ME66 / K6 Distortion problem

[Moseph]

I was on a shoot last weekend and I ran into an issue that I've never had before. The microphone itself (ME66 / K6) was clipping, regardless of the levels coming into the camera (XH A1). The levels on the camera were well below the red and it didn't sound so bad in the headphones, probably because I was hearing too much of the sound in real life.

I looked into it a little bit and found that running it in phantom power helps a lot, which I did happen to be doing. The power switch on the K6 was in the off position the whole time. I was only shooting masters so the microphone was a good 3-4 feet away from the talents. They were yelling at each other at some moments, but at others they were just talking rather loudly and the audio still clipped. I know it has a max SPL of 125dB, maybe the input was simply exceeding that level? I don't have a whole lot of experience yet but to me it seems a bit unlikely that voices at 3-4 feet would do that. Is there any other reason this could be happening?

Now I run into the issue of looking for the moments that have the cleanest audio instead of the best performance, obviously I can't have that. Thanks in advance.

 

[John Willett]

I was on a shoot last weekend and I ran into an issue that I've never had before. The microphone itself (ME66 / K6) was clipping, regardless of the levels coming into the camera (XH A1). The levels on the camera were well below the red and it didn't sound so bad in the headphones, probably because I was hearing too much of the sound in real life.

I looked into it a little bit and found that running it in phantom power helps a lot, which I did happen to be doing. The power switch on the K6 was in the off position the whole time. I was only shooting masters so the microphone was a good 3-4 feet away from the talents. They were yelling at each other at some moments, but at others they were just talking rather loudly and the audio still clipped. I know it has a max SPL of 125dB, maybe the input was simply exceeding that level? I don't have a whole lot of experience yet but to me it seems a bit unlikely that voices at 3-4 feet would do that. Is there any other reason this could be happening?

Now I run into the issue of looking for the moments that have the cleanest audio instead of the best performance, obviously I can't have that. Thanks in advance.

It's very unlikely the mic. is clipping and is most likely the camera.

Many cameras have the level control after the first amplification stage - so the first stage could be clipping before it gets to the level control.

The cure is to put a -10dB in-line attenuator in the mic. cable to drop the level before it gets to the camera.

This cures it for most people.

 

[Moseph]

What about the built in attenuators on the camera? The switches for those are directly next to the XLR inputs, I'd think that they would limit the incoming signal before it gets to the amps. Is that generally the case?

 

[John Willett]

What about the built in attenuators on the camera? The switches for those are directly next to the XLR inputs, I'd think that they would limit the incoming signal before it gets to the amps. Is that generally the case?

No idea - you need to look at the camera's block diagram to see where they are.

Don't assume - check it out.

It is extremely rare for the K6 series itself to distort.