Hi All.

Monitoring audio is very important I realize, but it suddenly occurred to me that I may be monitoring incorrectly.

Let's say I have this set up:

A Shure FP33 hooked up to a Marantz PMD660 recorder Nikon D800e DSLR. On the camera there is a mini jack for headphones. Of coarse the mixer AND recorder has a headphone jack too. I normally monitor from the mixer.

On the mixer, there is a Monitor Input Switch:

"In the center position, this
switch sends the post-master audio to the headphone
output. In the left (locking ) or right (momentary) position,
it sends the audio signal from the Monitor In jack
to the headphone output."

and a headphone monitor mode switch:

"The user can monitor the FP33 output as: Stereo; Right
channel only; Mono (Left + Right); or Left channel only.
Note: This switch also affects the Monitor In signal.
When using a stereo MS microphone, such as the
Shure VP88, the user may wish to pass the mic signal
through the FP33 as separate Mid and Side signals,
yet hear decoded stereo in the headphones. Using the
Headphone MS Matrix, the user can monitor the FP33
output as: Discrete (Mid and Side); Side only, Stereo
(decoded MS), or Mono (Mid only). Refer to the Internal
DIP Switch table for instructions on activating the
Headphone MS Matrix.

Honestly, I have never really been sure where these should be set, and all you pro's are probably going WTF?

Maybe someone can clarify this before my luck runs out?

Thanks everyone.

Jonathan

But WHAT are you recording? Are you recording MS stereo music concerts? Are you recording "reality" video with wireless mics? Are you recording scripted drama from a couple of shotgun mics on booms? HOW you use all those monitoring options depends on WHAT you are trying to accomplish.

The reason for the monitor selector switch is so that you can easily monitor the critical points in the audio chain. Namely, the output of the mixer, and the confidence monitor out of the recorder (to confirm it is getting audio properly, etc.)

Hello again Richard!

Most of what I record are interviews, two, three people either with wired lava and or a Rode NT3.

Your comment on the monitor selection is what I thought.

But that is telling you that there is a signal/audio getting out from the mixer. To me it seems that the audio going into a recording device or camera needs to be monitored as well to make sure that those devices are in fact recording? Or in the field, is just monitoring from the mixer enough? I may be over thinking this..

Note on your FP33 mixer, there is a connector called "MON IN". That is intended to be connected to the headphone out from your recorder. Then you can switch between monitoring the mixer output, and monitoring the output from the recorder (which at least confirms that the audio is getting to the recorder properly).

Richard,

Thank you so much!

This is finally making sense to me since I could not figure out how to monitor what was being recorded as well as what is out put from the mixer. Basic stuff I should know!

So just to confirm, I would connect a cable from the headphone jack on my recorder to the MON IN on the mixer, and then use the Monitor Input toggle switch to check audio coming from either mixer or recorder?

If I were to record directly to a camera (I know, two system is better) I would connect a cable to the headphone jack on camera>MON IN on mixer? Correct? In other words, anything feeding into MON IN on mixer is always connected to a headphone out from a camera or recorder?

Thank you sir.

Jonathan

Correct and correct. You got it.

BIG LESSON THIS WEEK!

Can't thank you enough Richard!

Maybe you could comment on this:

In the old days when I had reel to reel Teac and Revox tape decks, there was a tape monitor switch that allowed you to hear what was just recorded to tape, actually listening to audio from tape. Switching back and forth from tap monitor you could actually hear a slight delay or offset.

With todays devices, when you connect to the headphone out from either a camera or recorder are you hearing what is going INTO the recording media or what has just been captured on to that media? Obviously to be able to hear /monitor what is coming FROM the recording media itself is a near certainty that audio is getting saved. Maybe I'm over-thinking this. And I suppose this is different from manufacture, brand quality so on.

And my very last question (I think) I am making a slightly educated guess that when monitoring audio, the volume (gain) your hear in the cans should be about equal when switching back and forth between monitoring audio from recorder/camera and mixer?

Thank you very much again.

Jonathan

"With todays devices, when you connect to the headphone out from either a camera or recorder are you hearing what is going INTO the recording media or what has just been captured on to that media? Obviously to be able to hear /monitor what is coming FROM the recording media itself is a near certainty that audio is getting saved"
- Unless the device has a 'read-after-write' mode (most don't), you're just hearing the audio after the preamp & converter, but not off the media card or drive. Certainly better than nothing.
FWIW, back in the 'old days' an additional 3-head recorder(s) in record/repro mode were commonly used for a 'slap-back echo' effect and/or pre-delay for a reverb device.. as well as other 'flanging' and chorusing effects. No plug-ins, no presets

Hi Rick,

Thanks for that.

If I recall correctly (and it was the 60's and 70's) the Teac R to R I had did do some echo/reverb effect thing but also had what they called "sound on sound".

