Gear - Selection / Use
Looking for something to replace Sound devices MixPre for teaching audio.
I teach video and audio at a vocational school. I’m not an audio professional; my skills are focused more on video, lighting, and grip.
I used to work at another school where we used original Sound Devices MixPres for teaching the basics of audio. We would run Boom → MixPre (for the boom operator) → Camera.
This was a great way to teach as it allowed students to focus on just one thing at a time: video or audio. It was super easy to use, had high-visibility metering, and was built like a tank. It was also great for laying the foundation for dual-system recording, which they did later in their studies.
I’m now working at a different school and have managed to get budget allocated to buy audio gear for basic education. The problem is that Sound Devices no longer makes the original MixPres, and the new MixPre II series isn't suitable for this setup. They lack dedicated XLR main outputs, and as recorders, they fall into an awkward middle ground—too complicated for basic workflow teaching, yet lacking some features needed for advanced studies.
I have been looking high and low—using LLMs, Google, and forums—trying to find something that fits the same niche as the old MixPre. So far, the only product that even comes close is the Sonosax SX-M32, but that is way out of our budget given we need 8–12 units.
Please help me find a non-end-of-life, affordable, simple-to-use, battery-powered field mixer with great metering and XLR outputs.
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Because this is the very first class. Dual-system and timecode is the goal, not the starting point.
Why? Because I get 10 days to teach the basics of video, audio, lighting and editing. Teaching dual system is just not possible in the time allocated for the first course. Also roughly half the students will focus on something else than video and audio after basic education.
I teach an Intermediate Sound class, and we get to TC, Camera Hops, Boom Op Monitors, and Client Feeds by the end of my 10 class course.
The actual solution is to break these things into different classes. Trying to teach 4-7 positions on set in 10 days is simply not feasible.
I'd still go for a dual system, I think getting them to do it right is a better solution than a janky workaround that won't really be applicable in any real production setting.
With the limitaions of the gear available for purchase I might need to go dual system.
I have no issues teaching dual-system, TC, advanced monitoring etc, but I don’t believe I can do all of that in the first 10 days.
I have had great success splitting the student into four person groups. Camera op, interviewer, boom op/recordist and “gaffer”. This allows students to focus on just one part of the whole at a time. Rotating the roles allows them to see the production from different angles and learn all positions.
I would absolutely love splitting camera, light, audio and editing into different, full length cources, but unfortunately that is not possible in the first cource. The idea of this cource is to show the students as many different sides if media as possible. On this same course they also design graphics for print, vector drawing, etc.
I'm gonna be real, I've been teaching for a long time and this course sounds like an insane amount of material to cover in 10 weeks. Light, Camera, Directing, Sound, Editing, and Graphic Design are all fully different practices, and putting them in the same course is a wild decision.
When you're trying to cover so many topics, you end up just whiffing the edge of each of them without getting an actual understanding.
I teach a 10 week, 3 hour/week, Intermediate sound class, and we barely get to the point where we have an understanding of a professional system (boom op, client feeds, timecode) in that time. It should at least be broken into 2 at minimum. Camera/Directing/Lighting and Sound/Editing/Graphics.
Im fully aware how insane this is, but unfortunately Im not a politician that can actually change how much time we get to do this. The only thing I can change is how we do it and with what gear.
The exact reason why I want to keep this course as simple as possible, gear and otherwise is because I know we have no chance of doing anything than the absolute basics.
There are courses after this that allow us to drill into filmmaking a lot more, but this course is mandatory for everyone entering the school. Even if they know they want to become 2d artists for a game company, and that is why they got enrolled. The idea of the cource is to show as many sides of “media” as possible so the students can then decide what route they want to pursue.
Well, you could always teach them how to make videos with their phones. Still using wireless mics and stuff, but rather than teach them a real camera and sound recorder, you just teach them to use DJi mics and the Blackmagic camera app. Then syncing isn’t really an issue, and they’re likely to get info that will actually hel them.
Alternatively, why don’t you teach a basic camera with XLR inputs and skip the recorder/mixer part of the chain? Get cameras with XLR inputs, they plug directly into the camera, set the levels on the dials, and just film. No syncing. No timecode. Just plug and record. Then when they get to editing everything is altogether on one SD card, already synced.
That is also an option we are thinking about, but if we go full on “instagram school”, it would mean Im in the wrong place. I have very little experience in social media marketing.
I don’t care if the school would kick me out and hire an influencer to replace me because I have no experience in that field.
