Mixer - Do I really need one? Sound Devices MixPre

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daviddax20

New member
Hello,

I'm new to location sound. I purchased a Sound Devices MixPre. I thought this would improve sound quality instead of relying on the gains on my Canon XH-A1 gains. The gain on the camera is a bit noisy but not bad. From what I heard, the Sound Devices work well, have higher quality mic pres. But, I'm not sure if there really is a noticeable difference. I select the "line level" on the camera - but I still have to turn the gain nobs on the camera up to get a level. Weird. I thought I could just keep them down and raise the gain on the MixPre. Not so. Anyway, I'm not sure if I really notice a difference in sound quality. Maybe my ears are not developed yet.

So my question is: do I need the Sound Devices MixPre? What is the purpose of the mixpre? Only to monitor the levels on the LED indicators? Use as external headphone amp? (which is useless since I need to monitor from the camera to get the true recording)????? Should it improve my recordings? For $700 - what am I really getting?

Anyone want to shed some light? Otherwise, I may return the unit and spend $700 on somethine else.

Thanks.
 
Of course you need to turn up the gain on the camera somwhat - all the way off means there's no signal. Ideally the with 0VU tone from the mixer the gain controls should be about midscale when the cameras audio level is -20dBFS on its meters. But with the external mixer you get superior, low noise preamps, better gain control, limiters to control overs, highpass filters to reduce handling noise.
 
Monitoring from the camera doesn't get you the "true recording". Your monitoring after the cameras input section so you can hear if your blowing that away but your not monitoring off tape so your not hearing what you "recorded" until you play it back.
The camera's level controls are for both mic in and line in so of course you need to have them up. What your bypassing is the camera's mic pre, which is usually noisy. Also the MixPre (or other mixer) has limiters and roll off settings that are very useful and usually missing or useless on the camera. You get very good mic pres, slate mic (I find that useful you might not).

What your getting is the possibility of better sound. It still takes knowing what your doing. You still need to mic properly and gain stage correctly. And you also need to read the manuals. I toss that in because your primary question is I am sure answered in the camera's manual.
 
Do you need external lights to shoot video/film?

You can do without external lighting, you can also do without a mixer.

How it looks/sounds in the end will vary greatly depending on the proper use of these tools.

But central to both is not just having them but knowing how to use them properly.

For that I would suggest searching the forums/internet and reading Jay Rose's book http://www.dplay.com/book/index.html

Appearently their is a new edition out :thumbsup:

Cheers
 
I think that the Jay Rose books saved my life.

The best free help I got was here for sure, but I learned about Jay's books from here too. His books gave me a great foundation so that I knew what to come back here and ask for.

For a while I answered almost every question here with a link to Jay's books, but people got annoyed so I stopped. Too bad really, people want custom answers to standard questions and they don't want to pay $35. I guess they spent all of their money on their camera...lol
 
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