Better Signal to Noise Ratio on a Mixer?

[Zblock]

A guy on my filmmaking team has some really good audio gear but he's never properly learned how to use it.

I've tried to learn as much about every aspect of filmmaking as possible but sound is my white whale.

We're using a Wednt 5 Channel Mixer with pigtails directly to the camera and a Rode NTG-3 mic with zepplin and dead cat.

I usually have an unacceptable amount of noise in my recordings. I've tried listening on the headphones and either raising or lowering my levels on both the camera and the mixer to get the sweetest sound. I think that the level of the sound is most important so as to have good volume but no matter what I tune I still end up with the noise.

Do you guys have any tips for getting a better signal to noise ratio? Maybe someone who has worked with the Wednt could point me in the right direction. It doesn't seem like it should be any more complicated than what I've tried but I'm still left with noisy audio and have to resort to filtering out noise and fuzz.

 

[Chadfish]

Turn up the mixer and turn down the camera level. If your camera has a "trim" level you may need to adjust that. Usually the audio levels on a camera get noisy beyond 50%.

 

[Petrus]

All decent mixers have a 0dBVU 1 kHz calibration level signal generator. Turn that on and set the levels on the camera so that the meters show -20 dBFS. After that do not touch the dials on the camera.

If the mixer does not have the 1 kHz tone feature, play pink noise from stereo system and record that with the mixer/camera so that the level is 0 dBVU on mixer, set the camera as above.

When doing the actual recording the meters on the mixer should hit + 14, even +17 in peaks, which means the camera levels are -6 and -3 dBFS resp.

There are cameras like Canon XH-A1 which has clean line in standard level when the dials are fully open. This has been very hard for some to accept. I use SD302 in standard line out configuration and I just open the dials all the way: over 92 dB S/N ratio and never clipping.

 

[Chadfish]

Oh yeah, I forgot. Are your inputs on the camera set to "Mic" or "Line"? They should be at line if the mixer puts out a line level signal. That will cut a lot of noise.

 

[Allan Black]

Hi Zblock .. adding to what the others have advised .. you should connect from the Wendt to your HVX with XLR > XLR cables not pigtails .. on 'line in' as Chadfish says.

If the Wendt mixer has PPM meters (not VU) then recording voices could cause you to record at too low an overall level .. Peak Program Meters have bigger excursions than VUs, as a result new folk tend to keep their average level down to avoid running into distortion. Later when you see the same track on VU meters it reads much lower in level than you thought.

And recording with the headphones too loud could do the same. Use fresh batteries and learn to use the Wendt mic limiters to reduce any loud speech peaks allowing you to keep the overall level up. Put the 10Hz filters in for voice recording.

How's your boom op? Could be the NTG-3 be better positioned, at the correct angle about 12" from the actors mouth is best. Maybe rethink some wide shots. Also the Wendt set to 48V not 12T .. check all that out.

Cheers.