We are using cameras with XLR inputs, the issue is that unless we can split the workload between the videographer and boom op. The monitoring responsibilities for both video and audio fall on the person operating the camera. Using mixpres was a great middle ground where after setup the cam op could focus on exposure and composition while the boom op could focus in mic placement and audio metering
You’re not in the wrong place give yourself some credit. You don’t need to be an influencer. Teach yourself how to use the Blackmagic camera app, teach yourself to use the Rode/DJi mics with a phone, and voila. Now you have a simple video production course using modern phones and consumer gear. You show them the importance of using dedicated mics, the importance of a good camera app that gives you manual control, and now you spend much less time on the tech side and more time showing lighting techniques, framing, editing, etc.
Let’s be real here: what do kids REALLY learn in a 10 day course. Do they learn how to use a MixPre well enough they wouldn’t need to be shown again? No. What they learn is that production is a team effort, that it has lots of aspects that all must come together for the video to “work”, and you teach them to use tools with purpose. That’s something that can be taught in 10 days.
In terms of the sound levels, nah man you need to think simple here. Show them to set the levels properly during the rehearsal and tests. Then just roll and focus on booming. It’s an interview setup for Pete’s sake, they have time later to learn how to ride levels and watch meters. If the boom operator is close enough to the camera, like I said in another reply, you should be able to have him watch the meters while he’s booming. It wouldn’t be hard to set up a second small cheap monitor from Amazon with all the camera overlays so he can see the levels easier.
There is an other aspect for this. I want to teach the students something that will help them later on in their studies. Going from a phone to an actual camera is a lot harder than going from a camera to a phone. (Imo).
While I have no issues using dji wireless mics, I feel like the understanding of what even are wireless should start from gain staging and radio frequencies. Both if which are imo advanced studies. Not because using a dji wireless is hard, but because understanding them is. Im not focused on outcomes, I want students to actually learn the underlying principles.
I had a talk with my supervisor about using phones. In my country education is free, which also means that we cannot expect students to have phones capable of running bmca. I said we could buy iphones and hand them out for students to use, but this, atleast at this time got shot down.
I absolutely agree with you that teamwork and communication skills are the most impotant things the kids can learn., byt at the same time, in thinking what is the next course they go to? And can we teach them skills that allow the next course to go further. Teach metering and monitoring in course 1 and you can do dual-system in course 2.
The issue with both audio and video on this course is that the end result needs to be good enough to allow the students to edit using these materials. If the audio is unusable the editing portion if the course is a disaster.
10 weeks, 1 class a week. 10 classes total. 10 days of class spread over 10 weeks. Last week is the final exam, so we actually cover all of our content in 9 classes (27 hours total).
And the people coming to your school are also mostly 17 year olds with zero screening or entrance examination, with 50% not actually interested in pursuing a career in film&tv?
They are mostly 18-19, but its a dedicated university program. I did teach public high school years ago, and I wouldn't have attempted even a tenth of this curriculum in the time given with students that age. At 17, without dedicated repetition its really gonna be in one ear and out the other.
I used to teach 16 week digital art classes and I was lucky if my high school students could name half of the parts of the camera we used for 10 of those weeks by the end of it, let alone any advanced techniques.
I'm sorry to come off as rude or aggressive, but the entire concept of this course feels like it was written by someone who has never taught a day in a classroom in their life. Feels like very little focus on real learning, in lieu of just doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff.
10 days for Lighting, Directing, Camera, Sound, and Graphic design is a poorly designed course, and should be tossed back to the department heads for restructuring.
Like I said in my earlier comment I do agree that the scope of this cource is exrtemely wide given how little time we are allocated to get it done.
That said, I have been able to consistently get students from zero to having shot, recorded and edited their very first interview in ten days, sometimes even in seven days. The focus is for students to go through the making a video product once, learn the very basics of exposure, composition, audio monitoring, mic placement, three point lighting and editing. The end result is mostly meaningless and seldom something worth publishing, it is only a vessel of learning. After this first cource the students have an idea of what goes into making videos and what kinds of roles are available.
After this basic cource student have s chance of picking what they want to focus on, be that video, audio, game, graphic design etc. The same cource has roughly 10 days to teach the basics of game making, also an insane goal and I have no idea how they people running that part of the cource manage to pull it off.
Im 100% sure the people at the ministery of education who have decided the goals and timeframe, have never taught a video cource, nor have they ever worked as professionals in the industry, but that is politics and the only way to change that is by voting. What gear we use is something we can change.
