Use any tool for the job.

Last week I had the opportunity to do audio recording for a short film. Recording field audio is a tough job and yesterday we were not having fun. We were shooting a scene where a man is leaving a conference room, going down stairs and out the building while talking to his wife on a cell phone. Well the location that was picked was very nice other then the incredibility loud AC system. Oh yea, it whistled and we didn’t have control to shut it off.

Due to the nature of the shots, a shotgun mic was out of the question so we used a lapel (Tram…Check them out, sounds great!). The actor was wearing a suit and We couldn’t find a hidden place where the mic didn’t rub on something. I continued to record with it, but Brandon came up with a great idea. Use the voice recorder on an iPhone to record the audio. The mic on the iPhone is not to bad and it would be in a great place to capture the audio. Just had to show the actor how to start and stop the recorder. I have not reviewed the audio we captured with the iPhone, but I figure we should use any tool you have to get the best audio you can.

Speaker Repairs and Audio System Tune Up

Speaker RepairsThis week we are installing a couple of new DSP units in the worship center. BSS London Blue 80s are the new brains for our audio system. In the process of testing everything last night we found the the protection circuits are bad in three of our EAW MH-662iA speakers. This has been limiting some of the high frequencies from the main center cluster. Now we have to figure out how to fix them. So again I will be excited to hear what the system is going to sound like after we get this fixed and our system tuner James Young is done with the DSP upgrade and room tuning. Going to be a fun Sunday.

PERSONAL: Just a quick personal note, it was awesome to see Brittney (my daughter) worshiping on stage Sunday in the Edge service. It brought me great joy.

UPDATE: The Digital Shift

Studer VistaWe are getting closer to making the decision on a console…kind of.  I spent a good part of the week reviewing the consoles and talking with customers from both products.  As I was reviewing the requirements with the technical sales staff of both companies, I came to an interesting conclusion.  Soundcraft recommended that we look at moving from looking at the Vi6 to the Studer Vista 5 SR.  We had not looked at this console because it was out of our price range, but they have some options that might get it into range.  At this tim,e our requirements are greater than the capabilities of the Vi6.   Soundcraft will be add to the Vi6 and meet todays requirements for a console, but really doesn’t give us much room for growth in the future.

At this point in the process I’m not really interested in reviewing another product, but I did tell the folks at Soundcraft I would give them a few days to get an updated proposal to us.  If it seem interesting we would need to schedule a demo of the console as soon as possible.  I have heard good things about the Studer.  Grainger Community Church just installed three Studer consoles.  We just have to wait and see what they come up with.  In the mean time if you are interested, have a look  at the Studer.