I bought a beachtek dxa-4p for my gl1 last summer to beef up on the aural side of production. However, since then I've found that the beachtek introduces a rather unpleasant white noise floor that makes it impossible to bump up the gain on anything without hearing a horrible hiss in the background.

Does anyone else with a beachtek face this problem? I've ruled out a number of other factors that could contribute to such a problem: it's not AGC on the GL1 (does same thing on my friend's VX-2000 with manual gain control), it's not my AT-835b or XLR cable (those work fine going straight into the XLR'S on another friend's DVX-100P). Does anyone have any experience with a different make/brand of XLR to mini-plug adapter? After dropping $170 on the beachtek i'd expect more!

Any and all help is appreciated!

I"ve not detected any issues with the old Studio 1, now Sign Video adapters.

It has been observed in the past that Beachtek sometimes painted areas inside the box that should have been left bare so that the shielding would be more complete. \

You might lift the lid and see if there is paint on the joints between box sections or under the connectors, controls and switches. Scrape the paint of if so. Might solve the problem.

Mike, I cracked the box and had a peek...nothing looked too out of the ordinary. There was a little paint but nothing major. However I think I've been falsely accusing the beachtek. The short we just wrapped was shot on my friend's VX2000, and it appears that the hiss is just a normal part of his camera's audio. It's not very noticeable unless you have a discriminating ear or boost something up in post (thus raising the noise floor too). This was despite watching levels...it was there on both the on-board mic and the beachtek. Oh well, I'll try my hardest to notch filter it out. Thanks again for your help!

You'll probably need noise reduction software instead of a notch filter for this problem. It may have some clearly detectable peaks that you can knock down with a notch, but generally is going to need a broad-band filter to get better results in total.

Devin, why not just e-mail Beachteck? They are very helpful.

http://www.beachtek.com
info@beachtek.com

Thanks for all your help guys!