Soundcatchers is a UK production sound team serving media clients including the BBC, Netflix, Sidemen, Beta Squad, and Channel 4. Its workflow is designed to scale with the size of each shoot, using Sound Devices 8-Series mixer/recorders and Astral Wireless as the core system for production environments that vary widely in pace and format.
The company’s mobile recording rigs are built around Sound Devices 888 and Scorpio mixer-recorders, paired with Astral ARX32 Wireless Receivers and Astral Mini and Astral TX transmitters. Soundcatchers points to channel count, routing capacity, control flexibility, compact size, and ruggedness as practical requirements for shoots that may run for a day or less. On a Netflix Inside production, the team used a Scorpio with an Astral ARX32 as the RF Command hub in a tight eight-zone house environment, with contestants on Astral Mini or Astral TX transmitters and an additional push-to-talk microphone for the host.
The most concrete workflow detail is the use of Dante over Wi-Fi to run four iPads as mixers, giving the team control without extensive cabling through the set. For productions where confined spaces, multiple zones, and many transmitters have to coexist, the Soundcatchers setup shows how mixer/recorders, wireless receivers, transmitters, and networked control can be combined to keep a mobile sound workflow manageable.