C100: Improving on camera sound

krick

krick

Well-known member
Hi there,

i have a c100 and so far i've been happily surprised by the quality of its audio preamp. But i would like to improve it as much as possible without going into external recorders. Good audio comes from so many parameters: mic, placement, preamp...

Right now i shoot my interviews with

- ntg3 on a boom directly in camera
- wireless sennheiser g3 directly in camera

to get better audio i am thinking of:

- upgrading the g3 original mic with a sanken cos11
- i was also thinking of using a sound devices mixer in front of the preamp of the camera, like a 302 or mixpre... I read somewhere that adding a SD mixer in front would not improve quality that much ( which would be really surprising to me...). The other good thing about having a mixer would be to have proper knobs, changing levels during a take is a pain on the c100.


any thoughts? What is your setup when it comes to audio?

thank you
 
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krick said:
to get better audio i am thinking of:

- upgrading the g3 original mic with a sanken cos11
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You could, but the Cos11 is a fairly bright mic designed to be hidden under clothing. The brightness compensates for the loss of highs being blocked by the clothes. When used like this, it's an excellent mic for sure.

If you are not going to hide the mic, it might not be your best choice. Might want to consider a Tram50 (big favorite with all my local news shows) or even an Oscar Sound Tech 802 instead. Do a search on the OST 801/802 mics. They get some excellent reviews, and they are a lot less expensive than the Sanken.

For any mic to be used with your wireless, get what kit is required to allow it to be used wired also. Because as we all eventually learn, a $20 wire always sounds better than the most expensive wireless.

krick said:
- i was also thinking of using a sound devices mixer in front of the preamp of the camera, like a 302 or mixpre... I read somewhere that adding a SD mixer in front would not improve quality that much ( which would be really surprising to me...). The other good thing about having a mixer would be to have proper knobs, changing levels during a take is a pain on the c100.
Click to expand...

In general, using a field mixer will give you a step up in audio quality. How much of a step up will of course depend on lots of things, from the sound quality you can get from your camera (for recording) to your mics, how you use them, your expectations, etc. Among the biggest reasons to use a field mixer are flexibility, ease of use, sound quality, and limters (very important). And of course, using another person to run it! But even for a OMB like me, it's easier to track levels during use.

What I'm using now is a MixPre-D feeding my camera. I use the mixer's tone to set the volume control on the camera (-20dBfs at the camera) then don't even look at the levels on camera -- just the mixer. Since the mixer is showing a VU scale, I try to put peaks just in the red (which is +10 dBVU). Set the limters to +18 dBVU, then you can't clip.

This was a major step up on audio quality for me, because my camera sucks at audio. Can't speak to the audio quality of the C100.
 
1 more vote for the SD Mixpre D. I don't think it will be a night and day difference sound wise, but you get incredible limiters and proper knobs.
 
Krick,

Curious what G3 wireless frequency band did you purchase?

Coming from the nearby East Bay, I'm contemplating stepping up to the G3 too (as soon as a current corporate project finishes up)

And I guess I'll wait to see your opinion of a using PreAmp with the c100 because that was also one on my goals!!!
 
I have the Canon XF100 and a Sound Devices MixPre (older model prior to the -D). The XF records uncompressed 16-bit audio with pretty low noise, and I assume the C100 is at least as good. I discovered that running my AT 4053b thru the mixer into camera provides no real improvement in sound over just straight in with XLR. As mentioned, it provides more features, but better, cleaner sound is not really one of them. The worse your audio recorder is, the more the benefit. I got an open box Tascam DR-05 at Guitar Center for $89. Recording thru the MixPre into the Tascam (24-bit .wav) DOES sound better than the camera.

Oh, and +1 on Oscar Sound Tech lavs. The 802 is very rich sounding for a lav (even intercuts well with my 4053b) and the 801 is brighter (I assume for under clothing or if you just like a brighter sound).
 
Yeah I think the mixpre would really be more for a usability boost rather than quality. Maybe a slight increase in lowering of the noise floor? My absolute favorite lav is the DPA 4061. If you have the cash, honestly skip the Sanken. The sanken has a TON of presence that comes off as very artificial to me.
 
