Sure...but how well does it record sound?

G

glass

Member
The title pretty much says it all...do we know anything about its sound-recording properties?
I've heard about the 2 XLR inputs, 4-channels and 16 bit sound, but nothing about frequency response, dynamic range or distortion. I know that this is par for the course in cameras, but I'm hoping that I've just missed it in the torrent of posts on this otherwise obviously superior camera.
For $6000, I don't want to have to use another device to record audio.
 
We can just hope it's at least as good as the DVX... and as camera audio goes, the DVX is pretty darn good!
 
I remember before my friend and I shot a short on the DVX, we spoke to a sound designer who scoffed at the idea of recording sound in camera. This was when the DVX first came out. I told him we were gonna do it anyway and he looked at me like I had just insulted his mother. Needless to say I'm glad I was a stubborn SOB.

If the sound is as good as the DVX there won't be a problem, it should be better I'd imagine.
 
..well , any noises the camera makes wont normally matter, because your microphones shoudnt be on or near the camera.. they should be on or near the talent. so unless you using the internal mic, camera noise should not be a reall issue. the problem ppeople generally have with recording sound to the camera is that most cameras have lousy preamps for the mics, and noisy audio pathways which lead to a degraded and bunk like sound recording. the DVX however has the best in its class, and IMHO does a great job for on camera sound. presumably the HVX will be as good or better. becuase once a company develops somthing that works well. they rarely do research to make it worse.. its usually the other way round.
 
brianluce said:
why is there a general reservation to record sound in camera?
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Because traditionally, cameras in this price range have had lousy audio recording circuitry. DV Magazine did a comparison article where Jay Rose went through all the available DV cameras at the time (right before the DVX was announced) and rendered a verdict of "ugh. DV cameras have lousy audio."

A couple of months later, after the DVX was released and he had a chance to test it, he issued a second article that basically said "well, hold on a minute, I may have spoken too soon" and referring to its audio quality, he said something like "The DVX is a breath of fresh air."

Obviously no in-camera audio system is going to be directly competitive with the best dedicated audio recording gear. The question is -- at what point does the camera's audio circuitry become "good enough", such that the additional hassle of recording double-system sound becomes less worth the effort? For many of us, the DVX is the first camera to hit that magical point of having the audio circuitry "good enough" that we find we don't need to resort to double-system sound.

And we have higher expectations for the HVX.
 
Fundamentally, there are no inherent limitations to using in camera audio recording; rather it is simply a matter of execution, not format. DV 2 channel is a 16 bit 48 kS/s system. This nets out to a frequency response of near 24 kHz (depending upon the anti-aliasing filters used) and a dynamic range of 96.3 dB.

Certainly the argument for using a different microphone is clear, the mechanical noise transmitted into the microphone along with the distance to the subject are far from ideal, but the advantage of using the quantizers (A/D) within the camera has the advantage of being inherently synced to the video. Utilizing an external microphone preamplifier and then sending line level signal(s) to the camera's inputs, is an efficient and reasonable solution.

In measuring the performance of the 100A, I found that its quantizers were reasonable in terms of performance, the in camera microphone preamplifiers were not of the same quality, especially the on-board phantom supply generator was less than ideal. Neither of these are an issue when using an outboard preamplifier.

I too would assume that the HVX would equal or better the performance of the DVX, but of course time will tell.
 
DV 2 channel is a 16 bit 48 kS/s system. This nets out to a frequency response of near 24 kHz (depending upon the anti-aliasing filters used) and a dynamic range of 96.3 dB.
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Specs, the worthless piece of info you can get. What good can be an audio which has a teoretical dynamic range of 96.3dB if the circuit puts a 50dB noise??

The audio path can be near a lot of circuits that make it unusable. The best way to test gear is see/hear it.

If you just go by specs, HDV should be horrible. Instead a lot of the users are happy with it. What is more important the specs or the results??
 
Very true videoteque73. The noise floor is what counts and Panasonic's is around -45 to -50db. That is not 'good enough'. I hope they pay extra attention to the audio circuit as well as the other components. I'd like to see a -75db noise floor particularly on a solid state camera.
 
I think that 'videoteque73' partially missed my point, I stated that it is the "execution, not format" which may be limited in terms of performance.

Proper specifications, those which represent actual performance, are certainly a valid starting point and are far from worthless. Marketing driven claims may be of less value. As I stated, the quantizer within the DVX is a pretty decent performer, it is the mic preamplifier (and the phantom supply generator) that are the weaker part of it's signal chain. I would agree that waiting for the actual performance measurements of the HVX is a valid approach, but again I would expect that the HVX will match or exceed the performance of the DVX.

In a mode conversion system (A>D or D>A), obtaining linear amplitude response is a trivial matter, it is the noise performance that is likely to be the limiting factor. The advantage of an external preamplifier is that the noise contribution of the camera's gain block is minimized as the amplitude of the signal is greater and hence the S/N ratio is improved.

I am assuming that your comment of "puts a 50 dB noise" was intended to indicate a 50 dB S/N ratio (-50 dB FS). I don't have the noise floor performance plots of the DVX’s quantizer here, but from memory, they were considerably better than that. I can provide the measurements that we obtained (for the DVX) if you are interested and I can do the same for the HVX as soon as we receive the camera.
 
What good can be an audio which has a teoretical dynamic range of 96.3dB if the circuit puts a 50dB noise??
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Hey, videoteque73, whats it like having dog ears?

... Just kidding :laugh:
 
I hope the monitoring circuit is better than the DVX. It's hard to trust something that sounds like doo-doo while you're shooting...
One man's opinion.
Sam
 
Hey guys.
We're talking about a 4k camera here. Sure it's not the best. There's noise in the audio, grain in the image. But all is acceptable and it was the first camcorder that incorporated many needed features from a shouldercam. Wich, if you look closely, have all been copied by sony's hdv by the way.
I think it's a great value for money camera, and I expect the HVX to be that aswel. But it's bound to be imperfect or it would cost a whole lot more...
 
John_Hudson said:
Where's the starter of this lame thread?
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Working to pay for one of these nifty things, as it happens.
My point is simple: While this camera has a lot of great things to say about it, let's not forget that they aren't going to emphasize the things that aren't great, and sound recording would seem to be one of them, given the dearth of information on it. Camera sound has gotten worse with some visually more advanced models, and while we are all prone to gush over affordable, high quality HD, rule number one of digital video is that the sound has to be incredible. That is something that every camera maker should be reminded of, and perhaps every camera buyer.
 
... and yet Panasonic is one manufacturer who has made quality audio a priority. Most of us aren't concerned about it because we know they "did it right" on the prior camera. And they're up against HDV, which is using compressed audio -- they know that in the audio segment of the camera they have a chance to really knock it out of the park. I expect them to.
 
The DVX audio is excellent, yet Panasonic doesn’t tend to “emphasize” it in the literature, either. Check out the DVX100A brochure. Compare to the HVX200 brochure.
 
Uhhh... The audio is OK. It is not excellent. They don't emphasize it for good reason.

Anyway, I hope it is near excellent (should be for solid state!) because it would be less 'stuff' that you need when out on the road. We pack a ten channel audio setup (even if we only need 2) just because the camera's audio is not great.

It probably will be better on the HVX
 
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