Sound Devices Selected For Drop Dead Diva

Sound Devices has announced its 788T Digital Audio Recorder and CL-9 Controller have been used by first-unit production sound mixer for Lifetime's series Drop Dead Diva, Chris Durfy.
When he came on board for the show, Durfy already had extensive mixing experience. After getting his start under the tutelage of mixer Stacy Hill, Durfy became an over-the-shoulder mixer for the television show The Mansion in 2002. He moved on to mixing popular reality television shows, documentaries and other types of productions.
Durfy later joined the local IATSE union to transition his career path to scripted work. It was upon meeting veteran feature-production sound mixer Whit Norris that enabled Durfy to pursue second unit work.
Much of Durfy's work takes place on location, so the Sound Devices 788T/CL-9 configuration enables moving around in tough terrain.
Although Drop Dead Diva is studio-based, it requires quick moves between stages.
"The CL-9 gives me an affordable, yet powerful solution for converting my audio bag into a cart-based mixer," says Durfy.
"For higher track count needs, I can mount a second 788T with the CL-8 above the first recorder."
Durfy's kit consists of two Sound Devices 788Ts, one CL-9, one CL-8 mixing control surface and a CL-WiFi with iPad control, two Lectrosonics Venue receivers and a combination of Comtek and Lectrosonics IFB transmitters. A Furman P-1800 AR Power Conditioner and Remote Audio MEON v2 remote battery system powers the setup.
The 788T accepts either microphone or line-level signals, provides 48 V phantom power for condenser microphones, offers peak limiters for microphone inputs and features fully adjustable high-pass filters.
Routing flexibility allows each input to be routed to left/right mixed tracks, isolated tracks or aux tracks.
"The 788T has been an extremely reliable, rock-solid recorder for me," adds Durfy.
"It has rolled almost five days a week for the past four years, short of holidays and a couple of hiatuses here and there. I've been blessed with plentiful work and a recorder that can keep up with our rigorous schedule."
Each camera operator is equipped with a PIX 240 Portable Audio/Video Recorder.
"I think the camera guys have really come around to the PIX 240 as an official piece of camera department gear," says Durfy.
"The 788T and the PIX 240 each have ambient time code generators, so they sync up perfectly. The combination of the audio and video recorders streamlines the workflow and helps save the production a significant amount of time."
As Durfy moves forward with other projects, he plans to continue working with Sound Devices gear. "I'm almost done building a brand-new cart based around Sound Devices’ PIX 260i, utilising the Dante network," he says.
"Dante allows you to set up an extremely stable and redundant audio network of up to 32 channels of audio. Because of this, I think there will be more and more mixers moving into the PIX 260i realm very soon."
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(IT/JP)