A few months ago I was notified by e-mail that I was nominated for the Cinema Audio Society Student Recognition Award this year! I am among five exemplary students of sound and/or music from across the US and UK to have been nominated for this honor. This award is open for any currently enrolled student in a sound or music program, and offers a $2,500 prize.

“I am delighted to announce the finalists for the second annual CAS Student Recognition Award. These talented students clearly represent the next wave of talent in our art form,” said CAS President Mark Ulano, “the quality of their submissions has been stellar and we congratulate and welcome them to our sound family.” 

This weekend I will be shipping out to Los Angeles for the awards ceremony on the 20th of Feb! I am very excited to go to LA for my first ever visit to the west coast! On top of that, I get to see my better half, Molly, there! I'll eventually to make a post about how the weekend goes over!

A few weeks ago, my shipment of three channels of Sennheiser G3 wireless transmitters and receivers from Gotham Sound came in. Understandably, I was super excited to finally own my own wireless equipment! 

The menu system on them is very simple and fast, if you know what you're looking for. The built in frequency scanner is super handy with constantly changing locations, and certainly doesn't make me miss my theatre days of local frequency charts and individually programming each transmitter and receiver. The IR sync helps with this too, it's super fast and easy, and makes frequency changes on the fly no sweat. These absolutely sip battery power. A pair of alkaline AA batteries can last me 6+ hours, in both the transmitters and receivers! The bright, orange backlight on the clear, easy to read screen also makes evening work much easier. The adjustable squelch and pilot tone are useful to those who are versed in RF, but not of much concern to your average DSLR shooter.

The transmitters, having only 30mW RF output power means range isn't stellar, but is adequate for the close quarters bag work I usually find myself doing. I also wish the status screens were atop the device, instead of on the front, as I keep these in my sound bag, and have to pull them all the way out of their straps to adjust anything. Even a couple LEDs on top would have been super helpful! And one last gripe: I do wish I could see transmitter battery status on the receivers.

I wire them up in my bag and program them all, setting them up with printed numbers and everything, the works. I plug in the noticeably large ME-2 lavalier mics into the Tx, and to my dismay, they are very noisy! 

Not ready to give up, I eagerly awaited my second shipment from Gotham, containing my Sanken COS-11D lavaliers. Upon their arrival, I rejoiced to hear the clean sound coming from all channels of wireless. I was astonished at the difference. Obviously, good sound starts at the mic and preamps, and the COS-11D's did not disappoint.

I give these Sennheiser G3's a solid thumbs up for an entry level professional wireless system. However I wouldn't spend much time on the included ME-2 lavs, if those are the ones that come in your kit.