Super no-budget questions about wired lav mics and the H4n...

T

tinpanalley

Active member
I'm prepping for an extremely low budget docu-style shoot (book release promo videos) and getting myself more familiar by doing lots of research on what I can get out there in my price range for sound. I've never done this style of shooting before but I've shot features and shorts for some time from miniDV to 16mm. The difference here is that it's the first time I'm shooting with my Canon 7D something that's this involved and by myself. I'm always incredibly no-budget so the mechanics of this shoot don't scare me at all, but I do need some recommendations and answers.

My questions...
1. ATR3350 seems to be the default wired lav choice but gets lots of bad publicity. After some research, what I'm not thrilled about is the lack of a 'power remaining' indicator light and the distortion I've read a lot about as the battery starts to drain down to empty. Is there really no other under-$100 wired lav that is a bit of an upgrade from this?
2. Are there any similar price range, wired XLR lavs out there? $30-$50 would be amazing. Sorry if that's a dumb question, I am searching, just want to see if there are mics I havent come across.
3. For the benefit of phantom power, could battery powered mics be plugged into XLR inputs via an adapter to remove the dependency on batteries? Or is the circuitry simply not wired that way?
4. Is a worthwhile, decent quality sound mountable (on my 7D) shotgun mic available or even worth bothering with?
5. I think I'm set on buying the H4n, but I keep coming across conflicting arguments about the boot up times and SD cards not being noticed and so the TASCAM DR-40 starts looking more attractive. Am I right that the H4n nevertheless is the better choice here?
6. If I wanted to get two ATR3350's or similar lavs into an H4n, each on separate mono channels, would that be possible? I hear varying opinions online.
7. What am I looking for in a SD card for the H4n? Is there a class that works best?

The idea is that we shoot these as quickly and cleanly as possible to get a bunch of 3 minute videos on different topics. I want to buy some gear which will also serve for future projects including a feature I'm shooting in the near future. Different project with an actual small crew but I'd like the stuff to be useful there as well, if possible and not junk. All I ever do is dialogue stuff so that's all this gear will be needed for. So, no special effects, CGI, complicated sound setups, etc.

Sorry for the long post and thank you sincerely to anyone that can help me get on the right track here.
 
Wow!

DSLR shooter, shooting solo, no to low budget; this is not a recipe for good sound.

First of all, read the stickies at the beginning of this section. And then, read them again.

1. For a cheap lav, many here sing praise of Oscar Sound. But the bigger question is how are you going to control, power, and monitor any audio input?

2. XLR mics are usually phantom powered. The H4n can supply phantom power, but not very well due to weak preamps.

3. Yes there are battery powered XLR mics like the AT-897 shotgun which could be adapted to a 1/8" input, but again, how are you going to control and monitor? You might look at a Rode video mic pro or similar which is self powered and more or less made for dslr use.

4. Capturing audio from a mic mounted on your cam will suck in multiple ways including you won't be close enough and you'll get lots of handling noise.

5. In the lower priced audio recorders for video, Zoom products are pretty unloved. IMHO Tascam builds better products in the lower price range. Others will disagree.

6. Most recorders will do mono tracks, not sure about the H4n.

7. SD card requirements for audio are pretty low. Usually a class 4 card will do. Check the BH website for your product, look under the specifications tab.


Considering where you are with your questions, my best recommendation is to get some serious study in on recording audio for video. It would be a shame to go out and spend some time capturing decent visuals and have unusable audio. Cheap equipment with skill can work, but cheap equipment and a low skill level will be a disaster. Expensive equipment with a low skill level will be a disaster.

Welcome to DVX User.

Grant
 
Thanks for the welcome, thanks for taking the time to reply. I feel like I miscommunicated one or two of my questions or perhaps didn't ask them properly and I feel like you made assumptions about my abilities that left me looking more naive than I am but I suppose that's neither here nor there nor does it address my questions but I felt the need to say it. Thanks again.
 
