[Powell]

"soundhaspriority" wrote

What do you think of the Apogee Mini-Me?

http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/minime.php

What do you have to report after using it in the
field over these last couple of months? How is
the audio fidelity and have there been any
limitations in its use? Would you buy it again?

[Robert Morein]

"Powell" wrote in message
...

"soundhaspriority" wrote

What do you think of the Apogee Mini-Me?

http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/minime.php

What do you have to report after using it in the
field over these last couple of months? How is
the audio fidelity and have there been any
limitations in its use? Would you buy it again?

It sounds spectacular. However, as a component of a field recording system,
it is trumped by the Sound Devices 744T, for the following reasons:
1. It does not have an internal power source; hence one has to coble
together one, ie., an exernal lithium pack.
2. The manufacturing techniques are not terribly sophisticated. It's a
single board of surface mount devices, mounted in a rather heavy extruded
aluminum enclosure. It is actually rather bulky for the facilities provided.
3. To record above 48ksamples/second, it must interface to a device equipped
with SP/DIF, ie., a laptop with a suitable cardbus card, or a PDA. Core
Sound offers the PDA record-to-flash solution. The total system consists of
three components: the MiniMe, the battery pack, and capture device, which
have to be velcroed and cabled together. The result is not something
particularly light or easy to handle.

The MiniMe does offer a very sophisticated compressor; more of interest to
the musician than someone doing production sound. It is very usable in any
circumstance that allows table operation of a laptop and the MinMe.

The Sound Devices 744T hard disk recorder is a state-of-the-art production
sound device. It is smaller and more agile than the MiniMe solution. It is
quieter. It has four channels. While system noise hardly matters in the
environments I've been working in, it comes closer to the ideal of studio
quality in a miniscule package.

But if a suitable laptop or PDA is already available, the MiniMe can
provide excellent results at 1/3 the cost of a 744T.

[Powell]

"Robert Morein" wrote

What do you think of the Apogee Mini-Me?

http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/minime.php

What do you have to report after using it in the
field over these last couple of months? How is
the audio fidelity and have there been any
limitations in its use? Would you buy it again?

It sounds spectacular. However, as a component of a field recording
system, it is trumped by the Sound Devices 744T, for the following
reasons:

Sure, at the $4K price point it should sound excellent.
http://www.sonicsense.com/744t.htm


1. It does not have an internal power source; hence one has to coble
together one, ie., an exernal lithium pack.

Is it possible to power it from a video camera?


But if a suitable laptop or PDA is already available, the MiniMe can
provide excellent results at 1/3 the cost of a 744T.

If shooting with a video camera how do you synchronize
video and audio during editing?

[Robert Morein]

"Powell" wrote in message
...

"Robert Morein" wrote

What do you think of the Apogee Mini-Me?

http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/minime.php

What do you have to report after using it in the
field over these last couple of months? How is
the audio fidelity and have there been any
limitations in its use? Would you buy it again?

It sounds spectacular. However, as a component of a field recording
system, it is trumped by the Sound Devices 744T, for the following
reasons:

Sure, at the $4K price point it should sound excellent.
http://www.sonicsense.com/744t.htm


1. It does not have an internal power source; hence one has to coble
together one, ie., an exernal lithium pack.

Is it possible to power it from a video camera?

I doubt it. It does have a flexible power supply: 6V-15V, 5watts. That is
beyond what most auxilary power takeoffs supply. Some professional cameras
have auxiliary takeoffs that handle it.


But if a suitable laptop or PDA is already available, the MiniMe can
provide excellent results at 1/3 the cost of a 744T.

If shooting with a video camera how do you synchronize
video and audio during editing?

The MiniMe literature advertises that the clock is accurate enough to serve
as a master, which is fortunate, because it does not have a clock input.
Last year, I shot a pilot with five consumer DV cameras, and eight channels
provided by a Tascam desk hooked via Firewire to a laptop. Consumer DV
cameras have lousy clocks. However, the material was shot in such a way that
a cut from any particular camera did not last more than ten minutes. Within
this span, the drift is acceptable. Syncing separate sound to camera was
done by employing the sound track of the camera itself as a reference -- the
so called "scratch track."

This was a talk show. A person's discrimination of unsynchronized lip
movement is about 1/24 second. Thus, it is almost always possible to sync
separately acquired dialog if one is willing to do the work one's self. With
professional cameras, the solution is much simpler. The cameras and sound
recorder are momentarily hooked together to synchronize the internal
timecode generators, in a process known as "jamming." With modern video and
audio equipment, the sync is maintained with acceptable margin for at least
several hours, and perhaps all day, if the clocks are modern. Modern
editors, such as Avid, have the capability to import and position separately
acquired tracks on the basis of timecode embedded in the media.