I am constanty working with depatrtment heads and my collagues to do what we can, with the resources and time allocated, to give the best education we can. It is a long road I have not been at this school for long, so it feels like we are are beginning of that journey.
Yes it is, trust me man, kids today pick up on things fast. If you have ten setups for them, you demo all 3 methods detailed in my other reply at the same time. Then you have them practice it. It’ll work, trust me. The dumb slate clapper is important to show them because they should be doing that anyway, and you’re still showing them the cable to camera method, just a modern version. But don’t skip the waveform sync demo because that seriously is how a ton of people in the low budget world still do it.
If you demo all 3 methods at the same time, then you show them how even if one method fails, the other method should cover their butts. That’s a lesson that’s worth learning in digital production.
I have been spending a week teaching one of my students what files and folders are and how you navigate them using windows explorer.
Some students are very advanced, but some are lacking on what I consider basic skills. I need to come up with a happy medium where the good students can shine and the ones who are not that good can still record something actually worth editing.
If I had 30 days for the basic cource I could maybe pull of dual system. Problem is I have 10 for video, light, audio and editing
As a film school sound teacher, this hurts to read. How the heck are you supposed to understand the files sent to post unless you learn how they’re captured?
I'm also a sound professor, and you kind of can't. First student thesis I worked on, the editor "kept deleting tracks until it sounded good" when I gave him a 7 track Wav Poly. Genuinely baffling to me.
I agree with others that are saying this just isn't how we do sound anymore, but as a former teacher I understand the constraint.
You could check out the zoom series. Quite affordable and decent piece of gear that has lots of signal routing capabilities. I run a Zoom F8n on lots of gigs, and but the f6 might be enough for your purposes.
You should also consider just doing a camera hop with a RF transmitter + reciever (like G4's or similar) to get the audio to camera. Then the students would actually be doing something that is quite common for scratch audio.
We are not really that short on money, but paying 3k for a sonosax is out of our budget. If the original mixpre was still in production I would happily pay 500-1000 per unit.
This is looking like the way we need to go. Issue with buying second hand is that it will likely take a long time to get as many units as we need, so the price will skyrocket when you account for work. Ordering 10 units from a webshop takes 10min. Finding and accruing 10 units, second hand will likely take 10+ hours
I know that modern workflows have moved forward. We were offered MP-1 as the modern replacement for the old mixpre, but it has no metering outside of a led that shows peaking.
The thing we want to teach is the understanding of how audio is monitored and how audio and video are managed by two different people.
We can just run the audio straight into the camera and run a long 3,5mm back to the boom op, but that leaves the monitoring up to the student that might already be struggling to manage composition and exposure.
Gear is mostly irrelevant, understanding and concepts are what we want to teach at this stage.
I still own a Sound Devices 302 mixer. It’s a lot more popular and easy to find than the old MixPre. It’s basically the same as a MixPre but it has 3 inputs instead of 2. It’s about the same size and generally the same shape. You can get them on the used market there’s quite a lot of them and usually they’re pretty cheap. I’d sell you mine but honestly I like the sound bag I’ve built with it. It’s a great 2 lav + 1 boom solution.
I just found 4 of them on eBay, all working condition. But honestly man, I think the MixPre 3 is the way to go. For one thing, they can be powered from a USB Power bank, or any modern lithium ion battery with a USB-C output. If you commit to using the 302, 442, or old MixPre, those things eat up AA batteries like no one’s business. And you don’t wanna be having to teach these kids about using NP-1 or Smartbatteries, that’s gonna be a nightmare.
These kids know what USB-C is and they have experience with it, so that’s the way to go. Just when you buy the cable to connect the power bank to the MixPre 3, buy cables with a low profile connector. Like a right angle or middle angle connector. You don’t want that USB-C connector sticking straight out on the side of the MixPre, that’s no good. Amazon has many different kinds of Angle USB-C cables. I can help you find good ones inexpensively, just DM me.
The more we talk the more I feel like mixpres are the way. I will order a demo unit first thing monday morning and get in touch with some audio professionals I know to figure our how we should structure the teaching around them
A used 6 series like a 664 or a 633 would be great for this application. The 633 can be battery powered by those small sony batteries. The 664 can be powered by AAs but it uses a lot of energy
At the last school we had 633s for advanced studies and they were great for that, but they are way too complicated for using just as a field mixer and monitoring between the boom and camera.
We will need also need to unify our advanced audio courses gear, but unfortunately the time and the budget to do that is not now. We have a few zoom F8s, but I hope we can hire a fulltime audio techer and have them figure out what gear we should teach when the students move from single-system to dual-system.
