this is the dd pocket wireless system an under 200 wireless system that it's extremely easy to
use and set up extremely small and lightweight and easy to pack with you and gives you the option to
do things like this where you're 150 feet away from the camera but still getting good audio
nadi sent this to me but they're not paying for this review they don't get to see it they don't
have input into it before it's released when it comes to on-camera audio you have a couple
of decisions to make one if you're going to do an on-camera mic like this or if you
want to do a small wireless system like this there are advantages and disadvantages to both
the advantage of an on-camera system like what i'm using right now the d3 pro is that you lose
all of the variability of wireless where you can lose the signal for a second if you walk between
something in your receiver or if there's a lot of interference in the area sometimes that can cause
problems but it also gives you a disadvantage of the fact that i'm about two and a half maybe
three feet away from the camera i can't go much further than that that is even a little bit far
technically the closer you get to the microphone the better it's gonna sound so generally i like
to keep mine 18 inches to two feet at the most i'm in a pretty quiet environment there's not
a lot of wind right at this moment the biggest advantage of wireless audio is that you're now
no longer tied to being as close to your camera as you know 18 inches to maybe three feet you can go
pretty much any distance right now about 25 maybe 30 feet away from the camera but you always get
really good clean consistent audio occasionally you can get dropouts that's the downside and the
danger but if you have a good system like the dd connect system the pocket system then you're not
going to worry really too much about it especially if you're within 50 feet this system so far in my
testing has been rock solid but there's another reason that i always travel with a small wireless
system like this and before the tide comes in and strands me on this rock we're gonna go to another
spot and i'll tell you why i always have one with me every time i travel to anywhere now deity says
you can get up to 175 feet of range which is probably right about what i'm at right now i've
got to be close to about 200 feet a good clear line of sight no other interference the big reason
i carry a little wireless system with me to places like this and everywhere i go in alaska is weather
when you're operating in high winds or when there's high winds having a small wireless system
like this a lapel mic you can put under your jacket or your shirt basically eliminates all the
wind noise that you could possibly have the other reason is if i'm operating in you know not not so
great weather it's a lot easier to keep my camera covered when i don't have a big shotgun mic on top
that makes a big difference for wireless audio and another reason is if there's a lot of ambient
noise for example if you're walking along the beach and there's a lot of waves going on
then it helps to isolate you your voice because the mic is so close to you for example i've got
waves coming in breaking on the beach here and my voice is relatively isolated compared to this
which gives you a lot of other noise going on around you and even an on-camera mic won't help
eliminate that entirely but this just helps to give you a lot cleaner a lot more isolated sound
and the best thing is it doesn't really matter how close or how far away from your camera you are
you get that same quality sound no matter what there are a couple of reasons you might want to
consider the dd pocket system over something like the rode wireless go or the wireless go 2 and one
is certainly the price at 169 dollars for the base package it's really a good deal and pretty
much gives you everything you need to get going if you're going to use it on something like a dslr or
mirrorless camera anything like that and it's a great companion to small cameras because it's a
small system that will clip into any hot shoe or cold shoe mount on the camera another thing i like
about this system over there wireless go which i've used for a couple of years since it came out
is this has a locking 3.5 millimeter connector when you plug it in so when i plug in
a lapel like i have now i don't have to worry about it coming loose or popping out
which i have had happen when i was working with a client that had to ask them to redo
the thing we had just filmed which is always a bummer so i don't recommend doing that
and something that's really cool about this system is it comes with both a usbc to 8 inch or 3.5
millimeter headphone jack but it also comes with a usbc to usbc which means i can plug it directly
into my laptop and use this as an audio input to record stuff straight to my laptop which is
really handy uh when i've been traveling when i'm in a lot of different places and i need to record
voice over for videos that i've been working on as far as battery life goes you get about five hours
but the great thing is that it recharges in just a little over an hour completely from basically
almost nothing to full which is great because sometimes i feel like devices take forever to
recharge another reason i love this system over the road wireless go system that i've used for a
few years is this gives you 10 steps of gain so you can really fine tune how much audio
you're sending to your camera as opposed to three steps of gain on the original wireless go and my
favorite part is that you can mute remotely from the receiver the transmitter so if you need to
pause it or you're not recording and you don't want any sound then you can hit back there and
mute it and dd's done a great job of giving you a really bright oled screen on the receiver to
give you all the information of what the battery level in both the transmitter and the receiver are
how strong the signal is between the two and where your audio levels are coming in at which is really
handy if you're working with clients conducting interviews or something like that and you want
to be able to fine-tune everything from the camera and not have to mess with the belt pack and lapel
once you've put it on somebody or the lavalier mic whatever you want to call it it makes it really
nice because you don't have to go back and forth and back and forth to be tweaking and adjusting
stuff another thing i like about this system is dd's put giving us a good physical on and off
switch you slide it one way to turn it on slide it the other way to turn it off and it gives you
a really good easy visual indication of whether the system is on or off now there are also lights
that show you there's power on and the systems are linked which is great a couple of things
to note is this doesn't have backup recording it would have been nice if that had been in there but
also it probably would have cost a great deal more than 169 dollars and this is a single unit system
so you can't pair a second transmitter to the receiver but the great thing is the dd has made
this compatible with the other dd wireless system out there and so this will be part of your system
if you buy this now and then upgrade to that later and this is how easy this system is to set up
take the transmitter flip the switch to turn it on you get ready to go like that because there
is a mic built in here but i prefer to use lapel it's already in my shirt plug that in
tighten it down which i love the locking mechanism on my pocket receiver same thing power on usb-c
plug the usbc in and the system's already ready to go so i just got to plug it in
and then you put the receiver on the camera and you're ready to go ready to start recording audio
literally the entire setup takes less than 40 seconds from taking it out of the case to
having it on your camera turned on and recording but my favorite thing about this system is that
it's so small so compact and so easy to use that i can always have it with me in my camera
bag regardless of where i go and always know that i can get great audio regardless of the
conditions i'm in whether it's a beautiful day like this or it's windy raining snowing whatever
i know i can always get great audio thanks to this tiny little wireless system now if you want
to know about other microphones that i use click or tap right there i put together a small playlist
i'll see you in one of those videos as always if you have questions ask me in the comments
below or join my live stream wednesday nights at 4 pm alaska time 8 pm eastern i have a three mile
hike back through the woods hopefully no bears i'll see you again soon in the next video cheers