I have both a Mixpre-D I use and somewhat agree with ddixon. Not a huge step up, but it gives me better control. Just bought a Tascam-60D, which will allow me to record simultaneous dual mono files, one 10db under the other, and record in WAV files. I'll be doing some tests this weekend, and will see what I get. Given what you asked about, in not adding an external recorder, I think I would get the Mixpre-d.
 
With my Sony camcorders, even using a Zoom H4n as a Mic Pre is a step up (mic to Zoom, Zoom Line-out to camera Line-in) but best results came from my Sound Devices Pix-220.

Switching to Canon C100, I was completely underwhelmed by the difference on my rather unscientific test - be warned, this is probably the most pointless recording to listen to...

https://soundcloud.com/mdmatv%2Fone-hen-one-c100-tlm103-into

Compare and contrast to this test with the FS100 and Pix-220:


In conclusion, I still prefer working with a sound guy and his 702 or SQN. When shooting with Sony gear I insisted on doing interviews with the Pix - audio from mics into Pix, then out of pix into camera with the Sony equipment - for backing up the recording if nothing else. Because the Canon can record onto two SDHC at the same time, and talking heads don't create the compression challenges that destroy AVHCD, I'm much more relaxed about plugging mics directly into the C100 thanks to the improved mic pre-amps.

I use COS-11s, but have been told that they're also not the loudest of lavs. I've used ECM-77s in the past and been perfectly happy with them. Interesting to hear that COS-11s are balanced for hidden placement and are therefore bright. To be candid, I preferred the ECM-77s for sounding thicker and meatier, but acquiesced to my peer group who claimed that the COS-11 was more neutral. If anything, they're prettier on camera! LOL
 
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This is great info, thank you guys! This is much appreciated.

Bruce, I heard a lot about oscar sound Tech. I am going to go with them to try.

Chiskon, I am not sure but I will check for you.

8string, would love to hear back from you after your test. Because if recording externally make a big difference I will go that route to get the best sound possible. It's just that certain jobs don't have the budget/people to handle external sound the way it should be, externally with a boom...

Matt, I read your posts about the pix220. I was very interested in it for its preamps and its video recording feature. How is the knob to control the audio levels? I heard that the fan of the machine can get loud too, is that correct. And lastly it is quite an heavy piece of gear, right? The lack of start/stop trigger with the C100 turned me off a little bit too. I can totally see how easy it would be to forget pressing record in a rush...
 
krick said:
Matt, I read your posts about the pix220... How is the knob to control the audio levels?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, there isn't one! LOL

I use it in 24/96 mode so I have plenty of bandwidth/dynamic range so I can do it all in post. Sorry.

krick said:
I heard that the fan of the machine can get loud too, is that correct?
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It's very, very quiet - never hand fan problems. Not ever.

krick said:
And lastly it is quite an heavy piece of gear, right? The lack of start/stop trigger with the C100 turned me off a little bit too. I can totally see how easy it would be to forget pressing record in a rush...
Click to expand...

Yes, it's a big hulking brute of a bit of kit. It survived toppling over on a 4' stand (lost the SSD caddy - worked, but bit of plastic fell off), it's survived lots and lots of torture in checked-in baggage. It now lives in a Pelicase, business class travel from now on. My FS100 rig has a special bracket to hold it up at about 45 degrees so I can put batteries on it, whilst still add a power supply and allow it to counterbalance a camera up front.

But quite frankly, I bought it for my FS100 - if I were starting again with a C100, I would buy a Ninja 2 in a heartbeat.
 
How much improvement would recording sit down interviews be with a quality mixer/recorder (like a Sound Devices 633 or a 702 recorder with the 302 mixer) vs recording directly into the 16 bit C100? And let's consider this question as a one man band instead of having an audio guy to operate the Sound Devices units.

The new Sound Devices 633 has my interest for it's small size.
 
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Well, I've done a few jobs with a soundie on the C100 - 'IHT' (you know who you are) tends to get a bigger thicker sound through a careful bit of tweaking with a compressor - knowing that we're doing conference video and I like that feel, but 'DWF' goes ultra clean because he's broadcast - results need a little lipstick to suit my needs, but it can be mixed many ways.

