we've talked about doing this before in video number 233 where we took the board from an
autonate avio adapter and added it to a cat box from sound tools this time it's the atomos ninja
flame though that we compared in video 219 to the newer ninja 5. one thing we really didn't
get into in that video was working with audio on these older ninja flames stereo isn't so important
here when filming it's mostly filming stuff at a workbench but capturing a safety track at a lower
level than the main track is absolutely critical things like setting boxes down or using tools to
cut things can often make really sharp percussive noises and having that safety track six or more db
underneath the main track can really help to make sure we don't clip things
since getting this flame model with the single 3.5 millimeter audio input we've simply used
an xlr to 3.5 millimeter adapter and fed a mono signal to it from the mixing board across the room
the mixing board picks up microphones from all over the space but specifically from a
microphone at the workbench most of the time in this example and that mixer also has a dante card
in it and if this recorder had a dante input it would be a good bit easier to swap back
and forth between dual mono and stereo without having to dig for adapters and add another cable
and it would eliminate the heavy xlr cables uh and the adapter hanging from the monitor
in favor of a lighter network cable that could be installed more securely now this attempt here is
really just a minimal proof of concept kind of thing something that will work well enough to
live with and use for a while before deciding to more permanently modify any of this gear
what'll end up happening to make this more permanent is i will have to physically cut the
avio adapter apart to get the board out to then mount that inside the ninja and that's part of
what the previous videos were about specifically video number 233 is the fact that they don't just
sell these boards to do things like this now this is not a discussion about selling the raw
dante chips that's a whole other discussion these are just boards that have the chips on already
and you just solder xlr connectors in the in the case of an avio they're just soldered to the xlr
connectors that dangle and all that people doing this are saying is that we don't want the xlrs we
would just like to solder our own connections and that means that you can put them inside of things
and then connect up to existing connectors it's really not that big of a deal people talking about
developer kits and all this other stuff it really you know starts to make your head want to burst
because all we're talking about is soldering xlr connectors and an rj45 connector and uh it's it's
annoying to have to get a dremel out and take a whole thing apart just to get the board out of it
so the first step to try this out is to at least take the xlr connectors off of the avio adapter
and that's done pretty quickly just by desoldering them and you'll see where the 3.5 millimeter audio
input is wired to this little header and in this case we're just going to
pull the heat shrink back where the header is attached to the 3.5 millimeter jack and solder
on to the cups on that jack so we're just going to solder these additional wires in place so that
the 3.5 millimeter still works and then this is super reversible if i want to take this out
it's just a matter of unsoldering them again from this jack and it's all back to normal
up
dante
this is the workbench microphone hey hey
so this is working great now and we can easily reconfigure things uh using dante
to get the microphones or mixes patched to this recorder instead of needing a bunch of adapters
like everything though it needs to get used for a little while before i decide to make it
more permanent and i might just pull it all back apart and put real nitric
xlr ends back onto the avio adapter and go in a total different direction i did try using the
m8rx dante interface at the workbench because it has mic inputs and a 3.5 millimeter return
that could be used to feed the ninja recorder unfortunately that output is a headphone
output though and it's a little bit noisy for recording if this was just for a scratch track
or for monitoring with headphones on set it would be totally fine but it's not really what i'm after
here so this simple project has got me really thinking a lot about workflow and specifically
how much gear has crept into the room and into the process of making content here lately trying to
get to know the gear that's sent in for evaluation before making videos like with the behringer wing
or with this here m8rx dante interface makes me want to use the stuff as much as possible
there has to be a better balance though between using new gear to learn it and maintaining a
workflow that gets the results i'm looking for quickly and consistently with that in mind i'm
pulling this whole room apart right now boxing up all the gear that's not absolutely necessary
including the wing mixer and starting over from there to figure out what is really needed going
forward it's a constant evolution creating digital media for different purposes and destinations and
it feels like a good time to address this stuff now so we can be more efficient in the future
it's coming up on a year in the space now and hundreds of pieces of content have been made
or edited here for different things and we still need to address some things like making acoustic
panels for the room we need to make better use of the space in general for working with
audio and it would be nice to move towards better sound quality with less or smaller
physical equipment in the space the camera as well really needs to be simplified to something
more professional and self-contained it's been a great run with the sony a6500 and its aps-c
sensor recording externally at 4k 30 frames a second but that is getting a little bit old now
the room itself could be laid out better and maybe i'll do an update video when it's all
figured out in a few weeks so leave a comment below if you'd like to see more
of this process if you've got no interest at all in any of this leave a comment letting me know
that or with any questions you've got about modifying the ninja recorder with the dante
adapter that's all for this one subscribe if you want like the video if you did thanks for watching