Same Lapel mic sound different on Canon 5d Mark III & Xh a1s

[payal_choksi]

Hi all,

i have a very basic wired lapel mic which i use for interview. I use to get nice quality when i was using it with my canon xh-a1s camcorder. The same lapel mic when used with 5d mark III sounds like a cheap microphone.

One more thing i wanted to ask was my Canon xh-a1s has nice audio controls including attenuation, which really made this lapel mic sound good. I was able to get a very clear and rich sound even in noisy environments. Is there any recording device out there that allows attenuation of external microphone? Does tascam dr-40 or zoom or any other recording unit have this facility of attenuation?

kindly advice,

regards,

 

[Michael Carter]

"at·ten·u·ate verb\ə-ˈten-yə-ˌwāt, -yü-ˌāt\: to make (something) weaker or less in amount, effect, or force"

For starters, the audio section is the best place for audio questions...

I assume you mean a level control (or a "volume knob" or "input control"). Yes, any decent recorder will have a means of controlling the input signal.

The Tascam DR-60D is very popular these days as an audio recorder. It also works well as a preamp if your camera can record decent audio. It has a level knob for each XLR channel, a three-level gain switch per channel, and a very decent sounding (IE, you can't hear it working) limiter that can be switched on or off. It also has a stereo mini jack in to record 2 more tracks from a mixer or line level device and will record backup tracks at 6DB lower than your main tracks as a safety. It shipped with a free copy of PluralEyes (don't know if that's still the deal but at $199 for the recorder and the software, it was a steal).

Most DSLRs have pretty lame audio circuitry - there's just not much room to engineer and isolate a quality circuit, much less to have balanced inputs. Using a separate recorder is really your best bet to get decent sound.

If your Canon video camera had manual audio controls and XLR inputs, it was designed to capture sound at a much better level than your DSLR. You will really need a separate audio solution if you want to get that same quality with a DSLR.

 

[payal_choksi]

What i mean by attenuation was, when i turn it on, on canon xh a1s video camera, the lapel microphone's sensitivity to record would be reduced and it would not record the ambient sound or background noise. When attenuation was turned off, the lapel's sensitivity would become very high and it would record distant sounds as well. The lapel's range would increase drastically.