DSLRs audio solutions

The quality of the audio comes from those basic items:

1. Placement of the mic (the closesr the mic is to the subject the better – thus you have boom operators who levitate the boom mic just inches above the frame line). As we are talking low budget productions, if you can’t afford the boom op, then placing a small mic (lavaliere) close to the mouth (on your subject chest) is second best soluton. Using the build in mic or even an external mic attached to the camera will result in mediocre results at best as the distance the sound waves have to travel from the subjects mouth to the mic is too great.

2. Mic quality. I use Sennhesier wireless units as my lavs and Rode NTG2 as my boom mic.

3. Preamp quality. The reason why plugging good, well placed mic directly to your camera still yields crappy audio (filled with circuity noise) is because of low quality pream electronics in your camera, thus you need a device with good preamps (external recorder, mixer, XLR adopter with preamps – all those will yield better results then plugin your mic directly into the camera).

I’ll review 3 devices that have a pre-amp and allow you to record better audio then the build in camera’s circuitry: Zoom H4, Zoom H4n, JuicedLink  DN101 attached to CX211.

There is no one tool that is perfect for every situation, each has pluses and minuses.

Zoom H4
Pros:
— decent preamp
— lightweight
— allows to change the input level of each device separately

Cons:
— drifts up to 2 frames per 10 min of recording from the image of Canon 5D/7D
— no way to adjust the input level during recording
— clunky interface at first
— small display
— black & green display might be hard to read when your signal starts clipping
— clunky way to change batteries

Zoom H4n
Pros:
— momentarily flashing red light indicating clipping
— possibility to adjust the input levels during recording (equally on both inputs though)
— large display
— easy to comprehend interface
— lightweight
— easy was to change batteries

Cons:
— drifts up to 2 frames per 10 min of recording from the image of Canon 5D/7D
— doesn’t allows to change the input level of each device separately (WTF???)

JuicedLink DN101 (attached to JuicedLink CX211)
Pros:
— records straigh to the camera so you don’t have to sync up the audio in the post (also no drift issues)
— provides an audio monitoring ability through the headphones
— records one clean audio track
— you can adjust (ride) the levels of the input

Cons:
— the headphones level/quality is crap – you can monitor that you are getting the audio but not its quality (though it is mentioned in all the device’s literature)
— the meter only has 5 lights meaning you don’t exactly know how close you are to clipping (though the designer did put in a tiny red dot to show that your are clipping) – still hard to know whether you are feeding the camera good, juicy signal
— only one track of audio (though this is the only solution to disable Canon’s 7D AGC, thus it’s not really the device’s fault)
— the camera’s audio filter doesn’t allow for full volume to be recorded (again not really the device’s fault but something to conciser if you choose to go this route) – you will not be able to get to 0 dbs even if your sound sounds clipped
— weak cable from battery to device
— in playback the AGC track has to be disabled to hear the good audio – so no audio quality check on the fly