MKH 416 and how to Cable

R

ric8138

Active member
So I jumped on the $599 Sennheiser 416 deal at B&H (twice actually). With this sort of considerable upgrade to the shotgun boom end of my recording for indie film production it has come to my attention that I may not be using the best signal path for my boom setups. I have been running a 12' good quality XLR into a Shure FP22 that has an XLR & phone plug loop through and a headphone tap with volume control for my boom operator. This box runs on a standard 9V battery. The out then goes from the beltbox, down the line to my Zoom F4. Am I suffering any signal degradation going this path? I have recently seen PSC Duplex setups that appear to feed a signal back from the outs of the mixer to the boom op's headphones for him to monitor, leaving a straight path to the mixer from the mic. Is this the preferred arrangement?

Spec sheet on the FP 22
http://cdn.shure.com/user_guide/upload/854/us_pro_fp22_en_ug.pdf
 
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Perhaps I didn't explain the setup clearly. The Shure FP22 is not mixing, it hangs on the boom op's belt to give him a place to plug in his headphones to monitor his work. Theoretically, the F22 is a straight pass through of the mic signal to the F4, with a small bit of that signal amplified and fed to the boom op's head set. My question is whether this arrangement will result in any degradation of signal quality, although I assume it does siphon off a tiny bit of signal quantity, I hear no loss of signal at the recorder and Phantom power is passed through without issue.
 
This setup seems to work fine with my Senn MKH50, with 48V phantom, so I assume the 416 will function in a similar fashion.
 
The XLRs on the Shure are looped through and then the Shure internal circuit is a high impedance 'sniffer', and I'd doubt you could detect the small load it puts on the mic. A handy product, and I'd be happy using it exactly how you are - clipped to the boom op so they hear the mic, and passing on the output to the recording device.
 
ric8138 said:
Perhaps I didn't explain the setup clearly. The Shure FP22 is not mixing, it hangs on the boom op's belt to give him a place to plug in his headphones to monitor his work. Theoretically, the F22 is a straight pass through of the mic signal to the F4, with a small bit of that signal amplified and fed to the boom op's head set. My question is whether this arrangement will result in any degradation of signal quality, although I assume it does siphon off a tiny bit of signal quantity, I hear no loss of signal at the recorder and Phantom power is passed through without issue.
Click to expand...

Ah, should have looked at your link. I doubt that it makes much difference in the sound quality.
 
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