1) The ATR3550 is a very low-budget product. You get what you pay for. Its chief defect is below-average sound quality, mainly poor signal-to-noise ratio (mainly self-noise). But with those hundreds of frenzied book-lovers and fans crowding around the author at the bookshop, that may not be a problem. OTOH, if you are talking about sit-down interviews in a quiet corner of a quiet library, you will hear that signal-to-noise problem. Of course the mechanical construction isn't quite as good as the more expensive competition, so you must be more careful with it, or else buy a spare to keep in the kit.
I never saw any indicator light on any of the 3550 units I own or have seen. And perhaps because of that, the battery life has never appeared to be a problem, IME. Those little condenser capsules take very low power, but then those little hearing-aid battery cells don't have much capacity either. The solution to that is simply to buy batteries by the hang-tag card that has 10 or 12 cells in the blister-pack. They aren't that expensive if you shop carefully.
2) The cheapest XLR lav mics I know of is probably http://www.naiant.com/naiant/microphones.html The nice thing about Naiant is that it is a small business with direct access to the owner (Jon O'Neil) and every order is custom made for exactly what you need.
3) Yes, there are adapters that convert XLR phantom power (48V) down to the very low voltage that tiny electret condenser microphone capsules use. Again, Naiant is a source of inexpensive XLR to "plug-in power" converters.
4) A microphone mounted ON TOP of your camera (ANY microphone) is typically too far away to get decent audio pickup, unless you are doing "in your face" interviews with the camera so close, it makes the subject nervous.
5) I don't think there is a really significant different between the H4n and the DR-40. However, this is only an impression from scores of people coming through these forums with reports, questions, and issues. I have not personally used either gadget.
6) Yes, you need a special "Y-cable" to feed the two separate 3.5mm jacks into a stereo (TRS) 3.5mm plug. Again, I believe that Naiant is a source for these (and there are commercial versions from Hosa, et.al.) There are also adapter gadgets like BeachTek MCC-2 http://www.beachtek.com/products/hdslr/mcc-2-3/
7) I buy the Class-10 cards at Costco. They work for both video and audio.

Much depends on your shooting style and budget and situations and experience. You can successfully cut corners if you know what you are doing. And remember: "Fast / Cheap / Good: select only two."

Note that some audio folk are disturbed with people who come through here with $1000s worth of camera, lens, lighting, etc. gear, and then want to "cheap-out" the audio but still achieve professional results. :-/
 
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Not sure about the 7D, but on the T2i a Rode Videomic Pro works very well for interviews if you use magic lantern to kill the gain completely and use the 20db boost on the mic. Way better than I've heard from a cheap lav and recorder. No comparison in how quiet the recoding is. Bring along a mic stand to hold the mic near your subject.
 
tinpanalley said:
Thanks for the welcome, thanks for taking the time to reply. I feel like I miscommunicated one or two of my questions or perhaps didn't ask them properly and I feel like you made assumptions about my abilities that left me looking more naive than I am but I suppose that's neither here nor there nor does it address my questions but I felt the need to say it. Thanks again.
Click to expand...

TinPan,

I responded to your questions as they were asked and opined a few other suggestions. With regard to your naivety or lack thereof, your questions indicated a need for some pretty basic understanding of equipment and technique, and that is no sin at all. It is scary if you don't know how much you don't know. If you hang around here and ask a lot of questions, you'll find out soon enough where you are. That is how it worked for me. I'm not picking at you, but often folks arrive here with unrealistic expectations about what can be done with no budget, no help, and not much for experience. The audio section of DVXuser is a bit more rough and tumble than the other sections, depending on your skin thickness, that can be good (I hope) or not.

Keep asking!

Grant
 
I'd be thrilled to bits if one day on a forum somewhere, people would stop answering new members with the expectation that they'll be like other clueless people they've met in the past and would instead just answer the questions being asked or simply left it alone and kept on browsing another thread. I'm sorry ggrantly but that's how I see it. Answer the questions asked or walk away. I've never understood that desire to say, "Well, I'll answer your questions but first, here's why you're already wrong." Nobody every taught anyone ANYthing with that strategy. You have no clue from one post what I do or don't know about things without at least asking for clarification first.

