Using the onboard mic and an XLR.

A

Allan Black

Veteran
Hi all, to those with the A1s .. when you combine the stereo onboard mic with one external XLR mono mic, does the onboard mic collapse to mono?

And when you use a stereo mic into the minijack and the stereo onboard mic, do they both collapse to mono? Thanks.

Cheers.
 
Hi Huy. The A1s/G1s on board mic specs say .. 'Stereo electret, Cross-layout microphone'

I've never heard of a 'Cross-layout' mic, what's that? I figured that stereo combines to mono when you plug in an external mono XLR mic.

Cheers.
 
No - it just means that one element has the most sensitive direction one way, the other one crosses and goes t'other. If you were using two separate mics, crossing them at 90 degrees is a fairly common technique that give decent stereo imaging.
 
Like I said, the onboard mic is not stereo. It doesn't record stereo sound. It's an omnidirectional mono mic that simply duplicates the signal to both channels, like every other onboard microphone. If you plug in another microphone, the onboard mic is restricted to one channel.
 
So the manual is wrong...? It states the A1s onboard mic is stereo.

From a design and operational point of view I can understand it being mono, but not omnidirectional. That mic should be cardioid to basically only pick up what's in front of the camera.

BTW all my other vid cameras onboard mics are stereo, including my A1.

Cheers.
 
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Raster said:
From a design and operational point of view I can understand it being mono, but not omnidirectional. That mic should be cardioid to basically only pick up what's in front of the camera.
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It should be, but it's not. That's an omnidirectional mic.

Raster said:
BTW all my other vid cameras onboard mics are stereo, including my A1.
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You're confusing the definition of what a stereo mic is. Just because it gives you a left and right channel doesn't make it stereo. Like I said, what the mic is doing is taking a mono signal and replicating it on both channels at once, so you have 2 identical mono signal. True stereo recording is vastly different in term of how it replicates sound spatially. Here's a simple test that you can do. Record something, then split the two channels in post and listen to each independently. You'll find that both channels are identical. On an actual stereo recording they would not be.

The manual tells you that it's "stereo" because the vast majority of buyers out there has no idea what real stereo recording sounds like; all they want is to hear the sound coming out of both ears at once, and so in that sense it's "stereo."
 
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I've been in pro sound production for many years and I can't agree with that dual mono explanation at all.

The Canon A1 onboard mic is a stereo electret condenser. I'm producing video programs for aircraft organisations and we occasionally use that mic for spacial stereo effects in large reverberant hangars.

Cheers.
 
Raster said:
I

The Canon A1 onboard mic is a stereo electret condenser. I'm producing video programs for aircraft organisations and we occasionally use that mic for spacial stereo effects in large reverberant hangars.

Cheers.
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I don't know what to tell you. That's the way it works on my A1.
 
Raster said:
From a design and operational point of view I can understand it being mono, but not omnidirectional. That mic should be cardioid to basically only pick up what's in front of the camera.
Cheers.
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It's definitely omnidirectional, for all practical purposes, whatever the tech specs say. I speak from experience. Use the onboard mic in a scene where there's sound from behind the camera, and see what a good job it does of picking it up.

If you plug an XLR mic in, you can set the external mic to one or both channels. If both then, obviously, the onboard mic does nothing. If one channel, the onboard can use the 2nd channel.
 
NickG said:
It's definitely omnidirectional, for all practical purposes, whatever the tech specs say. I speak from experience. Use the onboard mic in a scene where there's sound from behind the camera, and see what a good job it does of picking it up.
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Well that's a very bad mistake by Canon, listing the A1s onboard mic as stereo and it's mono and what's much worse, omnidirectional. I'm surprised this hasn't come up before, or maybe I missed it.

That makes the A1s onboard mic useless for recording the video soundstage as the camera sees it, and that's what an onboard mic is supposed to be for.

I was going to trade up from the A1 to get the A1s audio limiters, so now I have to take into account the useless onboard mic.

Cheers.
 
There might be the odd exception, but it's my understanding that all pro-sumer/consumer level camcorders have omnidirectional mics. These machines are designed to be self-contained, to suit consumers who just wants point-and-shoot convenience, and pros/semi-pros whose shooting style or circumstances demand a one-box solution.

When I first got into video, the very first 2 lessons I learned were:

1. Good sound is the difference between good video and mediocre video
2. If you want good sound, do not depend on an onboard mic. The exceptions to this (run n' gun, newsgathering, verite) are where the sound is secondary to immediacy. or where rough sound is part of the package.

Apart from the omnidirectional issue, the camera is commonly too far from the action for the sound coming to the mic to be up to the standard of the video images.
 
Exactly, if you're serious about getting good sound, why would you ever depend on an onboard camera mic? For any amount of serious audio recording you'll have an external mic setup w/ the proper support tool. I can't imagine any situation where an onboard mic can do what an external cannot.

The onboard mic on my A1 broke off after about a year (crappy loose Canon design that's supposed to be a "feature") and I couldn't have cared less. Never used it.
 
Huy Vu said:
Exactly, if you're serious about getting good sound, why would you ever depend on an onboard camera mic? For any amount of serious audio recording you'll have an external mic setup w/ the proper support tool. I can't imagine any situation where an onboard mic can do what an external cannot.
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Exactly Huy and I agree, but some people do use the onboard mic for ambient sfx.

However the reason I first bought it up is because I'm considering buying an A1s and I want to know exactly what does happen, when you select the onboard mic together with an external XLR mic.

I asked a rep at Canon Sydney, he sent an enquiry to Canon Japan and here's their answer...

"The Canon A1 and A1s built in mics are stereo. On the A1s when an external XLR mono mic is selected together with the built in stereo mic, then that mics stereo signal is summed into a mono signal, then assigned to either track 1 or 2 on the DV tapes audio. The XLR mics signal is routed to the other available track."

The Sydney rep added this ...

"To my knowledge and observations, the summing of the internal mic is not explained in the manual for the A1s camera. It would be ideal for that to be explicit in the “external audio” section that we were looking at yesterday (pp47-55 in the manual)."

I agree with all that and I hope this explains it for others who were wondering.

Cheers.
 
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