Audio issues on one channel/input affects the other?

T

The Irish TRex

Well-known member
Hi!

One thing that has always puzzled me is that when I have a couple mics hooked up to my HMC150, one on each XLR input, if one has really bad distortion or clipping (say from lack of signal or audio connection issues where it crackles or pops suddenly or even if it simply peaks from a long loud noise) it affects the other channel. What it does to the other channel is drop the volume when those clippings or audio issues occur. You don't hear the pops or crackles on the 2nd channel, but the volume sort of falls out for the brief time period where the audio on the first channel has the issue and if the issue snaps, crackles and pops for several seconds, well then channel one's volume will sort of dip and then go back to normal over and over really quick until the snap, crackle, pop is over. Why is that? How does one channels/inputs issues affect the other? Does this happen on all cameras? Please feel free to explain in detail whats going on here. Thanks!
 
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I'm guessing here, but I'd say it's the limiter. The limiter affects both channels equally, IIRC, on the HMC150. Some cameras have the ability to have the limiter applied to the audio channels individually, but on the lower-cost AVCCAMS I think the limiter is applied equally, so when either channel overloads, volume to both channels gets temporarily reduced. You can avoid that by turning ALC to off, but then you won't get the limiter's protection either, so you have to decide which tradeoff is most important.
 
Much appreciated. Didn't really know what the ALC was or that it's even enabled on my camera. I'll see if I can test that out and see if it's "applied equally" as you guessed. Thank you Barry for your response. I'm curious if most other cameras that now shoot uncompressed audio would fare better or not have this issue. Never really heard of others mentioning it and it seems a mystery to you too but I can't imagine I'm the only one who's experienced it.
 
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