Today Sound Devices announced the newest member of their mixer family: the Sound Devices 633. This isn’t just a mixer, though. The reason it commands my documentary filmmaking attention is the 10-track audio recorder the comes built into this small, extremely well-made package. And because it’s Sound Devices, you can bet it sounds as sweet as it looks.
(Wow, somebody in the marketing department at SD has been watching Apple product introduction videos, hey?)
So many small details make this look like a winner: four ways of powering it! You can put to Sony-style L-series batteries on the bottom, and if they die, the AA batteries inside will automatically take over. No need to switch manually from external to internal power, as I currently have to do on my Sound Devices Mix Pre. And if all sources die, it has an internal battery that will gracefully power you down so that you don’t lose the take entirely. Brilliant.
It accepts both SD and CF cards, and you can record to both simultaneously so that you can hand one card to the client or to editor while keeping your own at end of shoot. How cool is that?
Granted, this one is no impulse buy. At $3,095, it’s safe to say that only serious audio pros, or at least sound sticklers like me, will be entertaining a purchase. But who knows what’s next for Sound Devices? Maybe a recorder/mixer in this vein with 2-4 inputs, a 6-channel recorder, in the form factor of MixPre? For about $1,500? That would sure be something.
