I had a rush of blood to the head last year and bought a sennheiser mke300d mic, though I've not used it for filming yet simply because it's somewhat out of proportion to the camcorder and it is in shot when it's mounted on the hot shoe.

I have used it for recording voice overs for my vids (direct to PC is useless as my PC is very noisy) but when I open the avi file in Soundforge to normalise, divide it up etc the sound is mono only. I've simply duplicated the sound in the other channel to make it stereo, which is fine for a voiceover.

I've now bought a bracket so I can mount it away from the cam when using a tripod.

Is a directional mic inevitably mono? I will shortly be recording some musician friends and I would prefer stereo, but will I get it? I've checked my sound from previous recordings of these musician friends and there is a slight difference in the two channels. It's not really stereo like a CD, but it does reflect what the ears hear in the hall.

If I do end up duplicating the channels, it will still be better than the cam's mic, as I won't have all the chatter from tables near the tripod, but I'd rather have the best of both worlds, if possible.

Gillian

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Win XP, Athlon 1.8, G force 3 T, 1 60gig drive + 1 250 gig, Pinnacle Studio 9 plus mostly, Premiere 6, and Vegas 5 sometimes, Soundforge, Cool Edit.