Their choices of microphone are probably more important, but IHT can make my CS1 and 416 sound better than I can.

Dude, I've had a soundie use a Zoom H4n as a Mic Pre-amp, though that was for an EX1-R and the Zoom sounded WAY better. I think you could probably find the same for the C100, but it's not the blindingly obvious one.

In my fat-fingered hands, the C100 does almost as good a job as my Pix220 which has the pre-amps of the 702, and so I don't need extras for my work. If I had a soundie, I'd take their feed rather than ask them to plug into me.

But then, I've had wonderful results using 24 bit audio over 16 - just for the dynamic range. But then there's quite a bit of work to do in post. But that's not recording in-camera.

So to answer your question, I'd want you to ask yourself how good a soundie are you? Most of us won't hear the difference. Which is absolutely opposite to my experiences with Sony camcorders where the answer would have been 'hell yes'.
 
Thanks everyone, I got a OST 802 and I am very happy with it. Dave from Oscar Sound tech was very responsive and helpful, price was very fair and the mic sounds nice and rich... Very good buy.

@Chiskon, I have the freq range: 626-668 MHz

@8string, would love to hear back from you after your test.

I think I am leaning towards a SD 302. I saw that Sound Devices just realized the 633 which would be great but 3K is a little steep for me on this one.

Now here is another question. Would having a 302 and recording separately on, let's say a simple recorder like the h4n or H6, could improve sound quality against 302 directly in the camera?

I would consider dual system if I can get better sound than on-camera preamp. I just don't want to make my life harder if it doesn't improve the audio that much... :)
 
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I'm in the same boat. The Sound Devices 633 seems ideal for what I want, but the Sound Devices 302 or MixPre-D is closer to what I can afford. I've read some forum topics on a cheap recorder vs expensive recorder to use with your expensive mixer and still am not clear on the main benefits that an expensive one has for simple one-man-band shoots. The best I could gather was that an expensive recorder has better audio fidelity as it converts the analog sound to digital, resulting in better sound, or something to that effect. I've read some people say the difference is big while others say it's small.


MattDavis said:
But then, I've had wonderful results using 24 bit audio over 16 - just for the dynamic range. But then there's quite a bit of work to do in post. But that's not recording in-camera.

So to answer your question, I'd want you to ask yourself how good a soundie are you? Most of us won't hear the difference. Which is absolutely opposite to my experiences with Sony camcorders where the answer would have been 'hell yes'.
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I'm not a good soundie, as in, I have difficulty hearing the differences between good and bad microphones, or, say, 16-bit audio or 24-bit audio. I think I'm getting better, though, as I listen to more tests online, but I've still got a ways to go in training my ears to recognize the differences more. However, even when I don't recognize the difference a piece of equipment makes, say, for example, a good lens vs a cheap lens, if, based on research, everyone says there will be x amount of improvement by using x piece of equipment, and I can afford that equipment and it can fit into my workflow, then I'll buy it even if I don't at the time notice the difference it makes. I feel that video production and filmmaking is often a subtle art form where the improvements in quality are often more subconscious than conscious. Using a more aesthetically pleasing lens that is of equal sharpness to a cheaper non-aesthetically pleasing lens may not be something the average viewer could put their finger on as to what makes the aesthetically pleasing one better, but if you start adding subtle improvements in sound and visuals to a production, it can often mean the difference between the end viewer liking the work or not.

When you say you have to do post on 24-bit audio whereas you don't have to do as much with 16-bit, what do you mean? Post audio is something I know little about; I generally just adjust the levels in post and leave it at that. Sometimes I'll try adding bass, or EQ, with mixed results, since I don't really know what I'm doing there.
 
