Deva II Thoughts

[wbrisette]

So, yesterday I took the Deva II out to a local benefit show to see how it was going to work as a standalone unit. I brought my DA-P1 as a backup, but really didn't want to use it.

I setup the deva, plugged in all mics and powered the unit up. The lights came on, but the display was unreadable. I unplugged one mic and the display lit up a little more, unplugged another mic and the display came back to normal. I tried various configurations and none seemed to work. I pressed the X4 back into service and fed two mics to it, and two straight into the Zaxcom. This worked fine and still kept the tracks separate on the drive.

Monitoring: Monitoring is going to be tough with this unit. Not because there aren't a ton of options, but because you're not mixing any channels it simply combines the channels you specify, or monitor a single channel in mono. Overall I think it's a wash because as long as they sound good in mono, you're going to do your combining later in a DAW.

The mic situation has me more concerned than anything else right now. According to the private Deva list I'm on one person said "If I remember right, they all are that way.", which if true is a huge thumbs down. I'm going to call Zaxcom today and see what they have to say about it.

Sound quality: I imported the sound files this AM and previewed the tracks in Digital Performer and they sounded great considering the enviroment (the outdoor venue is next to a very busy intersection and the traffic can be heard throughout). Over the next day or so, I'll have to find a place to put up some of the sample recordings so folks can do some comparisons.

Wayne

[wbrisette]

Well, here is the verdict.

Talked to Zaxcom, the can do a modification to the unit which will give me 30 mA of power for the mics. Unfortunately after talking with the folks at Earthworks, this isn't going to work either since each mic (QTC-1 & SR-77) all require 10 mA each. This means I'm still 10 mA short of where I need to be. Alex at Earthworks mentioned to me that the Phantom Power spec calls for 48 V 14 mA, which means Zaxcom cheated a bit when they built this unit. This is not a problem with the current models, only the original model (Deva II), but then we're talking about 8 & 16 channels now vs. 4 channels.

Now I have to figure out all my options.


Wayne

[jpschust]

so this is just a thought

if you've dumped so much money into a unit that you do really like and the only issue is the phantom powering, what about buying a couple of really nice portable phantom power supplies (the neumanns come to mind as some of the cleaner sounding ones) and just powering the mics outside of the unit. 

I don't imagine you are doing much stealthing with that unit and the earthworks

[wbrisette]

so this is just a thought

if you've dumped so much money into a unit that you do really like and the only issue is the phantom powering, what about buying a couple of really nice portable phantom power supplies (the neumanns come to mind as some of the cleaner sounding ones) and just powering the mics outside of the unit. 

I don't imagine you are doing much stealthing with that unit and the earthworks

No that's a thought as is just keeping the X4 and running a mixer with it. I just got off the phone with Glenn, the owner of Zaxcom, and he is going to refund me 100% of the price and give me a discount on a Deva IV unit. Now, I'm just trying to determine if that's what I want to do and find out how much of a discount it will be.

Wayne

[wbrisette]

I have to say, I have been very impressed with Zaxcom. How many times do you get to talk to the owner and really get the dirt on the why's of something? With the discount offered and features of the Deva IV, it's mighty impressive. After a long talk with the Minister of Finance (ie. the spouse), I pulled the trigger. I got the RMA number from Zaxcom and got my order in for the Deva IV. It's going to be a couple of weeks before it ships, there is a firmware upgrade that just came out last night and another one due in a couple of weeks that will make life much easier for people like me that are doing very long sessions, that they want to install at the factory. Two of the more important ones are the ability to mirror directly to DVD-RAM while recording to the hard drive (can be different sample rates and bit depths), and the ability to get past the 4 GB partitions that have limited the unit to 2 hours per partition using 4 tracks.

I might actually have to start finding paying work to use this thing... The good news is I have an invitation for drinks with a sound engineer, and Deva IV owner, who is in town shooting a film. I'm definitely going to have to take him up on this one.

Wayne

[wboswell]

http://www.zaxcom.com/hotnews/Soundfield_collaboration.shtml

seems like the only logical thing for you to do would be to buy the used Soundfield in the Yard Sale. 

[wbrisette]

That's not an option I purchased. As it is, I'm VERY broke for a LONG time.

That said though, I'm already working with Zaxcom on some documentation projects.

Wayne

[wbrisette]

Just thought I would post what's going on in Deva land....

Took out the Deva IV for a spin on Saturday night. Have a killer on-stage recording of Cooper's Uncle (local bluegrass boys). The great news is the unit worked flawlessly and it looks like it is going to work out well for me.

Now the bad news. Got home and transferred the data to a DVD-RAM disc. The disc mounted fine in my internal DVD-RAM drive of my G4. However, attempts to get into the folder with the wav files got me nowhere. I burned another copy and this time used the external DVD-RAM drive and my iBook to try to access the data. Again no dice.

Talked with the engineers at Zaxcom this AM and the current theory is the SCSI to FireWire adapter I'm using on the DVD-RAM drive might be causing the problem. They have the exact same adapter there, so they are going to run some tests and see what happens.

To make matters worse, at some point last night I think I fried the ATAPI to SCSI daughtercard that is attached to the drive. I talked the folks who make the daughtercard and they are going to look at the unit and let me know what is going on with it. The good news is they are close by (in one of the suburbs), so I can just drop it off.

In the meantime, I have a real FireWire drive coming to me and we'll see what happens when I use it.

Cooper's Uncle have signed the appropriate emails (can't figure what else to call it), so once I do get this stuff off the DVD-RAM disc, I'll post the show on archive.org.

Wayne