Having trouble with audio feed

[Jason Watt]

I've been using the Sennheiser G2 receivers with my XL1 with no problems but now have a sound man and he is feeding me through his field mixer and I'm having trouble with the feed. From the mixer the levels are and sound good but monitoring off the headphone out on the XL1 it's sounding really hot, a bit tinty and borderline distorted. On playback, it's sounds equally bad.

I'm receiving a Line feed (XLR direct from the mixer) and set the db knob on the side to -3db, the audio level on the side of the XL1 is at around 9-10 o'clock, the bodypack receiver is set to -15 db.

Any ideas what adjustments need to be made?

As a reference, reading other posts on how to set the levels with the receiver connected to my XLR in, I was set at Mic att 20, receiver at -15db and audio level about 80% or at around 2 o'clock.

Field mixer is a Shure FP24, mics was an me2 lav and K6 boom mic.

Thanks for any help....

[Steve House]

Sounds like the mixer is feeding a too hot for the camera. Have your sound man turn on the 1kHz tone on the mixer and adjust the level if needed until it registers 0dB on his meters. This gets the mixer sending a +4dBu to your camera. Turn on the auto-level on the camera for a moment and see where it likes to have the recording level at, probably -12dBFS. Switch to manual control and with the level controls set the same camera meter indication that auto level did. If you don't achieve it with the camera audio level controls set to about 75% of full, in other words the level controls need to be too high or too low, turn on the attentuator and/or add an appropriate pad in the line between the mixer and the camera. The idea is that you want the signal presented at the camera input to drive it to record tone at -12dBFS when the manual gain controls are set to about 2/3 to 3/4 full up. That sets up the camera and all further level adjustments are done at the mixer. With whatever audio source going through the mixer, the soundman should ride the gain until the levels he sees average 0dB on his meters with peaks occasionaly flashing a tad over.

The mic receiver might be too hot for the mixer. The same process would be followed - set the receiver output so the mixer hits 0dBU on its meters with the input gain control at about the 60-75 percent level.

[Jack Smith]

Did you set the input to line level in the menu?

[Jason Watt]

I've set the camera to Mic Att 20 plus have added and inline attentuator between the mixer and the XL1 XLR inputs, set it at -30db and it's solved the problem.

I read on other posts that the XL1 works best receiving via Mic Att 20.

Originally Posted by Steve House

Sounds like the mixer is feeding a too hot for the camera. Have your sound man turn on the 1kHz tone on the mixer and adjust the level if needed until it registers 0dB on his meters. This gets the mixer sending a +4dBu to your camera. Turn on the auto-level on the camera for a moment and see where it likes to have the recording level at, probably -12dBFS. Switch to manual control and with the level controls set the same camera meter indication that auto level did. If you don't achieve it with the camera audio level controls set to about 75% of full, in other words the level controls need to be too high or too low, turn on the attentuator and/or add an appropriate pad in the line between the mixer and the camera. The idea is that you want the signal presented at the camera input to drive it to record tone at -12dBFS when the manual gain controls are set to about 2/3 to 3/4 full up. That sets up the camera and all further level adjustments are done at the mixer. With whatever audio source going through the mixer, the soundman should ride the gain until the levels he sees average 0dB on his meters with peaks occasionaly flashing a tad over.

The mic receiver might be too hot for the mixer. The same process would be followed - set the receiver output so the mixer hits 0dBU on its meters with the input gain control at about the 60-75 percent level.

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Jason Watt

I've set the camera to Mic Att 20 plus have added and inline attentuator between the mixer and the XL1 XLR inputs, set it at -30db and it's solved the problem.

I read on other posts that the XL1 works best receiving via Mic Att 20.

Attentuation is additive so setting the mic input to Att20 and adding another 30 in the line is the same in terms of signal strength as turning off the in-camera attenuation and using -50 in the line or reducing the mixer output level itself by 50dB. From a signal/noise standpoint and guarding against accidental overload of the camera's inputs on hot peaks however, the method you're using is the best way to go.