Cracks, Crackles on Rode NTG-1 and internal Mic

[wseng]

Dear friends,

Been having some problem lately ... Founds cracks and crackles on my mic, internal and external (Rode NTG-1). The recorded sound is not very loud, not to the extend of clipping. But in certain frequency or note, it will sound like you squeeze a paper. I believe it's called crackles.. please correct me if I'm wrong.

Is it normal for this to happen ??

My shooting details :
Camera : DVX 102B (Asian PAL Panasonic)
Mic : Rode NTG-1 (CH Right), Internal built-in Mic (CH Left)
ALC : ON

The image above shows NTG-1 on Right Channel, the bottom graph. and there are a lot of crackles. and I believe many of them are not over 0db and some even quite low.

I'm setting the Right Channel to be slightly higher than Left Channel. So left channel, which is the internal mic is fine. However the left channel will be worse .. if I were to set at the same level.

Never really compared with the time when I acquired this mic, but seems to me that there's no such problem before. until very recently . Shooting conditions has been almost the same.

Would like to get some clarifications here....
- Does microphones deteriorates if we were to shoot very loud scenes like loud screamings and firecrackers ?
- Should I shoot at a much lower level ?

Please kindly advise... Previously I did replace a new mic assembly for my DVX102 under Panasonic because I thought it was the mic's problem. Seems like the problem did go away.. but now .. it's back to square one with the same problem .

Please download the audio file to check for me ... :dankk2:

 

[Noiz2]

If this is happening to two different mics (NTG1 and internal) then it is almost certainly not the mic. Looking at your file, well it's kind of hard because it's an MP3 so you have tossed out a lot of information in the compression. But I can't hear the noise your talking about, I'm listening on a laptop so thats not very definitive but it's certainly not the snap crackle pop that your implying. 0dB pops should be very easy to hear. I do see what looks like A/D converter or digital processing errors. Some of your peaks have a reverse spike at the top. I have seen that when digital processing crapped out, math overload, and instead of just clipping like it should it ends up folding back on itself. That may be what your hearing but it's not very audible on what I'm listening to and on the MP3.

Or you could just have dirty connections or a dirty volume pot. Try cleaning and "exercising" everything. Exercising is moving controls and or connections in order to scrape off dirt and oxidization.

 

[JordanBlock]

Just giving the mp3 a quick listen on my laptop, and I can hear a faint crackle/fuzz in the right channel, though it almost sounds more like the PA was a little overdriven. Like Noiz said, if the problem is in both mics, its not the mic.