Can I get by with unbalanced in this situation?

[Chip Hitchens]

I do sound recording for low-budget movies, and I’m looking at purchasing some better gear. I usually use a short shotgun mic into a dbx286A pre into a portable (i.e. Walkman-style) MD recorder. I’m looking at purchasing a rack mountable MD recorder with 24-bit A/D converters and digital out.

There are two units that I’m considering, the Sony MDS-E10 and MDS-E12, with the main difference between them (for my purposes, since I won’t be using many of the bells and whistles of the better model) being that for analog inputs, one has only unbalanced RCA inputs and the other has balanced XLR. My pre can output balanced signals. For the extremely short runs that I’ll be using within my rack, is it worth the extra cost of the better unit to get balanced connections?

 

[Richard Monroe]

If you use unbalanced outs, you'll lose about 6db of gain, which in most situations, is irrelevent. As long as the cable runs are short, I doubt you'll ever hear the difference.-Richie

 

[TexRoadkill]

Unbalanced isn't a big deal for a short run. You might have issues if your pre is outputting +4 and the recorder's inputs are set for -10. It could cause distortion on the recorder at pretty low preamp gain. You might get an RNC to put between the two and give you some level protection as well as unbalance the preamp.

 

[skippy]

I've got a pair of E10s: one in my road rack, and one in my studio rack. I use them for creation and playback of SFX for live performances. Nice units, stone reliable, lots of features that make them _very_ nice for this sort of start/stop cueing.

Unbalanced shouldn't cause you any problem at all. Despite being unbalanced, they have variable input levels and will swallow +4dBm levels without any drama. If you find yourself with ground-loop-induced hum, you can easily enough just stick a transformer in the path- like the Ebtech Hum Eliminators. That's not too likely if you have a relatively sensible power setup, though.

With ATRAC 3 they sound quite good for compressed audio (which while very good, will still never rival uncompressed). The quality of the audio will never be any better than the compression algorithm in your portable recording device, though. If it were me, I'd try to find a portable DAT unit, or something else uncompressed. But if you want to minimize your investment at this time, the E10 will do a very good job for you. You'll probably really like the varispeed for sound-to-film-sync, if you work with cameras with crummy speed regulation... (;-)

I remember working with wild sound, back in my misspent youth...

 

[Chip Hitchens]

Thanks for the replies.

skippy - I didn't know they made E10's with ATRAC 3. The one I'm looking at now uses ATRAC Type-R (which I think came after 4.5) and is *supposed* to be a little better. I haven't actually heard anything with Type-R, so I can't personally attest to that. I'm using ATRAC 3 now in my little walkman now and what I've got coming out is so superior to the camera sound, no one's questioned the quality yet.

I've considered making the jump to portable DAT, but it seems like such a hassle with all the rewinding and the head cleaning and watching the error count and all that. I'll probably need it eventually, but for now I can't justify spending the money. From the looks of eBay of late, I should be able to get 90% of what I spend on the E10 if I ever want to get rid of it anyway (assuming that Sony doesn't walk away from MD entirely).

 

[skippy]

According to the manuals, mine use ATRAC3 for standard speed, and ATRAC-R for the LP2 and LP4 speeds (2x and 4x record times). It doesn't really matter: they sound just fine, and I don't use the LP modes in any case. Mine are a bit older, though, so they may very well have changed specs with more current machines. The aren't my primary recording tools, so I haven't kept up with them...

The E10 will do really well for you. I'll bet that you'll end up doing more editing and varispeeding with it that you might expect- it's really pretty easy to use. If you get it, I think you'll find it to be the best bang for the buck short of going DAT- and costwise, it _is_ a lot cheaper than starting over...

 

[TexRoadkill]

Re: Thanks for the replies.

I'm using ATRAC 3 now in my little walkman now and what I've got coming out is so superior to the camera sound, no one's questioned the quality yet.

lol, I'd hope it's better.

The only two formats that are really accepted in the industry are DAT and 1/4" analog. If you want to do this on a regular basis you might as well try to find a used DAT or Nagra analog recorder on Ebay. It's also good to have a battery powered system in case you have to do some location shoots where there is no AC power. Most pro level Nagra's and DAT recorders have built in preamps so you can use those in a pinch. I've done a lot of scenes where I had to carry the recorder and follow the action with the boom.