Choosing a New Production Recorder with Allen Cavedo

In this episode, we talk with Allen Cavedo, a production sound mixer based in Virginia. Allen is in the market for a new production recorder/mixer and hasn't yet decided whether to go with the Sound Devices 833 or 888. We talk through the pros and cons and which fits his type of work better.

You can find some of Allen’s work here (Allen’s notes):

Unheard – Fly fishing film festival piece with ambient stereo sounds - Silver award winner

Reel Destinations – Promo for Focus Features Harriet film

MADD – TV and web ads – Gold award winner

Comcast – Internal corporate piece. The great sounding dialog is Allen’s, the not-so-great dialog is from another mixer

USMCA – Political ad shot in noisy location with 20 CNC machines running in background, SuperCMIT shotgun mic knocked out the noise

NFL Nashville Seattle Pittsburgh – Three cities where I got great interviews and NFL game day sounds, I also recorded the music in Nashville

The Boy and the Bucket – I got the ambient sounds of the kid for this corporate branding piece - Emmy Award winner

Thoughts on Audio Recorders for Video

Here are some of my thoughts on when it makes sense to use a dedicated audio recorder rather than just run a microphone to camera.

Zoom F4 Firmware, Fairlight, & Sennheiser XSW-D Wireless

In our first audio-only Sound for Video Session, we cover the new features Zoom added to the F4 recorder in the 3.0 firmware update. Now F4 users have AutoMix an the Advanced Hybrid Look-Ahead limiters that were previously only on the F8 and F8n.

We also cover my impressions of the Fairlight digital audio workstation page in DaVinci Resolve 15.2.4. It is getting pretty close to the point where I can move to Fairlight and away from Adobe Audition. There are still some minor issues. In fact, in mixing this episode, I learned that Resolve has issues exporting audio only projects. Sigh.

And finally, we talk about a new wireless lavalier microphone I just received in for review: Sennheiser XSW-D Portable Lavalier Set. I have yet to do the review, but cover some of its features here. This is a consumer/prosumer grade wireless system that is made to be as easy to use as possible. The review should appear on my YouTube channel in the next few weeks.

Gear used/discussed in this episode:

Zoom F4 (Amazon) audio recorder

DaVinci Resolve - Free video editing, coloring, and audio mixing

Sennheiser XSW-D Portable Lavalier Set - Wireless microphone system for those who need wireless to be as simple as possible

RODECaster Pro - Mixer and recorder used to record this session

Golden Age Project R1 Active mkIII (Amazon) - Affordable ribbon microphone which I used to record this session.

Copyright 2019 by Curtis Judd