My questions again... broken down to the bare bones.
1. Is there another under-$100 wired lav that is an improvement on something like the ATR3350 worth knowing about?
YES, this one. NO, until you get above 200 they're all the same.
2. Are there any wired XLR lavs out there under 100?
YES, this one. NO, not worth your time.
3. CAN battery powered mics like the ATR3350 be plugged into XLR inputs via an adapter to remove their dependency on batteries? Or is the circuitry simply not wired that way?
YES, go ahead. NO, and for more, read this...
4. Is a worthwhile mountable (on my 7D) shotgun mic available or even worth bothering with?
YES, this one. NO, not worthwhile if you want to do what you're doing.
5. I think I'm set on buying the H4n, but it seems to have problems and many say the TASCAM DR-40 is better. Is this simply a matter of opinion?
I like it. I don't like it. I like this one more.
6. Can I plug in two ATR3350 into an H4n and record each on separate mono channels?
YES, like this. NO, only one.
7. Is there an SD card that works best in a digital recorder.
YES, these kinds. NO, doesn't matter.

I don't see how any of those questions require anything more than yes, or no, or quick opinion. Anything beyond that is someone interpreting the between the lines of what I'm asking and more interested in showing what they know. How am I going to X, Y, or Z is none of your concern, quite frankly. Thanks again, because your lengthy response took time. And I will go back and read more here and elsewhere. But I'll just ask that you think more about what people are asking next time and not what you think they should know. That's actually contrary to the information you think you're providing.
 
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Suggest you re-read my responses, especially the first one.

Also suggest that you are not the response police, we have those here and they are called moderators. If you think I'm giving you bad info or responses, or wasting time to be snarky to you, I suggest you review my history and get a better idea of my inputs to the community over a period of years. I have learned much here and helped others.

Hope you get where you want to be

Grant out.
 
Regarding #3, I tried plugging my ATR3550s into my DR-40 using several types of XLR adapters and it didn't go well. If you really want to do this let me know and I'll dig up the old thread as I forget this exact issues. But I would just say don't.
 
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Wow!

DSLR shooter, shooting solo, no to low budget; this is not a recipe for good sound.

First of all, read the stickies at the beginning of this section. And then, read them again.

1. For a cheap lav, many here sing praise of Oscar Sound. But the bigger question is how are you going to control, power, and monitor any audio input?

2. XLR mics are usually phantom powered. The H4n can supply phantom power, but not very well due to weak preamps.

3. Yes there are battery powered XLR mics like the AT-897 shotgun which could be adapted to a 1/8" input, but again, how are you going to control and monitor? You might look at a Rode video mic pro or similar which is self powered and more or less made for dslr use.

4. Capturing audio from a mic mounted on your cam will suck in multiple ways including you won't be close enough and you'll get lots of handling noise.

5. In the lower priced audio recorders for video, Zoom products are pretty unloved. IMHO Tascam builds better products in the lower price range. Others will disagree.

6. Most recorders will do mono tracks, not sure about the H4n.

7. SD card requirements for audio are pretty low. Usually a class 4 card will do. Check the BH website for your product, look under the specifications tab.


Considering where you are with your questions, my best recommendation is to get some serious study in on recording audio for video. It would be a shame to go out and spend some time capturing decent visuals and have unusable audio. Cheap equipment with skill can work, but cheap equipment and a low skill level will be a disaster. Expensive equipment with a low skill level will be a disaster.

Welcome to DVX User.
 
Hi GrahamH, these are 3350s I'm looking at. That's what you're referring to though, right? In any event, I only recently confirmed that the DR-40 doesn't work with unbalanced microphones. They actually come right out and disuade people from doing so on their FAQ page. The H4n doesn't seem to have that problem as confirmed by their site and by others online.

