Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/634968
20 Sound Devices CL-12 Sound Devices President Paul Isaacs has other thoughts on product development. "Personally, it's not about creating standards for the sake of standards. A stan- dard is created to serve a purpose. What Sound Devices is always striving for is to always make our customers' lives easier, to make the workflows smoother, more efficient, and to make them more effective as sound mixers and cinematog- raphers. It's not so much the standard that guides things; the standard is a result of our desire to improve the working lives of our clients. SuperSlot comes from that desire." SuperSlot is a new standard developed by Sound Devices, with input from sev- eral other manufacturers. "SuperSlot evolved from a mounting standard that existed earlier, called UniSlot, a 25-pin, defined connector that Panasonic and Ikegami came up with so you could mount receivers on a camera and send audio wirelessly. UniSlot was developed to make it easier with one simple connector. We wanted to use something similar for the mixer/recorder in the bag, so that we could eliminate cables and the amount of cable spaghetti in bag. "If the wireless manufacturers weren't on board with it, there was no point in going down that path. We got in contact with Sennheiser, Lectrosonics, Wisycom and Audio Limited to get their thoughts. We worked with them so that everybody was happy. "We're all for standards at Sound Devices. We're not at all for proprietary protocols, but open standards. We very much want to open up design options so that any manufacturer can work with our products, like the 6-Series recorders." Zaxcom is another manufacturer that has helped to develop standards. CEO Glenn Sanders says, "Zaxcom invent- ed prerecord, which was born out of using buffered data, and now everybody else uses it. We invented the process of using Sceen, Take and Note meta recorded on a audio file with produc- tion sound. Zaxcom worked with Avid to make the metadata directly readable on Avid and Pro Tools systems. "I hate the term 'closed-system,'" continues Sanders. "I think we are anything but a closed system. Zaxcom has a unique system, due to the fact that there is nothing on the market for it to be compatible with. We feel strongly about Zaxnet's benefits." It is no surprise that the manufacturers who make sound equipment have different philosophies in product develop- ment. Competition between them helps drive innovation, yet satisfying the needs and wants of their customers remains the most important motivation. Moore of Lectrosonics says, "We do a lot of market research, people don't realize how much we talk to the guys in the field. When we are introducing a product, IATSE members are our core customers. We know them well and have personal relationships with them. We'll go to an event and invite people to bring their thoughts. You can't believe how many meetings we hold internally before green-lighting a new product. When we bring out a new product, it's because we talked to a lot of people. We're looking for the BEST of everything, but you can't include everybody's idea of what's best. "That's why you get different products that do different things. That's why we have so many variants on transmit- ters. All of these are variations on a theme trying to meet the different needs of the market. "We look at common practice of using a Lemo connector in certain environments. The theater environment uses the Lemo connector a lot. For our transmitters, we picked the Switchcraft 5-pin product based on durability. We found that the TA5-Series connector was more robust and survived destruction testing opposed to the Lemo. "This was done way back in 1987. We standardized our design based on that because, in our book, it was a more reliable, tougher connector. Sound Devices President Paul Isaacs has other thoughts on product development. "Personally, it's not about creating standards for the sake of standards. A stan- dard is created to serve a purpose. What Sound Devices is always striving for is to always make our customers' lives easier, to make the workflows smoother, more efficient, and to make them more effective as sound mixers and cinematog- raphers. It's not so much the standard that guides things; the standard is a result of our desire to improve the working lives of our Zaxcom Deva 16 TRXLA2