Using a H2 Zoom with a Shotgun microphone?

T

tomjelfs

Member
Hi Everyone,

New to the forum and hoping here could be a good place to discuss the level of film making I'm at.

My problem:

I currently have a Canon 500d and so in need of an external sound solution I went about purchasing, albeit naively, a cheap Audio Technica ATR-6550 with the intention of buying a recording device at a later time. I have now purchased a H2 Zoom and so keenly went about plugging my mic into the H2 Zoom to see what results I would get, obviously the first thing I realised was that I needed a stereo adapter which I purchased swiftly, but the results I'm getting are strange. When I listen to the results on the H2 Zoom they sound pretty good but the moment I put them onto my laptop the volume is so low it's un useable, when I put it into Audition there is no sound waveform that is visible.

Anyone know of anything I should be doing? I have a crappy plastic mic that came with my pc 10 years ago that does a better job, when recording straight into my laptop.

Any replies would be greatly appreciated.

Tom
 
I use the H4n and don't know anything about the Audio Technica...so the blind leading the blind.
It sounds like you're not getting power to the mic. Does the H2 have a power setting for that port...not Phantom Power? On the H4n's there is a separate setting to power the stereo port.

Does the mic have it's own power (battery)?
 
Hi and thanks for your reply.

Yes the Mic has a single AA Battery and I think that's in good shape, I'll have a look at the power for the port when I get home tonight, but as I said the sound recorded seems fine when I have headphones plugged in to the H2 and listening to the files on the device itself.
 
Try adjusting the input gain on your Zoom. You prorbably have it set too low. Then, when you bring the files into Audition,
you can normalize or do a volume envelope to get what you want.

If you're getting playback from the Zoom, then your external microphone is fine.

GJ
 
Thanks for the reassurance, I've had the gain set to medium and have tried High also. I'll try the stuff in Audition later on. So I'm on the right track using this set up?
 
Just to be clear ... are you saying when you record something on the H2 and play it back there, it sounds fine. But when you transfer the same file to your PC and try to play it there, the volume is very low and when you load the file into Audition the waveform is flat-line? Same file in all three playback situations?

Assuming this is the case, my first thought is your stereo adapter is introducing a phase reversal in one channel. The AT mic is mono so the first time you plugged it into the H2 and tried to record all you got was the left channel, right? You added a "stereo adapter" to the mix (what's missing here is exactly what sort of "adapter" you came up with). Now you get dignal on the left and right channels. When you play it in your H2 as a stereo file it will sound fine. What I'm suspecting is that the right channel has become phase inverted with respect to the left. Now you load the file into your laptop. If it's getting mixed again to mono in the laptop or during the transfer process, left and right will cancel each other out and you'll get the observed results.

The big question is why you feel you need a stereo adapter in the first place? Shotguns are for dialog and dialog is always mono. Record mono, edit mono, pan to the centre when you render the final stereo soundtrack.
 
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Ah! Makes perfect sense (what Steve said). Ditch the adaptor, unless you want a stereo recording, then just "boom" the recorder and use the on-board mikes.

GJ
 
Steve House said:
Just to be clear ... are you saying when you record something on the H2 and play it back there, it sounds fine. But when you transfer the same file to your PC and try to play it there, the volume is very low and when you load the file into Audition the waveform is flat-line? Same file in all three playback situations?

Assuming this is the case, my first thought is your stereo adapter is introducing a phase reversal in one channel. The AT mic is mono so the first time you plugged it into the H2 and tried to record all you got was the left channel, right? You added a "stereo adapter" to the mix (what's missing here is exactly what sort of "adapter" you came up with). Now you get dignal on the left and right channels. When you play it in your H2 as a stereo file it will sound fine. What I'm suspecting is that the right channel has become phase inverted with respect to the left. Now you load the file into your laptop. If it's getting mixed again to mono in the laptop or during the transfer process, left and right will cancel each other out and you'll get the observed results.

The big question is why you feel you need a stereo adapter in the first place? Shotguns are for dialog and dialog is always mono. Record mono, edit mono, pan to the centre when you render the final stereo soundtrack.
Click to expand...

Yes you are correct in all your assumptions and in answer to your question the adapter was this one http://www.maplin.co.uk/3.5mm-stereo-plug-to-3.5mm-mono-socket-adaptor-1227

Thanks for your concise reply, this is exactly what I needed to hear, especially the last part. I will try out this workflow tonight.

One last question: Are basic foley elements recorded Mono also?

Thanks again to everyone.

Tom
 
That adapter should have been okay but it seems that somewhere along the line there's a phase inversion being introduced in one of the channels. In what format are you recording the original file and exactly how are you getting it into your laptop?

Foley would generally be mono ... footsteps, ice clinking in a glass, etc are all point sources, hence mono by nature. Ambience, OTOH, could be stereo but ambience and Foley are two entriely different things. (BTW, Foley is capitalized as it is a person's name.)
 
Recorded using the default settings which is Wav format and transferred to the laptop by putting the card into a the card slot on the laptop, then a simple drag and drop.
 
tomjelfs said:
Recorded using the default settings which is Wav format and transferred to the laptop by putting the card into a the card slot on the laptop, then a simple drag and drop.
Click to expand...
I don't have an H2 to play with so at this point I confess I'm stumped. What happens if you dispense with the stereo adapter and just record a mono file? Do you get a normal looking left channel?
 
...And doesn't the H2 let you go directly into the computer through USB? (in case there's a card-reading/file error)

My H1 files open-up automatically in Sound-Forge.

GJ
 
Well I had a good tinker tonight and found a few things:

• Disposing of the adapter was a good idea.
• When recording this way it only plays out of the Left Channel
• There is an option on H2 to Mix Mono so it records mono to both Left and Right Channels
• You can adjust the Record Level and monitor it so that it gets a good volume "without exceeding 0(db)"
• There is the function to Normalise a file so that "the maxiumum level is raised to 0(db)"

So I now have numerous ways to solve my initial problem.

Do you think it is better to record Mono into the left channel only and then sort it out in Audition or do you think using the Mix Mono option is a good way to go? I guess all this depends on my needs but I like to know the best way of working and then water it down from there based on how much quality is need from what I am doing.

Thanks again by the way.

Tom
 
tomjelfs said:
Well I had a good tinker tonight and found a few things:

• Disposing of the adapter was a good idea.
• When recording this way it only plays out of the Left Channel
• There is an option on H2 to Mix Mono so it records mono to both Left and Right Channels
• You can adjust the Record Level and monitor it so that it gets a good volume "without exceeding 0(db)"
• There is the function to Normalise a file so that "the maxiumum level is raised to 0(db)"

So I now have numerous ways to solve my initial problem.

Do you think it is better to record Mono into the left channel only and then sort it out in Audition or do you think using the Mix Mono option is a good way to go? I guess all this depends on my needs but I like to know the best way of working and then water it down from there based on how much quality is need from what I am doing.

Thanks again by the way.

Tom
Click to expand...

First choice would be to record to a mono BWF file, if the H2 will do that. 2nd option is a stereo BWF with a silent right channel. If that's the case, on import to Audition or other audio editing sofftware, I would split the single stereo track into two mono tracks and discard to right channel in order to produce a file with single mono track. That is what I would import into my timeline and mate to the video for editing. When rendering the final soundtrack I'd pan that mono track equally between the left and right channels so the final stereo output track has the dialog centre screen. Using the H2's mono mix approach ought to work but it just feels awkward to me.
 
OK Cool. I think for the quick and dirty stuff I'll use the Mono Mix option and for the more quality stuff I'll look into doing it all in post.
 
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