The Spacer Bubble gets the perfect balance between wind protection, audio transparency and changing conditions, because the sound of your microphone matters – which is why you bought it in the first place. Watch the Spacer Kit in action, bringing just the right amount of wind protection in play to keep the sound of the mic as true as possible.
Director Reed Ingram Weir shares a trick he uses to make sure their mics survive the rigours of everyday use on productions: “The moment they arrive at our warehouse, every single mic with a thin gauge cable has a Bubblebee Cable Saver attached to it…”
From Brazilian rainforests and mountain treks in India to volcanos in Nicaragua, production sound mixer Kevin Bellante never fails to raise an eyebrow with his photos from the field. He grew up in Chatsworth and now calls Los Angeles, California home, in the San Fernando Valley.
When he’s not recording sound for productions near and far, which is seldom, he enjoys camping and scuba diving (most recently at the Great Barrier Reef).
With such a busy schedule, we’re thankful that he managed to talk to us a little about his career and give us a behind the scenes perspective on some of his recent adventures.
Watch what happens when Allen Williams tries to rip apart his “The Sidekick” IFB In-Ear Monitor review!
And here is a further follow up…
Michaela Girouard: Booming New Orleans. We took a few moments at Bubblebee to chat with her about early interests, what it’s like to work in New Orleans [hint: it’s great!], production craft, and equipment choices for those difficult working days on set in the sweltering heat. Read more →
Tim Stephan hails from Hamburg, Germany. A Filmtonmeister for over 10 years, both in Europe and abroad, we talk with him and find out more about his experience and advice for working in the film sound industry. Read more →
We had the chance to do a test comparison of two variants of the Bubblebee Invisible Lav Covers – Original and Fur Outdoor at London Bridge Beach in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. With a fair bit of wind out it was ideal conditions for using The Invisible Lav Covers to record clean and clear dialogue.
Read more here…
We interview production sound mixer Chris Welcker. A New Orleans local all his life, Chris started out in music and media and quickly found his niche in production sound. Since 2007 he has worked his way up through an impressive list of films including 12 Years a Slave, Jurassic World, Keanu, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, Queen & Slim, to mention but a few.
Learn about his experience, team, gear and the attitudes required to deal with the pressures of being in charge of sound on set.
Read the full interview here…
(June 25, 2019) — With dozens of dates around the world and a show in which the band is as much a part of the choreography as the dancers and acrobats, Pink’s Beautiful Trauma tour is no place for musicians to be tied down by instrument cables. Yet longtime bassist Eva Gardner was frustrated with wireless systems that didn’t preserve the tone and response she required for her crucial role in the rhythm section — until she and her bass tech Ruff Stewart discovered Lectrosonics Digital Hybrid Wireless®, including LT transmittersalongside LR and R400a receivers.
“The big risk when you go off the cable is that your sound can suffer,” says Gardner, who has also played with Cher, Gwen Stefani, and Moby, to name a few. “Pink’s concerts are big, visual productions. There are a lot of dancers/ aerialists and even an acrobat, so I’m moving up and down the stage all the time. So, I really can’t be tethered, and have been using wireless for about a decade. On previous systems, my sound was never really all there. It was thin and over-compressed. Then, we started having some issues with dropouts, so for this tour, Ruff and I went on a quest for a new wireless setup.”
“I hadn’t heard of Lectrosonics until one of our monitor engineers told me about it,” recalls Stewart. “He’d used it with AC/DC where it was part of [rhythm guitarist] Malcolm Young’s rig. I always loved Malcolm’s tone, and figured if it was good enough for a guy like him, it was worth a listen. We literally just took it out of the box and plugged it in. Other than a minor gain adjustment to match Eva’s bass, we did nothing to it. On bass guitar, the Lectrosonics is the most lifelike wireless system I’ve ever used. It literally sounds like she’s playing through a cable.”
Timing is just as important as tone, as Gardner explains: “The bass really needs to lock with the drums, so previously, latency was becoming more and more of an issue. That’s not the way playing the bass works — when you hit the string; it has to be in time! Lectrosonics has eliminated that problem. In fact, we recently did an A-B comparison between the system and a cable a few days ago. We listened very critically. Not only is all my tone there, but the response is so immediate that I forget I’m even using wireless.”
Stewart also praises Lectrosonics’ performance in high-RF environments, something any concert venue is virtually guaranteed to be. “Most people in the band are on in-ear monitors, there are cell phones, walkie-talkies for event staff, all of that,” he explains. “At first, I had some concerns over the distance factor in the face of all this RF, because Eva was on the opposite side of the very large stage from the receivers. But with the Lectrosonics stuff, we’ve had absolutely zero problems with dropouts, crosstalk, or latency. The frequency-scanning and pairing procedure between the receiver and transmitter is just brilliant, too. In Australia, we’d been using the R400a receivers and they were totally solid. Upon returning to the states, we switched over to the LR units as they gave us a bit more bandwidth for frequency choices.”
“We couldn’t be happier with the Lectrosonics gear,” concludes Gardner. “All my tone is there, I haven’t had an issue with battery life, and again, the responsiveness and timing are indistinguishable from being on a cable. I also love that the packs are so compact. It’s unbelievable.”