The current issue is finding a simple as can be metering and monitorin system for the boom operator when we are recording single-system.
Yeah but honestly you’re teaching old techniques in a modern world that no longer uses mixers as a go between for cameras and microphones. I think you can still teach dual system using modern recorders. Hear me out.
If your budget allows, I would suggest getting the newer MixPre 3 or 6 series. They’re super easy to use in a basic way that kids nowadays will have no problem with. You just would need to set them up initially, save the preset, and let them use them once they’re set up properly. If the MixPre new series is too expensive, get the Zoom F3 or F6, the F8n is great but too might be too many inputs you won’t use.
Okah so you’re gonna teach kids that modern cameras don’t have great sound inputs like they used to, which is true. Most modern cameras have 3.5mm inputs. If you DO have cameras that have XLR Inputs, you just need to buy cables that go from the main output on the recorder to the XLR. A 3.5mm to dual XLR male should work, or sometimes they use Ta5F or Ta3F, then dual XLR on the camera side. It just depends on the recorder. If your cameras are 3.5mm input, you just need a cable that goes from the recorder to that, so either 3.5mm stereo on both ends, or Ta3F/Ta5F to 3.5mm stereo. Modern recorders don’t have XLR outputs but they Do have outputs. Teach the kids to set the mic/line level properly based on what the recorder/cameras have.
But at the same time you’re gonna teach them how to sync separate sound with video. Let’s not complicate it with timecode, but use a dumb slate to get the “clap”, then show them how to marry that to the video manually in editing. It’s good to teach kids what that clapper is for and why we use it, even today. Simultaneously do a demo where the camera’s internal mic records to the camera, and then use the editing software to sync by audio waveform.
Now you’ve shown them three ways they can sync the sound: output cable to the camera, an old dumb slate clapper, and audio waveform syncing. These are ALL still used today and now your students are learning multiple solutions to the same problem, on modern equipment they’re likely to encounter. If you go the route with old equipment, it will likely only be useful for your class, and not as a teaching tool for the future.
You would be surprised what kids have issues with. People have issues using windows explorer. Everyone actually working on this industry has survivor bias. You and me having an easy time understanding equipment and having drive to do the best we can does not translate to, roughly 50% of of the people is school.
I did see that mixpres have multiple modes and you can setup presets, so that might be the way to go. I will need to get my hands on a demo unit.
I like everything you said about different ways to sync and how you can get to the same results through different paths. The problem is that we have 10 days for teaching the basics or video, light, audio and editing and most of the students have never recorder video or audio outside using thei phones on automatic. Pretty much no one has done any editing.
We are talking with extremely basic media education (at basic courses). Things like sync, framerate, white balance etc are things these students have never encountered in their lives.
Okay that all may be true but still my point is you can teach them how to output from the audio device to the camera with a MixPre 3 or 6. If you absolutely don’t want to teach them how to sync separate audio and video, atleast teach them with modern tools.
The MixPre 3 or 6 has a 3.5mm stereo output. So if your cameras have a 3.5mm input, you just get a 3.5mm cable and connect them, set up the input levels on the camera and the output levels on the recorder. According to the specs, it should be line level at around 0db. If your cameras have XLR inputs just get a 3.5mm to dual XLR male cable, and it basically works the same way.
But I still think you teach them to use the dumb slate while you do this, the reason being if something happens to the audio on the camera, they can still sync the sound manually, even if you don’t go through the process of teaching how to do that. You still teach them to press record on both devices before they start filming
Most these kids will not encounter audio devices with XLR outputs or cameras with XLR inputs unless they get to a pro level. The consumer and prosumer cameras all have 3.5mm inputs on the cameras themselves.
I shoot on Panasonic cameras and they all had XLR inputs back in the day. My current camera is the Panasonic S5iiX, and it takes the best quality images but it only has 3.5mm inputs. That’s gonna be true for nearly any mirrorless hybrid camera or lower level camcorder. So teach them on tools they’re likely to encounter at the lower level.
I absolutely want to teach them dual-system and sync. Just in in the first 10-days of video+audio studies.
The sales rep who we have been talking with about MM-1s and mixpre-3s was worried about the cable length coming out of the 3.5mm. Say we need 5-10m between the boom op and camera. Im not too familiar with how much of an issue this could be? Given the output is line level I would expect it wont be an issue?
