External talkback with Carbon

[starkey]

Hello,

Trying to decide if a Carbon is going to work for us in an audio post room. Does anyone know if you can assign an external mic to be the talkback mic? I'd like to use an external mic, using one of the 8 mic pre, instead of the built in mic. And still benefit from the TB dim functionality. Thanks!

[Darryl Ramm]

You can use an external trackback mic sure, since all this mic is doing is exposing the talkback mic I/O to Pro Tools and you normally bung an aux on it. And you can use any old Mic and I/O to do this yourself, but then you lose the footswitch and front panel control of the talkback, which seems an unfortunate oversight. There are multiple past threads on DUC talking about how to control an external talkback mic with the Mute-o-Matic plugin.

"audio post" meaning not video post? Or you need talkback for VO/redub? and want the low-latency monitoring for that? I am not sure Carbon would be my first choice here when MTRX Studio is available.

[albee1952]

My preference is to automate the talkback. In the control room, I have a Crown PCC160(quarter sphere boundary mic) that just sits anywhere on a flat surface. That feeds a preamp to an AUX track in the session and I stick Sound Radix Mute-o-Matic plugin(free) so when transport is stopped, TB is open. As soon as I hit PLAY(or record), TB mutes.

If you can't live with a hot TB mic whenever transport is stopped, skip the plugin and run the mic thru a "cough switch" box. These are usually wired so the mic is ON until you hit the switch, but it would be easy to change so the mic is OFF until you hit the switch. All it does is short(or not short) pin 2 and 3 together(so it will work on a phantom powered mic too). Sorry but this doesn't dim(nor does Mute-o-Matic)

[smurfyou]

I don't have one but looking at it that does not seem possible.

To the other replies, generally in post we need a real talkback that's controllable and dimmable. Sometimes more than one.

I personally would not consider Carbon for post.

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I'm routing my Grace through the Carbon, which works well for me.