The Quest For Perfect Sound

I really don’t think I need to spend much time discussing how important sound is but let me say this: For us, sound is just as important as the image, whether it’s for a narrative, documentary, commercial, or even a wedding piece, they all deserve equal quality in both picture and sound.

Let’s start off in the beginning, for me the ability to utilize sound was really what got me into video to begin with. With a background in photography, I felt limited in how much depth I could go into with my story through one image. Discovering the ability to utilize sound and motion through video was pretty amazing. Yeah, I know, it’s been around since before the invention of “talkies” but for me to have control over the emotion my audience felt by combining picture and sound was, and continues to be, immensely inspiring.

So hello video and hello to all the challenges that come with learning a new medium. My first investment in sound was a shotgun mic and a wireless pack. Now fast forward a bit and here comes the 5d and all of a sudden I have to start recording sound externally because prior to this I always relied on my XL2 and XHA1′s inputs. We purchased two Zoom H4N’s and continued on happily until we started to run into some severe issues – corrupt files. I was absolutely terrified after this and vowed that from there on out, I would find a sound guy/gal that I could call a friend. Well, like all great plans, it didn’t work out that easily. The budget wasn’t always there so we’d find ourselves setting up multiple backups just in case one of the Zooms decided to get moody again. It did and luckily we had backups but we had had enough. We wanted to step up our game with our audio capabilities and start to teach ourselves more. I will gladly admit that if I had the time I would go back to school and study sound engineering. However, for those of you who know me, you know I say that about pretty much any specialty that has anything to do with running a business and creating films. Right around the time I was seriously considering applying to different schools, we attended a workshop hosted by Adam Forgione. He was focusing on post but he really impressed me with his wealth of knowledge and just how energetic and passionate he was for sound. I immediately wanted to learn more so eventually when we finally had our chance to host a multi-day educational workshop, Masters In Motion, we brought Adam out to teach people the art of sound. We learned so much that day. Adam has a way of breaking down extremely complex topics into simple concepts. He really blew my mind.

After Masters In Motion we had a long, almost never ending list of equipment we wanted to buy and we made the decision that we would invest in our work by the end of the year. What a great decision. We’ve had so much fun learning how to use all our new gear and we wanted to share what we got and why so here you go:

Edirol / Roland R-44 Solid-State Four-Channel Portable Field Recorder – $1095.00

This thing is a beast yet it weighs under three pounds. With the R-44 you can record up to four channels of  audio at several different bit rates and sampling frequencies – up to 24-bit/192kHz. Another great feature is the quality of the pre-amp. We’ve used it a few times and haven’t run into any problems at all. It came highly recommended by our good friends Adam Forgione and John Hyland so I’m sure we made the right choice. In case you’re wondering how to use it exactly, check out Adam’s video at the bottom of this post.

Roland R-05 Portable 24-bit Digital Audio Recorder – $199.00

We were fed up with wireless mics so this was the solution. The unit is super small so it’s easy to hide in a pocket. We also have a wired pack that we use occasionally but this is great for mobility and if you don’t have a dedicated boom operator. Honestly, I’m not crazy about not being able to monitor sound during the entire shoot but as I mentioned before I always setup multiple options especially in a one take environment.





Rode NTG-3 Basic Shotgun Microphone Kit – $999.95

One of the coolest things about this mic is that it’s very close in quality to the sennheiser 416 but this one is cheaper. Also, the line-gradient supercardioid polar pattern is much more forgiving. So, if you don’t have the shotgun aimed 100% correctly it’ll still pick it up. Regardless of whether or not you get the kit, make sure you get the boom pole with the XLR running through the actual pole. It makes life a lot easier. We’ve used it a few times so far and the setup is simple: boom pole on a stand with this mic up top. What a difference from our previous lavalier mic setup. To get all the technical specs, check out this great write up on B&H.

Tram TR50 – Omnidirectional Lavalier Condenser Microphone (Black) – $239.99

This lavalier microphone is super small which is great because you can hide it very easily. What’s even better is if you place it right you can eliminate all that nasty fabric sound you used to get. We got this to specifically use with the Roland R-05. If you think this is really expensive for a lav mic, keep in mind that your audio is only going to be as good as the weakest link so we considered this a worthy investment.

Shure SM58-LC – Cardioid Handheld Dynamic Microphone – $99.00

What a great, reasonably priced, microphone. For years, this has been an industry standard, go to work horse, so it was really a no-brainer. It’s a durable and well built mic. You can tell just by picking it up. We got this for live events so that if we can’t plug into a board, then we can mic the actual speaker by putting this mic on our mic stand and running the XLR into the R-44.




We purchased all of the products for our sound setup because they came highly recommended by Adam. He’s a great teacher and is always willing to share a wealth of information, so if you have the opportunity to check him out, definitely do it. To find out about his upcoming workshops, click here.
If you’re thinking of buying the R-44 or even if you have it, Adam put together this great video on how to use it: