# Duncan Martin


## Posts

- [Stuff Of The Year 2025](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2026/04/stuff-of-the-year-2025/): Mini reviews for things purchased last year. PC: Palit 5070Ti The 2070S was starting to show its age for gaming, but mostly this upgrade was triggered by not wanting to pay for Adobe Premiere any more. When I’d tried Resolve previously I’d had serious stability issues to the point of renders just failing which I suspect was due to VRAM exhaustion. Plus, while Premiere uses more CPU, Resolve uses more GPU and I hoped this would make it snappy. It partly worked, I’ve had no stability issues but I still wouldn’t call Resolve snappy, and multicam editing performance is still… Read More »
- [Asus PX13 - Power and Benchmarks](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2026/04/asus-px13-power-and-benchmarks/): I recently bought an Asus PX13 laptop to replace my Dell 9305 which died in circumstances we don’t need to get into. Let’s just say, I’m better at servicing desktops. This is, I believe, a now EOL model with a HX370 APU and 4060 GPU and 24GB. With the combination of the APU and the GPU I wanted to get a feel for what settings I should be using when on different power sources. The supplied 200W adapter is large and I wouldn’t want to travel with it and would rather stay within the limits of a compact 65W or… Read More »
- [Asus ROG Ally: It's Complicated](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2026/03/asus-rog-ally-its-complicated/): Last summer I picked up an Asus ROG Ally on sale for £450 to replace an ageing, and increasingly rattly, Switch 1. For clarity, this is the RC71L model, with the Z1E processor but not the nicer Ally-X, and not one of the newer Xbox branded models. I’ve upgraded it to a 2TB drive with a 50/50 split between Bazzite and Windows. I had a few ideas for how I’d use it: travel handheld, home handheld (for sofa play) and also docked to the TV. For home use I also wanted to use it as a Moonlight streaming client. This… Read More »
- [The Four Year Rule](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2025/10/the-four-year-rule/): A while ago I set myself a goal of keeping things I buy for at least four years. I wasn’t happy with some of my spending habits, tending to get an idea and rush out and buy something to satisfy it. Then realizing it wasn’t quite right, then eBay-ing it and getting something else. It felt chaotic and I was losing money on the reselling. The other issue was I was buying the thing I could afford at the time which ended up being a compromise and less likely to be satisfactory. Conversely, things I’d bought that were ‘recklessly’ expensive… Read More »
- [Sessions Are Back And Smaller Than Ever](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2025/08/sessions-are-back-and-smaller-than-ever/): So I’ve just published my first session for almost two years, featuring Phildel. Where have I been? Well, the short version of the long break is that I’d just got tired of it. It’s a fair amount of work and I was spending my free time on other things, mostly exercise, and particularly cycling which is the destiny of many a middle-age man. Between admin and editing the whole session flow involves a lot of sitting at a computer and I do that all week. Given the choice between more sitting at a computer on the weekend or going for… Read More »
- [The Latency Of Sennheiser RS170 Headphones Is About 80ms](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2025/08/the-latency-of-rs170-headphones-is-about-80ms/): That’s it really. I know no-one cares, these haven’t been in production for years but I still use them and I was curious. People who have asked Sennheiser have got answers of mid 40ms and low 20ms values so I thought I’d just test it myself. It’s worth noting that these use a different encoding/transmission system (Kleer) than the current generation which are quoted in the 40ms range. Test technique was splitting an analogue metronome signal direct into a recorder, and via the headphones and a microphone and measuring the difference in initial waveform movement in Reaper. Just to validate… Read More »
- [Two Years of L-mount](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2025/03/two-years-of-l-mount/): Just over two years ago I switched to L-mount as my primary camera system. At the time I was doing a lot of video work using multiple micro-four thirds cameras. For a long time this was mostly G80 based, but ended up with GH5M2, GH5S, and a G9. I was tempted by the improved AF on the S5 II and gave it a go, the quality was a notable step up so went full L-mount from there. Since then I’ve backtracked with the OM-5 and have partly sold out of L-mount, but still have the S5 II, S1 and some… Read More »
- [OM Systems OM-5: MFT Rebound](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2024/10/om-systems-om-5-mft-rebound/): As previously mentioned I gave up on my Sony RX100 VII and sold it on. And that left a bit of a gap for a new ‘medium cam’, something more capable than the pocket-size Canon G9X II but smaller than the Panasonic S5 II. I decided to fill that hole with the Olympus OM-Systems OM-5. A little history I started with Micro Four Thirds way back with the Olympus PL3 and went through quite a few cameras, ending up with a Panasonic G9 for photo and GH5 II for video. A couple of years ago, I upgraded to L-mount, led… Read More »
- [Sony RX100 VII: Exit Review](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2024/08/sony-rx100-vii-exit-review/): As I’d owned my RX100 VII for a couple of years I thought I should write a long term review. When I started drafting it in my head I realized the camera really wasn’t working for me and ending up selling it shortly after. One of those occasions where measuring something changes the outcome. Background I already owned a Canon G9X II which I found very useful as a pocket camera, but it had some shortcomings. The basic idea of the RX100 VII was to be a super-G9X, especially with the 200mm equivalent lens and Sony autofocus making it useful… Read More »
- [Garmin Forerunner 265S: 1.5 year review](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2024/08/garmin-forerunner-265s-1-5-year-review/): Background Back in January 2023 ish I picked up a Series 8 Apple Watch which I ended up using it mostly as a fitness tracker. When it died after a swim a few months in I took the refund and thought I may as well get a dedicated fitness watch and went for the Garmin Forerunner 265S. What works There’s a good level of customization for the screens to show various stats during an activity. You can add a vibration alert that triggers after a distance, and for running I set this to 1km whilst for swimming it’s every 4… Read More »
- [Lumix S9 - 5 minute thoughts](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2024/05/lumix-s9-5-minute-thoughts/): I’ve been taken a break from session recordings to focus on other hobbies, and I’m certainly not buying any more session gear. Which is a shame since Panasonic have, very sweetly, released a camera just for me. Yes, the S9 is out to, let’s say, “mixed” reviews. But for my use, it just might be very good. I haven’t tried one in person so this all just thoughts based on paper specs. I have no idea if it’s a good business decision, I have never personally Tik’d nor Tok’d. Should they have spent that opportunity cost on refreshing one of… Read More »
- [Motu 1248: Four Year Review](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2024/05/motu-1248-four-year-review/): To prevent excessive chopping and changing I set myself a target of keeping new toys for four years. The Motu 1248 has just reached this benchmark so, in theory, is open to be upgraded and it’s a good moment to have a retrospective. The four year target is a bit of a blunt instrument, it’s a fairly long time for, say, a phone but for audio gear like speakers and microphones it’s no time at all. Audio interfaces also seem quite slow moving, the 1248 was first announced in 2016 and is still available for sale now. Revisiting old gripes… Read More »
- [New Attempts at Location Sessions](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2024/01/new-attempts-at-location-sessions/): An ongoing list of equipment used on the For Folk’s Sake sessions. Rev. Simpkins There were a few reasons for doing this outside, but I’m glad I did and it turned out nicely. This is really the session that made me think it would be good to get out more. This was car based, so I didn’t optimise for weight at all and regretted it because it was at least a five minute walk from the car-park to the actual marsh and the heavy stand bags, plastic boxes of cable were a pain. Video all worked fine. The G9 was… Read More »
- [Premiere Problems, Resolve Woes](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2023/04/premiere-problems-resolve-woes/): I’ve been having another go at using Blackmagic Resolve Studio for editing my sessions, rather than Adobe Premiere Pro. I tried this a while ago with the free version, and did publish a video from the attempt, but ended up going back to Premiere which I found overall easier to use. But ended up buying Resolve Studio more recently just to get access to the noise reduction, and having purchased it the idea of not paying the ongoing Premiere subscription was tempting. For reference my current hardware is: Intel i9-10850K, 64GB RAM, NVidia 2070 Super, 2TB NVMe root drive, 2TB… Read More »
- [USB Power Requirements for Panasonic Cameras](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2023/02/usb-power-requirements-for-panasonic-cameras/): Quick one, hopefully. For powering my Panasonic cameras on shoots I’ve been using dummy batteries with USB PD adaptors for the tripod cameras. These have been working OK but I recently found out this setup is actually slightly underpowered and it made me a little paranoid about stability. For USB power directly into camera Panasonic say you need 9V @ 3A (27W) and this seems to be true for the dummy battery path as well. With my normal Anker power banks (9V @ 2.2A) although video recording is fine, if you try and do a burst with mechnical shutter (tested… Read More »
- [USB Power All Round](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2022/11/usb-power-all-round/): A small collection of results from playing with USB powerbanks. USB power is a really interesting way of powering devices: there’s lots of capacity options, charging is easy and they’re reusable across devices. And prices are low compared to NP-F batteries and certainly first party batteries for devices. The biggest issue is finding quality options amongst the piles of no-name products. Zoom F8 When I bought the F8 I wrote about power options including a USB-A to 12V adaptor (stable up to 96KHz) and a SQNR NP-F battery adapter, which is, unfortunately, rubbish as although it can run the F8… Read More »
- [iPhone 13 Pro - It's OK](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2021/11/iphone-13-pro-its-ok/): Quick post. My phone was up for renewal so I went large with an iPhone 13 Pro. This was an acceptance that I take more photos on my phone than any ‘real’ camera so made sense to spend the money. After a few weeks my opinion is basically that’s it’s fine, but not miraculous, and it does have some flaws. Here are a few photos from the park, standing under a railway bridge. iPhone vs Canon G9X II vs Lumix G80 with 12-35/2.8. All photos around ~70mm equivalent. Shot RAW (not ProRAW on the phone) and edited in RawTherapee with… Read More »
- [Recording Black Horses](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2021/07/recording-black-horses/): The For Folk’s Sake sessions went on a long pause during the various UK lockdowns, but now things are mostly back to normal I’ve started recording again. The first person in for this new run was Basia Bartz. Basia was previously here alongside Catherine Rudie, where I was intrigued by the combination of violin with FX and loop pedals, and I was glad to get her back to perform her own music. Plus, it was nice to start with a friendly face while I knocked quite a lot of rust off. The technical side of this session is interesting in… Read More »
- [Windows, Thunderbolt, MOTU 1248](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2021/03/windows-thunderbolt-motu-1248/): For completely legitimate reasons other than “I was bored in Lockdown” I commited to an CPU & motherboard upgrade on my studio machine, previously an Intel i7-6700. I considered AMD, but stayed with Intel in the end. Mostly this was out of fear of PCI & USB stability issues, and slightly that I wanted to play with Thunderbolt for audio. There is one suitable Thunderbolt AMD board, but it has the B550 chipset which are limited on expansion. Plus Thunderbolt on Windows still feels a bit experimental and Intel felt safer in terms of getting support from manufacturers. The new… Read More »
- [NEC Spectraview SV242W vs Gigabyte Auros FI27Q-X](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2021/02/nec-spectraview-sv242w-vs-gigabyte-auros-fi27q-x/): About eight years ago I decided to get a really nice colour accurate monitor for photography and bought a NEC Spectraview SV242W and an X-Rite i1Display Pro. It didn’t turn out to be very useful as at the time the software support was pretty poor. I never really got any sense out of the actual colour calibration beyond gamma adjustments and one of the background utilities had a habit of grabbing focus randomly which was ‘tiresome’ – particularly during games when it would just dump you back to the desktop. So it ended up living in sRGB mode as an… Read More »
- [USB Chipsets for the MOTU 1248](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2020/05/usb-chipsets-for-the-motu-1248/): My studio PC is an i7-6700, which is fast enough for audio work but a bit underpowered for video editing. For a potential upgrade I’d like to consider something AMD Ryzen based. Going AMD means I’d have to give up on my upgrade to Thunderbolt, but that’s only a nice-to-have so I can live with it. But even sticking with USB there’s a risk. Audio gear can be timing sensitive, and manufacturers often assume Intel chipsets, and some devices are official Intel USB only. I can’t test a motherboard I haven’t bought, but I can test PCIe USB cards. If… Read More »
- [MOTU 1248](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2020/02/motu-1248/): It’s audio interface upgrade time at the studio. I’ve swapped my Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 (2nd gen) for a MOTU 1248. There were a few motivations for this. One was to expand/improve the support for external mic amps. Another was to improve how I handle headphone mixing for live monitoring. With the Scarlett I could offer headphones to a few performers, but not with any reverb which some singers prefer. For larger groups it got more tricky as the Scarlett only offers five custom mixes. But these mixes are stereo so you can start panning left/right to split into ten (really… Read More »
- [Running The Numbers - Who's Getting Booked For Sessions](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2020/01/running-the-numbers-whos-getting-booked-for-sessions/): At the time of writing, I’ve been recording For Folk’s Sake sessions for 3.5 years, with a total of 66 recordings producing 99 published songs. As the 2019 recordings have come to an end, I’ve been categorising the artists that have come round and looking for any trends and patterns. I do lurk in a few online groups for music makers, and there are occasional discussions about the value of paying for PR agents versus DIY. In one of these discussions, someone mentioned the kind of data you’d expect them a PR to be able to show, such as “I… Read More »
- [Tracing noise with the DPA 4011ES](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2019/09/tracing-noise-with-the-dpa4011es/): I (fairly) recently splurged and bought a DPA 4011ES for instrument recording. You can sort of view this as the big brother of the DPA 4099 I’ve been using previously. I’ve used the 4011ES for a few sessions now and I’m still getting the hang of it (for one thing it’s very bass heavy). But I have had problems with electrical noise. For example, on this video of Grace Gillespie, if you turn up the volume at the end you’ll hear the sound of electrical interference (and this is after I’ve run a filter to remove it). And here it… Read More »