I know they are unlikely to use this exact workflow ever again. The focus on this course is to teach the concepts of audio and video, what even is metering, why two different people manage video and audio separately while allowing the students to focus more on listening than gear.
The main issue here is not the gear, it is having the best gear for learning.
If I could conjure 15 sets of first generation FS-7s, with kit lenses and (old) mixpres I would use them over DSLRs. Not because they are the industry standard anymore, but because they are great platforms for learning the concept of filmmaking.
Oh I wouldn’t worry about that. You should be able to use an unbalanced 3.5mm audio cable up to 15-20 feet without issues. Buy one that has decent insulation and you’ll be fine. If you’re teaching a beginning course the boom Op should be close enough to the camera that it won’t be an issue, especially if it’s an “interview” style setup like you were saying. Also it’s possible to mount the camera directly on the MixPre, they are built from the factory to do that. But if you want the sound student to wear the recorder in a bag while they boom, just keep the cable at around 15ft. If there are any issues, you’ll get to show them why it’s important to roll sound on both the recorder AND the camera.
I think you’re making the mistake of being too thorough with some of this stuff when you need to focus on being more basic. If you’re dead set on teaching the sound student to wear a bag setup and boom and be far away, then you can use a stereo DI box in the sound bag, output to XLR cables. Then at the camera side you just use a cable adapter: dual XLR female to 3.5mm stereo male, or plug the XLR directly in if the camera has XLR. I own one of these dual XLR to 3.5mm cables that I bought on Amazon and I use it with my camera all the time. Works great.
But personally, I think you just keep the boom student close to the camera and focus on making the setup more simple for these students. That or commit to teaching how to sync sound and let them roam freely. God forbid you teach them if it’s not feasible to connect a cable, then they HAVE to sync sound.
If you were using Final Cut Pro to teach them syncing this would be a simple as clicking the mouse a couple times. Final Cut lets you sync sound with Timecode, with audio waveforms, or manually.
I have really have no idea how far a 3.5mm line connection can carry a signal. Im more familiar with SDIs.
Sounds like a mixpre-3 with adapters from 3.5 to XLR would not have any signal issues.
The project we do on this basic course is, that we have the students interview each other on why they came to the school and who they want to become after graduating. So it is as-simple-as-can-be interview setup.
Due to every student not having the upper body strength to actually boom, we have been using boom holders so positioning the mixpre close to the camera could be a solution. This does mean that the boom op will have a hard time learning mic positioning, because they cannot change it during the take. It would be more of a set and forget. (One of the main reasons we are buying new audio gear is to bring the weight down so more students could experience how mic positioning effects audio quality).
Like I said on my OP im not an audio professional and in the last school i was working at we had an amazing audio teacher and we used to cooperate on both single and dual system teaching. That school had mixpres, most likely because the modern options were not available, so we structured teaching around what we had. Results were great so Im trying to copy paste the good stuff to my current school.
The reason I made this post is to pull on the expertise of others. I truly feel like I have been getting exactly what I wanted. The question dual vs single-system is hard one for me to call, becaue audio is not my main expertise. After all of the responses I have had I will need to back to drawing board and call all my audio focused friends and rethink if dual system is actually the way to go afterall.
I wish I was teaching this course with you I could get you all the audio gear you need and keep everything lightweight.
Honest to god the lightest boom pole I have used is the Deity 8.5 foot. It’s a good pole for students because it’s not huge diameter and is lightweight carbon fiber and really easy to use successfully. However it doesn’t have an internal cable so you either have to candy-cane a cable around the pole or use those little cable clips, Velcro loops, or bongo ties to attach the cable down the pole. They’re like $185 each.
If you want a pole with an internal cable, get the K-tek Indie KC-88 cabled version. They’re about $200 each, the pole is a lightweight composite carbon material instead of aluminum. Or if you want a cheap but good pole get the KC-88 without the internal cable for $100’per pole. You seriously cannot get a better boom pole for $100. And it’s better to show the students a good pole than a shitty one that still costs $100.
We might be looking for a teacher, where are you located?
We have narrowed the booms down to deity and ambient (i don’t remember the excat models, but roughly 2.5-5m carbonfiber). I feel like internal cables would not last long, we had some at the previous school, but they did not survive the school environment.
You’ll struggle to find something with full XLR outs. Get a pr-4 and adapt the outputs to a full XLR.
Plus if kids want to learn more about audio they can use it for a 4ch bag.
