MixPre battery life in real life conditions with phantom "on"?
 

Does anyone have an idea how long aprox. will the batteries last on a SD MixPre when used with phantom powered shotguns/hypers at near full gain?
Is it sub 4 hours considering the OP is not monitoring from MixPre and uses recorder's headphone output instead?
And is the 66db gain enough for quiet/distant applications?
I'll feed it directly to a camcorder's line in or to an external recorder that has all the bells and whistles that the 302 would have except the noiseless gain of more than 70db.

Thanks in advance,
T

If you use the lithium batteries (not the rechargeable ones) they last for days. Duracells should see one day out easily.

Hello Toenis,

A lot depends on which mic(s). Some condenser mics are more power hungry than others.

66dB is enough gain, but some mics are more sensitive than others and would work better if the source is very quiet to very distant, or both.

There are practical limits to how much gain a preamp can deliver. What preamp are you getting over 70 dB of quiet gain?

Regards,

Ty Ford

Ty, I meant that maybe the SD 302 will deliver better gain S/N than the MixPre.
I'm using a NTG 3 or Oktava 012 or a stereo pair with 12.6mV/Pa sensitivity.
One interesting thing is that I have to turn the sensitivity on the R44 recorder to full that is about 58db and trim it a bit down to use it with boomed mic to get decent levels. But doing so will give me preamp gain noise when direct monitoring with MDR headphones.
In the other hand when I listen to the sound in studio from Fostex PM monitors connected to balanced lines it doesn't give me that much noise at all so I can assume that the headphone amp on the recorder is adding in some noise too as one would expect.
The gain control on the R44 is kind of unusual as you can dial the sens. of the input from line +4 to mic -58 and any in between and use trim to control the levels continiously.
I really don't want to mess with double (recorder+mixer) preamps and double batteries in double system recording that is hard enough for small crew.

T

Toenis,

Sound Devices can best tell you about S/N differences between the MixPre and 302. The 302 has other good features that more than make up for its price difference.

Headphone amps can be misleading. The Sound Devices headphone amps are exceptional.

Again, what preamp are you talking about with 70 dB of clean gain?

Regards,

Ty Ford