Certainly with what I have gained here, my monitoring of audio will be, well, actually monitoring the audio.

Jonathan

The more expensive tape machines had 3 heads (erase, record, play in that order). That would allow you to actually play-back the signal (audio, video, whatever) you just recorded. That was called a "read-after-write" confidence monitor. And typically those machines also had a mode called "E-to-E" (electronics-to-electronics) where you were just monitoring what was coming in. Obviously, monitoring from the playback head would yield NOTHING if the tape wasn't moving.

And, as Mr. Reineke mentioned, because the playback head was a fraction of a second AFTER the recording head, you could use that as a delay-effect. Of course, solid-state devices that use digital memory are used for those kind of delay effects in the modern era.

But in the modern era of recording to digital media (DRAM, flash RAM, hard drives, etc.) you don't really have the concept of separate writing and reading devices, so "read-after-write" is very rare in digital recorders. Of course, since modern digital recording equipment is so much more reliable, most people don't miss the "read-after-write" feature.

aaannnnddd...

IIRC, "sound-on-sound" referred to using the record head for playback. When you were building tracks, you wanted to have playback synchronous, not delayed. That is, with 16 tracks, you could lay down drums & bass as your sync reference. Then, switch those tracks to, um... playback from the record head. Now your other performers can listen to the rhythm tracks and lay down their tracks in perfect sync. Teac/Tascam included that feature on 2 and 4 track r/r recorders, though it really comes into its own with 8 or more tracks.

In general, you always want to monitor at the END of any audio chain. But inexpensive digital gear can make that difficult.

When tape ruled the audio industry, manufacturers would put a set of playback heads AFTER the recording heads so that a recordist could "confidence monitor" that a clean signal was actually getting printed to the media. That's long gone.

Today, you're arranging digital bits, and to my understanding there isn't a machine made that will allow you to simultaneously write the digital file AND read it instantly after it's written. So you're blocked out of what would be the ideal monitoring situation.

The best you can do is test your recording chain by recording a sample file and playing it back from the recording media listening for any anomalies. Then you just have to trust that if you keep your levels correct, the final recording will be clean.

Modern digital recording processes remind me of the old famous Regan/Gorbechev line - "trust, but verify."

That's the best we can do today.

Simple as that.

Incredible stuff guys.

Tell me, I've been lusting after a Sound Devices 552 mixer/recorder and I suppose when I win the lottery or have a client that offers to pay above Craigslist wages I'll consider that.

I noticed in the instructions there is no "Monitor In". There is however something called RTN B In. There is also a RTN B/ TC for time code.

I'm guessing that the RTN B IN is the monitor in? There are also a half dozen other inputs that I'll spare you the questions.

Jonathan

"Sound-on-sound" was a generic term. Teac actually used the term "Syml-Sync" for using the record head for playback.. and I recall on my old Teac 3340, one of the first "Syml Sync" machines, had a limited bandwidth and sounded muddy in that mode.. but was adequate to play along with for overdubbing. On the same machine, another variation I used frequency was to lay-down the rhythm tracks, (typically guitar, bass and drums), then pre-mix those three tracks down to one and use the remaining three tracks for vocals, guitars, keys or other. Track sharing was common as well, punching-in a guitar part on a vocal track for instance. Lots of pre-mixing was necessary and not many 'undo' options.
Lester Polsfuss originally experimented with disconnecting a recorder's erase head (and/or putting film over it), and record an additional part 'over the top' of what was there..leaving it intact (somewhat). Les originally refereed to this as "sound-on-sound" ..

syml-sync (simul-sync?). That was the word I was looking for - thanks Rick!

"premix three tracks to one..." We called that ping-ponging. How to do an 8-track layup with a 4 channel recorder...

If only there was a way to earn money with my vast store of "vintage" knowledge of workflows gone by... I think I do speak for a lot of old-timers when I say that some of those antique workflows still inform my digital production processes.

The old sync techniques, especially, now seem as if they're from the dark ages. But bring them out and dust them off, add a little digital polish and double-system sound is back bigger than ever. And better, now that digital "transports" don't drift.

I may be wrong, but in my fuzzy memory I think Scully might have called it "Sel-sync." Seems to me they might have needed an additional audio transformer in the chain because the record head impedance was much different from the playback head. There may also have been a LPF in the chain to eliminate bias crosstalk within the record head, which could have been pretty strong.

I will have to dig out my old Scully 280 electronics and read the labels on the switches, but that won't be right away.

'Sel-Sync' was an Ampex term and was kind of synonymous monitoring off the record head.
FYI, Polsfuss (aka, Rubarb Red) was also involved with Ampex along with Bing Crosby.

Yes, I recall that Bing Crosby was one of the original backers of Ampex. He wanted the networks to switch from Acetate disc recordings, to magnetic tape recordings, for the delayed west coast broadcasts, because tape had much better audio quality -- and also could be easily edited.