I have a firm grasp thanks to the help from everyone here on what shotguns would be like in this scenario, what adapters are out there, but one of the things I'm not getting yet is whether I can get two 3350s into the H4n simultaneously and monitor their levels separately for something I want to try to do. I figure if they go in through a splitter into the 1/8" jack, they'll be ONE source in the H4n. And I'm not sure whether they can each be fed into XLR-minijack adapters and then plugged into the two XLR jacks on the H4n. I don't even care if they still have to run off their LR44s but being able to get them both in via XLR adapters would be great for getting both on separate channels.
 
tinpanalley said:
Hi GrahamH, these are 3350s I'm looking at. That's what you're referring to though, right? In any event, I only recently confirmed that the DR-40 doesn't work with unbalanced microphones. They actually come right out and disuade people from doing so on their FAQ page. The H4n doesn't seem to have that problem as confirmed by their site and by others online.

I have a firm grasp thanks to the help from everyone here on what shotguns would be like in this scenario, what adapters are out there, but one of the things I'm not getting yet is whether I can get two 3350s into the H4n simultaneously and monitor their levels separately for something I want to try to do. I figure if they go in through a splitter into the 1/8" jack, they'll be ONE source in the H4n. And I'm not sure whether they can each be fed into XLR-minijack adapters and then plugged into the two XLR jacks on the H4n. I don't even care if they still have to run off their LR44s but being able to get them both in via XLR adapters would be great for getting both on separate channels.
Click to expand...

To send two 3350s to a 1/8 stereo input you'll need a special 'Y' cable and I'm not aware of any properly wired available off-the-shelf so you'll probably have to wire it up DIY. The 3350 outputs to a TRS plug wired for dual-mono, ie, the tip andd ring are wired together so the same signal appears on both. To send two of them to a stereo input with one on each channel you need two 1/8 TRS female in-line jacks wired to a 1/8 TRS plug. One of the female tips goes to the male tip to put the mic plugged in there onto recorder's the left channel. The other jack's tip goes to the plug's ring to put the mic plugged into it onto the right channel. The jack's rings are left unconnected or are shorted to the tip.

To send the 3350's into the XLR inputs on the recorder a pair of Rode VXLR adapters would do the trick. The VXLR is wired to take a mic outputting on a 1/8 TRS dual mono into an XLR - it was originally intended to allow for a Rode Videomic to be used with an XLR input but it will work with any mic similarly wired. Note these particular adapters do not allow for phantom powering for the mic - to do that requires a power supply / adapter that takes 48 volt phantom down to the 3 to 5 volt 'plug-in' power the mic uses and they usally cost considerably more than the 3350 mics themselves - typically around $150 each.
 
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Steve House said:
To send the 3350's into the XLR inputs on the recorder a pair of Rode VXLR adapters would do the trick.
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Ok, thanks Steve. So, the two lavs in a single 1/8" is pointless. And I CAN do the XLR input idea, just without phantom and making sure of course to shut phantom power off on the h4n when I do it. It's only for one setup, but I want to know that I can do that just with two adapters.
I think I've decided instead of the two 3350s, to get one better quality lav closer to 100 and then rent or borrow another for the day I need it. That way I get to actually own a 'better' lav for the future than having two 3350s that are really not ideal in a lot of circumstances.
 
I believe that the Rode VXLR that steve mentioned should work, or here is a cable that I believe will do the same thing.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/133526-REG/Comprehensive_XLRP_MJ_3ST_Mini_Female_to_3_Pin.html
Personally, I wouldn't mess around with 3.5mm lavaliers and adapters and such. You'll see that these types of adapters never get really great reviews because they are cheap work arounds that are prone to issues. Get a pair of XLR lavs that lock in and run off phantom power and you won't have to worry about 'power-remaining' indicators or cables unplugging, etc. The XLR mics such as the Oscar Sound that ggrantly mentioned will sound much better (and are actually professional quality) and run about $100 a lav. Or just look on ebay for used or cheap XLRs. Here is $40 one that I've personally never used or heard of, but might be worth the gamble if you want to do the no budget thing.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Omnidir...ultDomain_0&hash=item4617ae77f7#ht_1933wt_682
I'd go with a DR-40 over a H4n, but I suppose it's just a matter of preference. I used a DR40 for a while before I moved to a DR680 and had zero issues (I was feeding it through a SD302, however). The preamps on any of these small recorders aren't particularly impressive, so get used to having a little noise, especially if you are using low-sensitivity / cheap lavaliers.
 
