I'm beyond pissed right now.
I've had two failures in the field this year with the D:vice and a pair of hat-mounted 4060's, and I have no idea why!
Both times, I return home to find I have recorded several gigs of… nothing. Empty bits. Gigs and gigs of nothing. Absolute digital silence.
Here's as much as I can tell about my set up and method. Any tips on what may be happening, or what I may be doing wrong, are very much appreciated.
The rig consists of:
iPhone 8 plus, 256GB, with iOS 11 back in August when the first failure occurred, and iOS 12 yesterday when the second one occurred.
DPA 4060's, poking out of a baseball cap... cables run down the back of my shirt, into a pocket, attached securely to the D:vice. the USB-Lightning cable runs from the D:vice to my other pocket, and plugs into my phone. That's it. This is the simplest set up I've ever used, and yet, I seemingly have issues.
Procedure: Usually before leaving the house I:
1. wake up iPhone
2. plug in D:vice
3. Launch D:vice app, make sure it's set to stereo, a low gain setting, sometimes I engage the bass filter, and then I activate Lock, so nothing can be changed accidentally.
4. Launch Shure Motiv app and press Record.
5. Put phone to sleep and back in my pocket.
That's it. what the heck could I be getting wrong there?
the one flaw is I can't monitor or check through headphones before leaving the house. I have a newer phone without the standard 1/8" headphone jack, so unless I buy some wireless buds, I can't hear what's going on. I tried buying a lightning to lightning plus 1/8" adapter, but it doesn't seem to actually pass digital and audio at the same time.
I'm blind, and while Voiceover, the iOS screen reading function, does read me all the controls in the D:vice and Motiv apps, it will not read the meters, as they are graphical.
First failure was seeing Jeff Beck outdoors.
Last night's failure was at Steve Vai's Generation Axe tour, with Vai, Yngwie, Zakk Wyle, Nuno Bettencourt, and Tosin Abasi, in a theater with great acoustics. I had eleventh row floor, right in the middle, and heard lots of lovely stereo from the PA. *sigh*
Again, all tips welcome!
I usually feel a little on edge when I'm taping at a show, and honestly, if I can't get consistent results, I'm considering just selling this stuff and not worrying about it.