This fine field mixer will make a great addition to your audio arsenal.

By Jay Holben

I’ve been accused of being a jack-of-all-trades before (master of very few), but certainly one area that I have no expertise in is sound. Although I’ve learned much over the years, I am still an infant in the sonic world so when the opportunity to review the Sound Devices 552 Portable Production Mixer came my way, I knew I had to turn to an expert. This time around I turned to my production mixer from from my indie feature comedy 2 Million Stupid Women, Chris Howland, who spends a great deal of his career in run-and-gun situations. He jumped at the chance to work with the 552 and, indeed, put it to a major test under-fire on several projects including an independent feature And They’re Off, with Sean Austin, Kevin Nealon and Cheri Oteri, and the National Geographic reality series Lockdown.



The Sound Devices 552 Portable Production Mixer features five high-performance mic inputs with two-stage gain control, limiter, variable high-pass and solo monitoring; a pre or post-fader direct output option for each input; multiple output connections (XLR, Hirose 10-pin, TA3), AES/EBU output; two tracks of Broadcast WAV (up to 96 kHz) recorded to SD or SDHC media; time code input; voice-confirmation for menu and control options; a lightweight design and can be powered by four “AA” batteries.

“It’s a really neat tool; a very good recorder,” attests Howland. “A solid two-track recorder and mixer – and it’s very portable. The sonic quality of the mixer itself is pretty typical of the high quality you would expect from Sound Devices, good mic pre, low noise and a lot of dynamic range. Even when you ‘barbecue’ something, it still has a little more room left. The limiters are very, very smooth for a mixer and they let you set a threshold, which is pretty cool. The limiters in this mixer are better than I’ve ever seen in a mixer. Even on a horror film I was working on when the talent suddenly let out an unexpected eye-crossing scream and pegged the meters, it still wasn’t distorted – that’s impressive.”

Working on the NatGeo show Lockdown was a challenge for Howland. For 11 days he and a cameraman were embedded with the Special Emergency Response Team in a San Antonio County Jail and documented their work, which included running in full riot-gear to aggressive and dangerous situations among the inmates.

“When one of the guards hits their duress button, we have to run, full-tilt, down the halls with the SERT team to wherever the situation is. It was important to be incredibly portable for this, and I was wearing the Sound Devices 552 as a bag rig. I could only go in with one bag of gear, so I had to stay very small. The 552 was great because it cut down on the equipment I needed in my bag.

“The 552 replaced two of the components from my larger bag,” Howland explains. “I had a PSC M4-mkII mixer and a Tascam HD-P2 recorder, two different units. The 552 combines those two units into one so I could replace them both and go with a smaller, lighter bag. It made it a lot simpler – because when you’re (literally) running-and-gunning, lighter is much, much better.

“In addition,” he continues, “the battery life on the 552 is amazing. On my PSC, I’d go through three or four batteries in a day. I bought four NP-1s with my mkII, but with the Sound Devices, one battery would last me 12 hours of rolling. That helped keep the weight down that I was carrying even more. I was also not only powering the 552, but four Sennheiser wireless receivers – and it still lasted me all day.”

Further cutting down on the weight of his bag, Howland explains, “On my previous rig I had to have a Sound Devices MM1 in the bag to jump from mic to line level for Comtec feeds so I could bump the signal up about 40db or so. This meant that I had to have an additional component, plus cabling in the bag, but with the 552, you don’t need that. That made everything in the bag much more sleek and compact.

“One of the annoying things is that the SD and computer ports are on the bottom of the device, so they’re buried in the bottom of the bag. That meant that every day I had to unplug all of the inputs and pull the unit out of the bag in order to access the SD slot. I didn’t want to leave a cable connected to the computer port as I felt that, over time, the pressure of the bag against that cable would damage the unit. That port should be moved to the top – or at least the side – to make it easier to access.

“The gain knobs are also a little tricky to adjust in a real run-and-gun situation. They’re very small and tucked into the face of the unit, so it’s a challenge (especially if you have larger fingers like me) to mess with the gain on the fly. It’s a pretty busy faceplate and there are a lot of shortcuts that you have to remember. I don’t want to say the controls are anti-intuitive, but it took me a while to get used to them; probably about 4-6 hours before it became second nature.

“The one additional piece of gear I had to put in the bag was a Denecke SB-3 Time Code generator, just to be sure I stayed in sync. The 552 has built-in time code input, but there’s no display – so there was no way to really know, for sure, if it was keeping sync with the slate. There’s a bright blue indicator on the display that blinks when it falls out of sync, but that’s a little hard to trust. I would really like to see a small display that shows me running time code so I know, quickly, that I’ve still got a good jam going.

“It’s a very good unit,” Howland concludes. “Everything is well laid out and they make up for the lack of display with a synth voice that tells you what is going on, that works out well.”

As a final testament to his experience with the 552, although he had some minor quibbles, Howland went out and bought his own unit and now uses it as his primary "bag rig" mixer/recorder. “I liked it enough to make it part of my arsenal. It’s always nice to have a bag rig, even in the feature film world where you’re often jumping off into a splinter unit — I can do that very quickly now and have the same kind settings and files generated from my cart rig.”

Sound Devices 522 Portable Production Mixer

SCORE: 
PROS: Lightweight, multi-function, mixer/recorder combo, low battery consumption..
CONS: SD card slot on the bottom, not easy to adjust gains on the fly, no time code display.
BOTTOM LINE: A great addition to your audio arsenal.
MSRP: $2,895
CONTACT: www.sounddevices.com

SPONSORED LINKS

print rss

COMMENTS (3) 07/20/2010 I see. Thanks. However, I still wonder if the option to do all mixing is post is likely to become preferred over doing it on location. Or is that route somehow inferior or prone to results that are less than satisfactory compared to mixing on location. Thanks! 07/19/2010 the 788t and 744t do completely different things from the 552. i have the 744t, the 442, the mixpre, and now the 552. the 552 is a mixer, while the 788 and 744 are recorders. I know they both mix and record but not in the same way. both the 442 and 552 have so many routing options for input and outputs it's not funny. the 788 and 744 cannot do this. when you want to mix each channel you need all those faders, panners and other controls. again the 788 and 744 don't do this... 07/18/2010 I'm a new Sound Devices 788T user. As a videographer for 12 years my audio know-how was good and I got no complaints. I wanted improvements in quality, function, and the flexibility of not being tethered to a camera. I don't do TV or film work but I have to wonder why anyone would want a mixer like this when they could have a recorder like the 788T or the 744T. It seems that recording each input to an iso track (12 available) and doing the mixing in post is far more preferable (in addition to simultaneously sending each input to a Right or Left mix track if desired). It saves me from having to worry about mixing on location in stressful situations. I was under the impression that the 788T or 744T is the preferred device to have for TV/Film work. Of course there is the price difference with the 788T costing 6,000 dollars. I was researching all the possible solutions from Sound Devices and nobody was recommending a mixer like the 522 or any other brand over getting the788T if it was within my budget. As I said, I'm no audio veteran expert so what do I know? I just relied on people at the usual respected pro retailers. I do know that the 788T has already made my work sound better and given me lots of flexibility. By the way, Sound Devices has told me that the mic pres on the 788T are even better than the 744T or the mixers they offer. Thanks for the review. More...

Leave a Comment:   Text Only 2000 characters limit Enter the word as it is shown in the box below: (Why?) (case sensitive)