Thread: Mics - Yes they matter - demonstration

Originally Posted by Trentsteel

This may sound like an odd question, but how do you get these sounds onto your computer? How do you turn analog into digital? I'm asking because apparently the only option we've been able to come up with involves some several hundred-thousand dollar multi adapter and I keep thinking there must be some better way.

We tried plugging a mic into our digital camera but the engine of the camera almost drowned out any sound we did capture with it.

If at all possible try to avoid having a mic that is attached to, and sitting on a camera. Having a separate sound recorder is preferable to recording to camera, but if recording to the camera is the only option, then at least try to get the mic off the camera and on a boom pole or stand. With stand alone digital recorders it is very easy to get the audio off them and into a computer, usually via usb and simply copy/paste. However, you need to make sure the audio is sync'ed to the video somehow.

A Sennheiser SKP transmitting block is really good at this. No nedd to sync.

civil partnership video

Get the mic off the camera was a well-worn cry in the days of film and more recently tape transport which was picked up and there's nowt you can do about it later.
With off camera a good sound-man can get in close (whilst remaining out of shot). Certainly a radio-mic has no sync issue but only prosumer cameras have mic-input and I saw some reviews of the Sony VG10/20 that showed their audio-handling wasn't exactly friendly.

If you can't use camera mic-input....then maybe a hand-held Zoom-recorder - the more expensive versions having XLR i/p so you can use pro gear - the SD card just goes into yr PC - job done.

I think the almost ritual comment of get the mic off camera is still valid, but nowadays for different reasons. Small, but good mics were always a problem - so quite a few camera manufacturers simply added smallish cardioids to their larger cameras and they did work. Downsides were that fingernail noise was a problem when trying to find small buttons and switches near the mic - gain cranked up a bit, usually because of agc, and a teeny-weeny hunt for the white balance or shutter button would make very odd noises. Same thing with full size, separate lens style cameras - your right hand would be right under the better quality mic. Now the cameras have shrunk even more, so have the mics. I have to say that on the tiny pocket size Panasonic SD-9 I use for convenience shots, the 5.1 sound is actually very good. It's clearly not 5.1 as we know it as in post - the left/right v centre channels are not hugely different and as for the rear channels? What it does have though is sound that is quite useful once you list to the individual tracks - I often use this camera hung from the lighting bar on a theatre balcony - as a static camera. The image is great, and the sound quality surprisingly good - and the mix of the internal mics provides really effective audience cover, and also a nice stereo image of the band if they are live and not amplified. Obviously, and I think this is the killer - if you use this to record somebody talking to the camera from as close as two metres, it always gives a nice reproduction of the space, with the speaker somewhere in it. This is why separate mics are essential for this style of shooting. This is where I reckon the modern 'get it off the camera' comments comes from. It's NOT that the modern on-camera mics are bad - quite the reverse, they are too good at recording what a listener at the camera position can really hear - and this when reviewed is wrongly called bad sound, when it's usually high quality 'wrong' sound. When we had linear tape and then even h-fi camera sound, we often had noisy pre-amps and sub-standard mic elements that didn't work much at the bass end - so the slightly HF focus made voices a little better than music. Now we get better mics, but their result is deemed poor, which is a bit unfair. A ten quid omni lav clipped close to the presenters mouth sounds hugely better than a £500 mic too far away.