice with one another. I've been on shoots where our wireless monitor feeds knocked out wifi. It can also be difficult to determine the source or reason for such a problem and, typically, when a problem such as this is detected, crews avoid repeating the circumstances where it occurred.

I had, before editing, written that it's an issue for the Production Mixer on your shoot to deal with, but since the problem appears to be the camera and/or remote, it seems like the camera department's gear is the problem, so to speak. I think the first thing I'd do is determine if they're operating on the same slice of spectrum. After that, I'd just mess with them to see what works. We can't be ruining other people's work.

The broader picture - maybe relevant here or maybe not - is how RED cameras treat audio, and it's not great. A perusal of this subject in a professional Sound Mixer's forum is most revelatory, despite the widespread belief amongst many folks, particularly in the RED community, that a professional audio person couldn't possibly know about audio.