HMC150 Internal microphone goes bad.....

A

Admir

Well-known member
Hello!

I was on a wedding filming a performance when all of a sudden the audio goes from good to bad, you can hear the transition here: https://youtu.be/l0cTjZqc4Tw
Worth mentioning is that I was filming closely to huge drums for a good while, some times the audio went over the red point on the meters but mostly I had it almost dialed down all the way. All audio from this shoot after this point sounds like in the clip.

Now, when I got home and discovered this I did tests with the camera and everything works fine all of a sudden. As you may understand all of a sudden I got some trust issues with my cameras internal mic.
Do you guys have any clue what might have happened, could the drums have damaged something in the mic, and how should I test it to find out if this was some type of one time thing or if this is something that needs to be fixed.

Any help is really appreciated!
 
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I've only heard those kind of sounds when a compression error has occurred. Haven't had it happen w/my HMC150, but it used to happen w/my miniDV cameras. Back then you could usually blame it on something getting on the record heads and/or the tape. The error went away after a stop/start? Hopefully you had some sort of audio capture going on elsewhere.
 
voxwerx said:
I've only heard those kind of sounds when a compression error has occurred. Haven't had it happen w/my HMC150, but it used to happen w/my miniDV cameras. Back then you could usually blame it on something getting on the record heads and/or the tape. The error went away after a stop/start? Hopefully you had some sort of audio capture going on elsewhere.
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Thats interesting and strange, since this camera uses a solid state media. Strange thing is that it didn't go away for the rest of the shoot, it was at the end that this happened thank God so very little got damaged. The day after I tested the camera and everything works now as it should, I was sure that it happened due to really loud drums next to the camera but it all works now.
 
I could be wrong about this, but to my ears the distortion sounds more like something electronic interference or digital processing related rather than physical damage to the microphone.

There are few sound sources in the real world loud enough to actually do damage to a microphone. And if you found one (a few feet from a jet or rocket taking off, for example), you wouldn't be able to stand being next to it without ear protection. People record loud drums and even gunshots all the time. They may distort, but don't leave any lasting effects on the equipment. You also wouldn't expect a physically damaged mic to recover on its own.

One possibility is that it could have been interference from a nearby strong RF source.

- Greg
 
Greg Smith said:
I could be wrong about this, but to my ears the distortion sounds more like something electronic interference or digital processing related rather than physical damage to the microphone.

There are few sound sources in the real world loud enough to actually do damage to a microphone. And if you found one (a few feet from a jet or rocket taking off, for example), you wouldn't be able to stand being next to it without ear protection. People record loud drums and even gunshots all the time. They may distort, but don't leave any lasting effects on the equipment. You also wouldn't expect a physically damaged mic to recover on its own.

One possibility is that it could have been interference from a nearby strong RF source.

- Greg
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Interesting! I was standing next to a DJ with speakers, and he gave the girl singing a wireless microphone. Strange thing is that all the sound after this happened was this way, the entire evening. But the day after it was all fine once I started testing at home after discovering it.
 
firehawk said:
Yeah that sounds more like interference to me
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But what type of interference starts all of a sudden and continues through the rest of the evening? I would think that it would come and go but this just came out of nowhere and continued until I was done. What could the DJ have done to create this?
 
Did you turn the camera off at any time after the problem started but before you wrapped up shooting that day? If so, did the sound issue return?

I'm wondering if some bit got flipped in the internal processing of the camera that made it misbehave until it was reset. Not that this is a good thing, since it could happen again. Card issues are also a possibility, but I would kind of expect the video to be affected as well as the audio in that case.

Even if it's external interference, it might not have been the DJ that was responsible. Could have been somebody's cell phone in the venue, or a radio tower outside.

- Greg
 
Greg Smith said:
Did you turn the camera off at any time after the problem started but before you wrapped up shooting that day? If so, did the sound issue return?

I'm wondering if some bit got flipped in the internal processing of the camera that made it misbehave until it was reset. Not that this is a good thing, since it could happen again. Card issues are also a possibility, but I would kind of expect the video to be affected as well as the audio in that case.

Even if it's external interference, it might not have been the DJ that was responsible. Could have been somebody's cell phone in the venue, or a radio tower outside.

- Greg
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Yeah the camera was turned on and off several times between takes. The only thing I can imagine that could have happened regarding the SD card would be that I forgot to format the card from an older project. But since I allready had shot about 20 clips of the new project, I had to delete about 300 clips by hand internally between takes in order to save the other clips I managed to record that day. Not that I see how that could have affected anything but you never know.
 
tompa said:
I had same problem 2 years before!!! Only one time, never before, never after!!!
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?307364-Strange-audio-problem
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Hvala Tompa!

Well I'm not the only one then, and I hope that it wont happen again. I get really upset just thinking about what would happen if this happened during a wedding ceremony. That would have been devastating. I have recorded over 2 hrs of footage wiht loud sounds from the TV and it is all fine as usual. But man does it give me trust issues with my beloved workhorse.
 
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