What's in your kit? with Production Sound Mixer Simon Hayes AMPS CAS

A deep dive into Simon Hayes' 2024 Production Sound carts encompassing Sound Devices ASTRAL eco system and how he interfaces it using DANTE and MADI across Zaxcom, Lectrosonics, Schoeps and DPA equipment to create a unique and personal workflow that gives ultimate flexibility in his pursuit of preserving performances in his films.
We also look into Simons Pro Tools rig and how it interfaces with the rest of the system to assist in the capture of live musical films.

[@MichaelWynneCAS]

Thanks for the cart & workflow tour Simon! Being a Nexus owner myself I really appreciate your workflow thoughts and implementation.

[@jonathancaro6420]

Thank you for sharing your gear. Nice to see how the latest gear is being used by a true professional legend!

[@luist4373]

Great stuff simon ! Would like to see the rest of your kit like Simon did in the ursa series.

[@philpike6177]

Pure gold dust. Thank you so much, Simon, for giving us this incredible view into your rigs; you can't buy this sort of thing.

[@nicolasfieldsoundservices]

Thanks for being so generous with your knowledge Simon! Cheers from Canada

[@AllenCavedo]

Terrific tour of a state of the art production sound system.

[@aleksbundalo6161]

Thank you so much for sharing Simon!

[@igladkiy]

Thank you, Simon! It’s an amazing insight and a very well thought out setup😮. It would be a privilege, if you will, give us a sneak peek into talents IEM/earwigs system that you’re using for this musical. 🙏🏻

[@polakdan]

Those bent RJ-45 connectors at the bottom of the cart would scare the crap out of me. They don’t look particularly protected under the fabric cover of the rack bag. I’ve seen 90 degree Ethernet cables for sale and you could probably even use a 1u protective shroud. Thanks for all the inspiration

[@fiercesound2138]

Beautiful set up

[@finnfransen_official279]

Thanks! This is an interesting video.

[@hearheresingapore]

Thank you for the brilliant insight into your set-up

[@KabukiStarship]

This is great. I've been looking into starting a TV show so this is excellent information for me.

[@federicomalandrino5183]

Dreamland🤩

[@polarmx7890]

So if I understood, you only need the Deva for the flexibility to work with the booms?? And you send that to your scorpio??? What are you using for the director/producer/others coms??

[@mathiasschmidt6206]

When recording the super cmit do you then record the preset 1 signal and the unprocessed signal onto the Scorpio in to separate channels, if so what do you name those channels? Boom 1 and BU Boom 1? Thank you so much for the video. Regards Mathias.

[@stereothrilla8374]

Love your setup. Sorry, I’m spoiled though. I’m radio boom for life.🎉

[@-Ninel-]

What company is the Nexus battery?..and the other sound carts? thank you

[@cgjjSimonHayes]

Batt Country in the U.K. - recommended.

[@POLARICED]

What's that combination lock on the mbp?

[@davidlstevens]

which IEM's are you using for cast on the 3 channels?

[@mickeymacachor]

Why not use Dante over fibre instead of introducing another protocol such as MADI?

[@cgjjSimonHayes]

Dante has a maximum stable cable length of 75 metres. With MADI we can do a 500 metre cable run. This was a requirement on some of the cliff to beach scenes in The Little Mermaid. It worked so successfully we kept it to link ProTools and Scorpio so we se instantly ready for a +75m cable run.

[@mickeymacachor]

@@cgjjSimonHayes Dante just runs over a standard IP network. I have run Dante and other audio over IP protocols such as Revenna over multiple kilometers.

[@mickeymacachor]

Just need to run the network over fibre

[@mickeymacachor]

Not sure where you got the 75 meter figure from. But that is incorrect. Even standard copper ethernet is rated for 100m depending on required bandwidth and cable type used.

[@cgjjSimonHayes]

I misread your post. The 75 metre figure is the limit we use on copper cable. Of course, the quoted figure is 100 metres but I like to leave some safety. Regarding why we chose MADI over fibre: The first film that required fibre for long runs between ProTools and Production Sound was The Little Mermaid. At that point we were pre Scorpio and pre Dante. We were still working in an analogue/AES hybrid on my main cart. We knew we needed to deliver 500 metre cable runs between Tools and Cart and so we looked at the most robust options and chose MADI for a number of reasons, but the main takeaway is that we were not running anything on Dante. Since then we've obviously upgraded our Production Sound workflow to be very dependent on Dante due to Scorpio & Nexus. As MADI has been SO successful: reliable, robust, tested over extraordinarily long fibre runs we decided not to change a winning system and keep the MADI as our interface between ProTools & Production Sound. It all comes down to the old adage "if it ain't broke don't fix it".

[@igorzavalnyi5341]

I'm curious why filming sound engineers don't use digital mixers user in the live sound industry? They can be more budget-friendly while delivering lots of capability and incredible sound qualidy for recording, while having superior tools for monitoring. Are there specific features that the live mixers don't have?

[@TaylorThomasVideo]

I think it comes down to set specific metadata entry and built in noise reduction by cedar / sound devices and auto mixing