strange digital distortion sound heard with handling noise

tikigod19

Well-known member
I noticed yesterday when playing around with my sennheiser ME66 and HMC151 that when I for example lifted the camera and tripod off of the ground and then put it back down (without being super careful) I had an audio peak on the screen (up into the red) and heard a banging noise. All perfectly normal. However I also heard a strange digital sounding noise similar to what you would hear when watching back a corrupted video that pixelates...

1) does this make any sense to anyone?
2) is it normal

thanks!
 
If you peak into the red on any digital audio recording device (which the HMC is), the distortion you get will be digital clipping - which is a different sounding animal than analog and very ugly. Most likely you really pushed it into the red.

If you're concerned, set up a mic, record some footage and test how the audio is doing at normal and high levels; turn your inputs down to 20% or so and give the camera as much of a shake as it would get from an active handheld shot and see if anything's "loose" in the audio chain. You should be able to tell if it's functioning properly.
 
thanks very much Michael, I'm sure it was just the digital clipping, perhaps I was not used to the difference in sound between this and analogue, but yes its most certainly an ugly noise
 
After your tests... If you are more prone to make handeling noise you may want to go with a good mic shock mount that would mount to your top shoe.
 
yeah I have a decent syspension mount. The noise only occurs literally when I plant the tripod legs firmly on the ground after carrying it around so presumably its never going to occur during a piece of video that i intend on keeping
 
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