Carbon internal talkback distored
 

The quality of the talkback system on my Carbon seems wayyy off, in a bad way. Does the talkback system sound "okay" to anyone else?

For me, the amount of cooling-fan noise from inside the Carbon makes the talkback nearly unusable. But worse, and with gain in Hardware Setup set to lowest setting of 0dB, the system is quick to distort. If I talk with any amount of extra volume in my voice, about 1 foot away from the unit, it's overdrive city.

I've tried to test this on the Carbon's internal headphone amps, also routed outputs to external headphone distribution amps. All results are sub-par, to say the least.

Re: Carbon internal talkback system - not great results here
 

Hi, well I quickly try the internal Talkback on my Carbon and could hear as you the noise you're talking about.I didn't realise it was the fan but of course it makes sense) in fact I thought I was doing something improperly and having no time to investigate I just decided to see later.....Didn't notice distortion on mine however.Anyway if it's normal behaviour, well I'm afraid this talkback is unusable.....

Re: Carbon internal talkback system - not great results here
 

While I agree it ain't great, I use it strictly as a talk back.

That said, for my usage, I just simply insert Dyn3 gate, and I have no issues. Yes there is fan noise but the gate helps with that, and I've experimented with how much TB to send to the talent.

Also I have the gain set about 24.

Re: Carbon internal talkback system - not great results here
 

Today I got a reply from Avid - wow - great service! Someone at Avid Support saw this DUC post and emailed me.

So, the distortion I was experiencing is a known firmware issue. I rolled back PT from 2020.12 to 2020.11, reset firmware, and the mic levels are more realistic, not distorting anymore in normal use. I'll work in PT 2020.11 until next version rolls out.

For the fan noise, okay, I'll try a gate & finesse sends/volumes to talent. Thanks for that tip, Bob.

I also tried Waves x-noise, but that puts the talkback in 'native' mode with about 100ms delay. Waves z-noise introduced wayyy too much latency to be useful in a realtime use case. I'm going to try a demo of McDSP NR800 Noise Reduction Processor in AAX DSP mode & report back. Any other known/good noise reduction AAX DSP plugs out there?

Sure would be AWESOME if we could use an external microphone in the switchable/dimmable talkback system. I did try to use my own mic into input 24 (via adat), but that doesn't make use of switchable/dimmable functions that the talkback system utilizes.

Re: Carbon internal talkback system - not great results here
 

Glad to see that CS got back to you already! Had you logged a support case for this?

Re: Carbon internal talkback system - not great results here
 

Not to hijack this thread, but I’ll tell ya what, it sure seems that Carbon is getting a lot of visibility with CS and the development team members.

Kudos to y’all for that.

Re: Carbon internal talkback system - not great results here
 

Shoot, I think myself or Kyle have spoken with all of you at one point or another!

Jeffro, yes, we have a case for table17.

Thank you all for your passion & your patience.

m

Re: Carbon internal talkback system - not great results here
 

Hello Everyone,

To follow up on this, we've recently discovered an issue with Talkback mic distortion on some units. We're working on a fix for this in the next Pro Tools release. In the meantime, please contact support for assistance if you haven't done so already. Thanks.
avid.com/learn-and-support/contact-audio-and-music-support

Re: Carbon internal talkback system - not great results here
 

yes, thanks, I have a ticket started. Firmware has helped with the distortion/level concerns. Fan noise... https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=418957