In Box

by Charles Fulton
January 2003

Review Blues
A review on Edirol DV-7 originally published in May 2002, and reprinted in the special Winter 2002 issue states a weakness, "The waveform, however, gradually became more and more misaligned..."

This has not been an issue with the DV-7 since the February 2002 software upgrade. We request in the future that Videomaker fact- and price-check before printing articles, since publication is usually three months behind actual review. We regret any confusion or influence this may have had on potential buyers for the DV-7. Current DV-7 version 1.6, now $4,495, is shipping, and the next generation system is due out in early 2003.
Rob Read
National Sales and Marketing Manager
Edirol Video Division
Bellingham, WA

Thanks for your letter, Rob, we're glad to hear that the issue we discovered on the evaluation unit sent to us has been corrected in your otherwise excellent product, which, by the way, received a very positive review. Of course we endeavor to check every fact and price on every page, as we did in the original review.
Our special Winter issue (2002 Video Gear Buyer's Guide) featured reprints of interesting products reviewed throughout the year. As you note, these are reprints, not re-reviews, and are identified as such. We regret any inconvenience to Edirol.
-The Editors

All Mixed Up
As a first-time reader of Videomaker, I found the August 2002 issue immediately useful and informative.

As my background is more from the audio side, I was happy to see that Videomaker includes audio articles; namely, the Test Bench review of the Nady SRM-8 audio mixer. I liked the test setup using the SRM-8 to mix voiceover narration, PC audio, and the original video-source audio, and to record the mix back on the PC. However, I'd like to make a few comments about this setup.

First, the PC sound card must be full duplex in order to playback and record audio simultaneously. Second, instead of connecting the stereo output from the Sony camcorder to the SRM-8 Tape Input, connect it to a pair of the stereo Line Inputs (channels 5/6). This will allow the user to more conveniently adjust the level of the original source audio at the mixer, rather than having to adjust the level using the camcorder controls. It also allows you to adjust the EQ and Balance of the source audio, which probably can't be done with the camcorder controls. Third, I don't fully understand why an additional (Alesis) microphone preamp was needed (in the aux send path) to enhance the sound quality of the Shure microphone recordings. The Shure microphone was already connected to a preamp - the mono channel of the SRM-8 mixer. Using another preamp, or any other outboard processing gear, raises the cost of making the mix and recordings.

Speaking of cost, after a little Internet shopping, I found that the street price of an SRM-8 is around $160. A much less expensive alternative is the Behringer Eurorack MX802A mixer. The MX802A provides the exact same functionality of the SRM-8, but at a significantly lower street cost of $99.
Mauro J. Caputi, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering
Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY

Dear Mauro,
You raise a good point-why on earth would anyone run a high-quality microphone signal that's already pre-amplified via audio mixer through a second microphone preamp, via the effects send channel? The short answer is, "to test the auxiliary send capabilities of the Nady SRM-8 mixer."
Microphone preamps have two basic functions-one, to prepare the mike-level signal for recording, and two, to massage, enhance and otherwise tweak the sound in pleasing ways. This was the effect we were after in our review: to test the ability of the mixer to send and return an audio effect. It's true that what we were doing was a bit of overkill for such a good microphone, but even so, the ability to do so is a key function of an audio mixer, and the Nady performed this function well, and probably would have done so whether the tested effect was a microphone preamp, a reverberation unit, a delay, etc. (By the way, the quality of the microphone signal, after it was returned by the microphone preamp, was very good indeed.)
-Joe McCleskey

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