Eric Coughlin said:
When you say you have to do post on 24-bit audio whereas you don't have to do as much with 16-bit, what do you mean? Post audio is something I know little about; I generally just adjust the levels in post and leave it at that. Sometimes I'll try adding bass, or EQ, with mixed results, since I don't really know what I'm doing there.
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Good call - let me clarify a little:

Two halves of the audio numbers: Sample rate and bit depth. Higer sample rate, more fidelity. Rough rule of thumb is that the sample rate should be double the frequency of your highest samples, so if we're into recording 20Hz to 20KHz (the latter number being beyond the normal adult hearing range any way), you need at least 40 KHz. A Compact Disc recording is sampled at 44.1KHz. 48 KHz is very good, but you may hear 96 KHz bandied about, which is less about the top end frequencies, and more about the granularity of samples in the audible range (especially when doing nuanced fettling in the music side of things). I'm happy with 48KHz.

But the second number - the bit depth - is interesting. We talk of dynamic range in pictures, but of course it applies to audio too. Audio engineers - please go get a cup of coffee whilst I relate the 'bedtime story' version of high bit depth! Essentially, a higher bit depth gives us the ability to have a wider dynamic range - lower lows, higher highs - before we hit the noise floor. So you can record with things waggling around -30dB on a 24 bit recording and lift things up level-wise, whereas it might be -18dB (or even -12dB) on a 16 bit recording. It's roughly analogous to making a 10 bit video image vs an 8 bit video image - the more bits, the more you can bash the levels around.

So, therefore, if I am unable to 'ride the levels' whilst recording due to lack of sound guy, I can record at 24 bits and do the level control in post. You can do this with 16 bit recordings if they're roughly the same level, but I've had situations where an impromptu interview with a couple of guys with a Zoom H4n blow up from a 5 minute take to a 45 minute monster interview, with these guys not really knowing where to put the Zoom's mic for optimum level. We couldn't interrupt as we had no idea of what was going on, and the Producer was all for letting it roll. Or there's the 'four guys sharing a reporter mic' situation - one holds it at chest level, one guy swings it around like a pointer, the other guy virtually swallows it as if it were an SM50, and you're expected to capture something from this train wreck. On a 16 bit audio, something will probably blow, from a 24 bit recording, with lower levels set, decent mic-pres, you're going to be able to manipulate levels quite a bit.

As for the post work on DWF's recordings, it's just a bit of EQ and multiband compression to make up for the rather clinical sound of the Sanken COS-11 recorded via his 702, no compression, no nothing on his recordings. IHT does that at his end so, by and large, I'm just waggling the levels around - but what sounds good on a good monitoring sound setup could do with a little bit of help if you've got web/ppt playback on laptops in mind. So DWF's recording is easier to repurpose in that regard.
 
Krick,

I have an original MixPre that I used as a preamp to bypass the lower quality preamp of the HVX200 that I was using at the time I was doing a lot of corporate interviews. Having the ability to drive the sound levels and monitor from the MixPre was a definite advantage for me. I believe the quality of the SD preamp becomes more substantial when you have to boost a weaker signal. That being said, the factors of mic placement will have a much more noticeable impact on your sound quality. I used to use the MixPre with an AKG Blue Line mic and a Zoom H4 to record dialog at times because using the MixPre to drive levels is nice and intuitive.

I haven't done corporate video for a long time and have gravitated toward doing visual landscape cinematography. If you are interested, I wouldn't mind selling you the MixPre and/or the Zoom H4 at a decent price.

John
 
Hi John,

Thank you for your message. I am still trying to figure if I will be going the mixpre-D route or go with a used 302...

If I go with the mixpre-d, I will want the improved monitoring, usb port and the cam mount. The only thing that is keeping a little undecided is the battery life on the mixpre seems very short when running on 2 AA batteries.

Thoughts around mixpre-D vs 302?
 
Not sure about the MixPre-D but the battery life on the original MixPre is fairly good. 2 AA batteries would last most of a full day of straight use with 1 condenser mic. Or in typical use for me, 2 or 3 days of several hour shoots.
 
I have a mixpre D and the battery life is very good. Difficult to say how much time it can run. I use recheargable batteries and I'm quite happy with the battery life. Of course, I shut it down whenever possible during a shoot.
 
So I got a mixpre-d. Love the form factor, it is a cute very well made little mixer. What was a surprise and I love is that I can send the sound to my C100 and record on my iphone via usb. How cool is that to record 24bit/96k at the same time?
 
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