Man, when I recall how bad the continental land lines sounded back in the '60s, with all the various frequency shifts in the carrier circuits ... you'd open a network key and hear all sorts of birdies before the program began. Must have been even worse in the '40s and '50s when Crosby was starting out. We have come a long way.

By design, record heads had a wider gap to allow more power/deeper penetration (i.e. to completely magnetize the microscopic dipoles). Playback heads had a narrower gap to allow better high-frequency response (directly limited by the gap distance, and the tape speed). For that reason playback from the record head was never as good as from the playback head. But since it was only for sync/cueing purposes, full-fidelity was not a primary factor.

And yes, as I recall both Les Paul, and later Frank Zappa, both were early pioneers of multi-tracking and other tape related effects (especially tape echo by Les Paul IIRC). I think both of them modified stock recorders, or perhaps even built their own, to get the effects they wanted.

And somehow the innovation seemed to make audio more interesting then than it is today, with everything now being straight out of the [digital] box.

And somehow the innovation seemed to make audio more interesting then than it is today, with everything now being straight out of the [digital] box.

Wait. Graphical multi-point parametric EQ on a touch screen isn't an innovation? And it's not interesting? Yet, I don't see how you could do that by any manipulation of audio tape, or indeed analog electronics. ;)

Wait. Graphical multi-point parametric EQ on a touch screen isn't an innovation? And it's not interesting? Yet, I don't see how you could do that by any manipulation of audio tape, or indeed analog electronics. ;)
Parametric EQ started off as an outboard analog effects device, and many analog mixing boards still have sweepable mid eqs, some with wide/narrow switches.

Another analog-pioneered effect!

I guess the interesting part is that parametric eq is now commonly available in most any NLE/DAW, even many sub-$100 softwares.

Which is really reflective of the larger movements of mass access to video and recording technologies.

I've got this analog-domain 4 channel noise gate by symmetrix, it was once de rigeur for drum micing - I can't give it away on craigslist. Yet you can buy a $200 "drum mic" package online. Is that an improvement? I think not, but today there're a lot more cheap drum mics in use than the quantity of noise gates ever manufactured.

Bill made the most important comment in this tread:

“The best you can do is test your recording chain by recording a sample file and playing it back from the recording media listening for any anomalies. Then you just have to trust that if you keep your levels correct, the final recording will be clean.”

Recording and playing back an audio and video signal after all configurations are complete is mandatory in my book. And I do it every day before the show kicks off even if the configuration supposedly has not changed. It is a mandatory check in my opinion.

Jonathan, these guys are great. Some of the old school audio stuff they are talking about applied to video recording too. On tape based video cameras and decks it was the operators responsibility to know if the video signal he was looking at was pre or post recording head. Most broadcast decks were post but not all. It was possible to set up a multi camera shoot, have great looking monitor pictures all over the place, and NOTHING being recorded by the heads! Hence the need for playback. And it still applies today even though I often record to hard drives. How do I know the hard drives are working if I do not look at a test record?

Laziness is a killer. Why do we harp on guys here about monitoring at all times? Because I could write a list of things that I have seen that made a good audio or video signal go south after the record button was pushed. A lot of them have to do with something going on in the building you don’t even know is going to happen. Like commercial washers or compressors being turned on and causing “dirty power”. If you’re not listening you don’t know you’re going down in flames. Signals change!

You asked good questions and these guys gave you good info as they always do.

Steve

Thank everyone!

Upon a little further investigating, I found that the term RT is the same thing as MON. (correct?)

So the RT on a SD 552 or the 633, which I is my new lust-have, would be cabled to the headphone out from camera.

I've got to say, you guys must go nuts. It's really confusing when something is called one thing and then on the other thing it is called something else! Sheeesh!

I've been reading and re-reading Jay Rose's Fantastic book "Producing Great Sound For Film and Video".

Audio is definately 1/2 art and 1/2 science!

RTN is the '[/i]Return[/i]'.. from a HP jack or other audio line output.
Alternately, it can also be assigned as an additional unbalanced line input feed-thru... don't know if that applies to the 663 though.

"Audio is definately 1/2 art and 1/2 science!"
> FWIW, Hiding mics effectively (w/o clothing or rubbing noise) is 95% art and 5% science[/i]

Thanks Rick.

I'm at a point now where along with a question, I would also ask "And in what situation would I do this....."

Again, coming from a mostly photo/video background, some of the equipment I'm eyeball has features that I may seldom, if ever use in my day to day work. But I believe in buying once, and if something is wrong, I'll know it's me ;-}

"And in what situation would I do this....."
Not exactly sure what you mean but, the 'return' mode is usually used so the sound mixer can monitor directly off the camera, recorder or other destination device to confirm audio 'is getting there'. Most pro mixers have a multi-cable, commonly referred to as an ENG break-a-way snake as a fast & easy interconnect.