Strouty said:
The XLR mics such as the Oscar Sound that ggrantly mentioned will sound much better (and are actually professional quality) and run about $100 a lav. Or just look on ebay for used or cheap XLRs.
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Thanks for all the great input. Unfortunately I don't really have access to those Oscar Soundtech mics because I'm in France. But there ARE others in various shops and on Amazon France. I'm looking at this AKG right now as an option. I suppose with something like this, all I need is the miniXLR to XLR adapter, right?
 
tinpanalley said:
Thanks for all the great input. Unfortunately I don't really have access to those Oscar Soundtech mics because I'm in France. But there ARE others in various shops and on Amazon France. I'm looking at this AKG right now as an option. I suppose with something like this, all I need is the miniXLR to XLR adapter, right?
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I don't think the AKG will work out. It's designed to plug into a bodypack wireless transmitter that supplies low voltage mic power thus a simple mini XLR to XLR adapter won't do it, you'll need the phantom power adapter I referred to in my earlier post ... here's a link http://www.ambient.de/en/products/ambient-recording/mic-power-supply/emp/emp3s.html to one that would work with the AKG mic and they run about $130 US. (Here's AKG's own version http://www.akg.com/MPA+V+L-1280.html?pid=81 looks like it runs about 60 euros.) In addition, the AKG is a cardioid pattern, good for sound reinforcement applications where feedback suppression is needed but not so good for film//video work as the subject tends to go 'off-mic' every time they move their head.
 
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tinpanalley said:
I'd be thrilled to bits if one day on a forum somewhere, people would stop answering new members with the expectation that they'll be like other clueless people they've met in the past and would instead just answer the questions being asked or simply left it alone and kept on browsing another thread. I'm sorry ggrantly but that's how I see it. Answer the questions asked or walk away. I've never understood that desire to say, "Well, I'll answer your questions but first, here's why you're already wrong." Nobody every taught anyone ANYthing with that strategy. You have no clue from one post what I do or don't know about things without at least asking for clarification first.
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Well that aint going to happen. The folks who are answering questions are not paid to give bad advice, they are not paid at all. So if you want "answers" you will have to live with opinions also.

And actually there are not "answers" to most of your questions. You are asking for opinions. Any "is there a better" or what is the best" question that is not very specific about exactly how it will be used and exactly what the end expectation is are really just shots in the dark. And no matter how much filmmaking experience you have they also demonstrate a lack of sound experience. It's not about pointing out that someone is "wrong" but trying to help them be successful.

I wish folks who asked questions would ask the right questions, but that isn't going to happen either.

Now you were much better than most in that you did get fairly specific about what you are trying to do and that you don't have much sound experience. Since you admit the later you should probably not assume you have asked the right questions.

I don't need to add my yeses and no's since they would probably be the same as Richards but that does not answer your real question.

Your real question is something like "I am doing these short interviews in a behind the scene doc style on a shoestring budget as a one man band. I'm looking for a "doc style" "good enough" sound and they will be shot as one on one interviews where I can get pretty close. What would be a good package to do this under $1,000."

But by getting snarky you really eliminate a huge resource of folks who know a LOT about sound and a bunch who have done things very much like what you want to do.
 
Steve House said:
In addition, the AKG is a cardioid pattern, good for sound reinforcement applications where feedback suppression is needed but not so good for film//video work as the subject tends to go 'off-mic' every time they move their head.
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Right, so not omnidirectional like the Sennheiser ME2, for example. Ok, well, I may need to just stick to the 3350 then and figure out another setup for the two person shot. I think I'll try the mini to XLR adapter to see how finnicky, static-y, noisy it is and see if I can live with it or not. That being said, I do like the phantom power adapter option because like you said, it's cleaner to not go mini to XLR.
 
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