- [Zoe Konez Returns](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2019/09/zoe-konez-returns/): I’ve just published a new session video with Zoe Konez, which you can see below. Zoe has been in before, and although she’s not the first person to return what makes this interesting is that Zoe was the very first person to do a session with me, and comparing the two really shows the distance travelled. The story behind the sessions project is that I was already helping out with the site, initially some gig photography and later I took on the admin for live reviews. I then had to idea to try sessions, given that I already had cameras… Read More »
- [Goodbye To DIY Site Building](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2019/07/goodbye-to-diy-site-building/): For the past few years I’ve built duncanmartin.com off a set of tools I wrote myself, culminating in a system named Parakeet. The idea was to allow really easy page generation (to encourage blogging) and efficient static HTML output. It didn’t work out and I’ve given up on the idea and embraced WordPress. What worked Parakeet did succeed in terms of producing super efficient HTML, with nice meta elements, (minimal) optimised JavaScript, optimised CSS. As the output was all static pages it meant it could be delivered really easily on even a cheap VM host. The site always scored super-highly… Read More »
- [DPA 4099 Instrument Microphones](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2019/03/dpa4099-microphones/): Of all the equipment I use as part of my session recordings, the clip-on microphones I use for acoustic instruments generate the most interest from performers. So, I thought it was worth putting a post together with a bit more detail. The microphones are by Danish brand DPA. DPA use both product names and number codes, which for these mics are “d:vote” and “4099” respectively. As DPA product names can describe a range of very different products I’ve just got into the habit of sticking with model numbers and tend to just call these microphones 4099s. Aside from the very first… Read More »
- [A Better Pocket Camera](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2019/01/a-better-pocket-camera/): I went on holiday in the summer and knowing that the best camera is one you have with you I took my smallest M43 setup, a Panasonic GX80 and 12-32 pancake zoom. I then failed to take any pictures with it, and instead used by phone the whole time. The problem is even that small M43 setup is still far too big. It would fit in some very capacious walking trouser pockets but it bounced around horribly, which was uncomfortable and probably not very good for the camera. I don’t like camera neck straps, and didn’t want to have to… Read More »
- [NP-F Batteries for the Zoom F8](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2019/01/npf-batteries-for-the-zoom-f8/): Following on from my previous post about powering a Zoom F8 I decided I did want a more serious solution than the USB step-up adapter and end-up with a different kind of adapter. This time I tried a Hawk Woods DV-SQNR which converts Sony NP-F style (aka L-mount) batteries to a 12V Hirose connector. The SQNR has a maximum output of 24W, so should easily provide enough power for the Zoom in all situations. Why NP-F The obvious solution to a better power source would have been a (nominal) 12V battery from Tracer or Talentcell. Of these two the Tracers are significantly more expensive,… Read More »
- [Powering the Zoom F8](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/2018/10/zoom-f8-power/): I picked up a Zoom F8 recorder to improve my on-location recording experience. It seemed like the right time, the F8N is now out and shops are selling off the F8s much cheaper even though the new version is 99% the same (and certainly not worth 50% more). I even got a free bag. Having bought a F8 a gentleman’s thoughts will turn to how to power it. A world of batteries Between the 12V barrel connector and the Hirose connector there are certainly plenty of options, including V-mount and Sony L-type batteries with cradles, plus various 12V output Lithium… Read More »

## Pages

- [Contact](https://duncanmartin.com/contact/): For anything For Folk’s Sake related please use duncan@forfolkssake.com For anything else, web@ You can also find me on Twitter and Facebook.
- [Sessions](https://duncanmartin.com/sessions/): I’ve recorded a number of sessions for the music blog For Folk’s Sake. I’ve mostly retired from this now for time reasons, but can still be tempted. I take pitches either directly from artists or via agent by email at duncan@forfolkssake.com. Please put “SESSION” in the title to make it easy to find among all my bulk PR email. If I don’t reply within a week give me a nudge. Please provide some example music and an idea of when you’d ideally like to record or publish. Please note there can be gap of several weeks between recording and first publication.… Read More »
- [](https://duncanmartin.com/duncan-martin/)
- [Blog](https://duncanmartin.com/blog/)


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