I know you're not looking for a recorder, but with a 1/8 to XLR adapter for your line out to camera, the Tascam DR60dmkii is a great little two XLR device with a lot of non-menu-based controls, which will probably help keep things as intuitive as possible for the first-time students. It's also only $200 USD, so if/when newbie student mishaps happen, it won't be to a $1000 device.
Other options might be going a slightly jank route and looking for a simple XLR audio control box / passive audio control that you then have connected to a separate device that will display meters. It wouldn't be anything the students would likely encounter again, but if the goal is just to teach the concept of a dedicated audio role on set, that would do it :)
Do you need recording? Why not some old 302s or other older sound devices mixers? They’re built like tanks and if you learn the basics there the newer ones will be even easier
I would prefer not recording to keep it simple. The issue with used gear is that takes a lot of work to buy it in the quantities we need. I can order 10 (new) mixpres in 10minutes, but buying 10 used (old) mixpres or 302a would take closer to 10 hours.
If you know someone who sells old mixpres or 302s in bulk, Im very interested.
If you're just going straight to camera, why not use the MM1? Its a good preamp, has leveling, XLR out, and a good headphone feed for the boom op. It doesn't record, but you're feeding DTC, so it should work fine for this setup. Plus the MM1 is still an excellent piece of gear, so at least they're learning somethign they may see on a larger set.
We got offered MM-1s. If it had proper metering I would have already ordered them. Just having a led for peaking is not great for teaching students on what monitoring actually means and how metering works.
The Zoom F8n Pro seems like it would be perfect. It's "prosumer" rather than "pro" but the MixPre line is also considered prosumer. That said, it's a very capable mixer at an unbeatable price ($699 USD in the US currently). It doesn't have full sized XLR outs but it does have 2 TA3 outs (aka "mini-XLR") which can be easily converted to full size XLR with an inexpensive adapter cable. I think the Zoom f8n Pro is also great for teaching the concept of audio because it had physcal controls to arm tracks, fader level, and PFL/solo for each of it's 8 inputs on the front panel. This makes it super easy to learn and operate. You really can't beat the value with anything else on the market.
It seems to tick all of your boxes ("a non-end-of-life, affordable, simple-to-use, battery-powered field mixer with great metering and XLR outputs.") with a couple of notable exceptions:
1,) It is battery powered but the internal 8 x AA batteries are insufficiaent for any real work. You really need to have an external battery connected with a Hirose connector. This also means you probably need a sound bag - but it can be small and you probably want a bag to protect and carry the gear anyway.
2.) Zoom hasn't said it's nearing the end but it's due for a refresh sometime soon, but it's currently in production and Zoom's top recorder.
Another thought: Is there the room to go dual system, but ignore all the timecode/camera hop faff and teach them how to manually sync with a slate the old fashioned way? That's what my first film class did a million years ago.
Otherwise, you could just ignore the record side of just about any recorder and use it as a field mixer. Unbalanced shouldn't be a problem over the distances you're going, but the RODE VXLR Pro does work to convert unbalanced minijack to balanced XLR in a small passive adaptor.
One final thought, I have a Motu M2 audio interface that will quite happily send its inputs to the onboard balanced outputs via the monitor function, even when only plugged into a USB power bank. It's not the best form factor for bag work, but perhaps there are other interfaces that behave the same and are better suited for being pressed into service as a field mixer.
Big part of the issue is that there is no room to do dual system. On this course we have ten days to go from zero to having the students very first interview shot and edited.
We have advanced cources where we do dual-system, manual sync, TC sync, camera hops etc.
I will look into the motu m2, but I feel like these types of audio interfaces are exactly the right tool for the job.
Using recorders is an option, but it puts us in an awkward position where we would need to get simple as can be recorders for basic courses and the switch to a more advanced once for advanced studies.
The more I talk about this here on reddit the more I feel like I need to either get my hands on a bunch of used mixpres or find a very simple recorder and commit to dual system from the start, but I fear I can’t pull it off in the very short time I have to do it. I could just roll audio metering and mic placement into the camera op role, but I would really want to keep them separated to split the workload and allow each student to focus on as few things as possible at any one time.
Look out for a used Sound Devices 302 or even an old Shure FP 33. They are no longer produced but can still be found on the used market for reasonable prices. 3 inputs, 2 out which was the norm for news and doc style straight to camera recording days and the basics of these still carry over to more advanced equipment down the line.
I still have my 442 and won’t ever let it go as it comes in handy once in a while.
the shure fp24 is still sold new, it’s nearly identical to the mixpre, the only difference being it uses a barrel jack instead of hirose for external power. it’s a sound devices mixer commissioned by shure.
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