Panasonic GS-500 & Sennheiser EW 100 G2 question?

[Mark Anderson]

First I'd like to say that this is a great site with many seasoned professionals who have spent many years mastering their craft. I'm just starting to learn and feel like a sponge trying to take in as much information as I can. Right now I'm concentrating on my audio. After reading some of the comments about the Sennheiser EW 100 G2 microphone, I saved my money and purchased the wireless lav set. I'm very pleased with the quality and would highly recommend it.

My question is when I plug in my wireless mic to my GS-500, the audio level from the camera is barely audible while the G2 wireless lav is perfect. I've adjusted the camera's mic level but it doesn't have an any effect on the audio level. I've tried adjusting the TX sensitivity & RX AF level on the mic to lower levels but it doesn't appear to make any difference. Am I missing something very simple? Any helpful response would be greatly appreciated.

[Peter Rhalter]

Are you connecting to a line level input instead of to a mic level connector on the camera?

Best wishes,
Peter
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http://www.parkfilms.com

[Greg Bellotte]

if you are plugging the receiver into an 1/8" mini jack on the camera, this usually disconnects and overrides the internal camera mic. your best option is to use a mixer, or channel spitting y cord, along with a camera mounted ambience microphone. done correctly, this will give you one channel of wireless mic, and one channel of ambience that you can tweak in your editing software. a lot to strap on a small camera, but workable.

you may also need an attenuator for the line level receiver audio into the ycord, to match the lower mic level. your camera would prefer that they both be about equal.

[Mark Anderson]

Originally Posted by Greg Bellotte

if you are plugging the receiver into an 1/8" mini jack on the camera, this usually disconnects and overrides the internal camera mic. your best option is to use a mixer, or channel spitting y cord, along with a camera mounted ambience microphone. done correctly, this will give you one channel of wireless mic, and one channel of ambience that you can tweak in your editing software. a lot to strap on a small camera, but workable.

you may also need an attenuator for the line level receiver audio into the ycord, to match the lower mic level. your camera would prefer that they both be about equal.

Greg

I think you just helped me connect the dots. Do I need to purchase a particular mixer for my GS-500? Also does the wireless mic and camera mounted mic in turn connect up to the mixer?

[Greg Bellotte]

any stereo mixer will work. it's a matter of combining the two sound sources into a common stereo feed (one on the left, the other on the right) that your one external input will accept. in other words, the wireless will go into a mixer input that feeds the left output, the camera mounted mic goes into a second mixer input that feeds the right output. this new "stereo" mix is plugged into your camera for recording.

it would be handy if the mixer accepted both mic and line level inputs, because the g2 is line level (very loud) and 99% of mics will be mic level (very soft). it would also be nice if your mixer supported mic level outputs, as not all camcorder inputs accept line level.

be careful, you can easily spend more on a mixer than you did on your camera. better audio aways seems to cost money. some of us spend thousands on it... :-) most decent mixers are going to be 500+, there are some mono consumer toys for under 100. y-cord solution around 15.

[Jon Fairhurst]

We use a GS500 at Colonel Crush. We use a mic to line transformer between our shotgun and the camera. The transformer goes from XLR to 1/4". We then step it down to a mini-plug. Note that the shotgun is battery-powered, so we don't need to give it phantom power.

One tip: keep the connection between the transformer and camera as short as possible.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...entPage=search

[Graham Hickling]

I recently did a similar set-up with my Sony HC1, which just has a stereo 3.5mm audio plug.

I found a Hosa 3.5mm stereo male to 3.5mm dual mono female adapter. Like this one: http://www.redco.com/shopexd.asp?id=950

I plug my camera-shoe mounted mic into one mono plug and the 3.5mm output cable from the Sennheiser SK100 body pack into the other.

The HC1 doesnt allow for independent adjustment of the channels, so I adjust camera's mic levels for the on-camera mic, the use the SK100 and EK100's control to adjust the wireless signal strength to a more-or-less matching level. (Not sure about the "line level" comment in Greg's post ... I havent had any problem matching the wireless and on-camera mic signals doing as I've just described.)

If you monitor with headphones, you'll hear one mic in your left ear and the other in your right.

If you have the time, $ and enough hands a mixer would of course be preferable, but I was after a cheap setup for solo work and so far I'm happy.

[Mark Anderson]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I ended up calling Guy @ dvcreators.net and he set me up with a Beach Tek DSA-2S adapter along with a Rode videoMic. This should solve the problem.